Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Maddy hadn’t slept at all. It wasn’t typical for her and Sam to share a bed the entire night. But they had last night. After all that shouting and screaming and lovemaking, it hadn’t seemed right to leave. And he hadn’t asked her to.
She knew more about him now than she had before.
In fact, she had a suspicion that she knew everything about him.
Even if it wasn’t all put together into a complete picture.
It was there. And now, with the pale morning light filtering through the window, she was staring at him as though she could make it all form a cohesive image.
As if she could will herself to somehow understand what all of those little pieces meant. As if she could make herself see the big picture.
Sam couldn’t even see it, of that she was certain.
So she had no idea how she could expect herself to see it.
Except that she wanted to. Except that she needed to.
She didn’t want to leave him alone with all of that.
It was too much. It was too much for any one man.
He felt responsible for the death of that woman.
Or at least, he was letting himself think he did.
Protecting himself. Protecting himself with pain.
It made a strange kind of sense to her, only because she was a professional at protecting herself.
At insulating herself from whatever else might come her way.
Yes, it was a solitary existence. Yes, it was lonely.
But there was control within that. She had a feeling that Sam operated in much the same way.
She shifted, brushing his hair out of his face. He had meant to frighten her off. He had given her an out. And she knew that somehow he had imagined she would take it. She knew that he believed he was some kind of monster. At least, part of him believed it.
Because she could also tell that he had been genuinely surprised that she hadn’t turned tail and run.
But she hadn’t. And she wouldn’t. Mostly because she was just too stubborn.
She had spent the past ten years being stubborn.
Burying who she was underneath a whole bunch of bad attitude and sharp words.
Not letting anyone get close, even though she had a bunch of people around her who cared.
She had chosen to focus on the people who didn’t.
The people who didn’t care enough. While simultaneously deciding that the people who did care enough, who cared more than enough, somehow weren’t as important.
Well, she was done with that. There were people in her life who loved her.
Who loved her no matter what. And she had a feeling that Sam had the ability to be one of those people.
She didn’t want to abandon him to this. Not when he had—whether he would admit it or not—been instrumental in digging her out of her self-imposed emotional prison.
“Good morning,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his cheek.
As soon as she did that, a strange sense of foreboding stole over her. As though she knew that the next few moments were going to go badly. But maybe that was just her natural pessimism. The little beast she had built up to be the strongest and best-developed piece of her. Another defense.
Sam’s eyes opened, and the shock that she glimpsed there absolutely did not bode well for the next few moments. She knew that. “I stayed the night,” she said, in response to the unasked question she could see lurking on his face.
“I guess I fell asleep,” he said, his voice husky.
“Clearly.” She took a deep breath. Oh well. If it was all going to hell, it might as well go in style. “I want you to come to the family Christmas party with me.”
It took only a few moments for her to decide that she was going to say those words.
And that she was going to follow them up with everything that was brimming inside her.
Feelings that she didn’t feel like keeping hidden.
Not anymore. Maybe it was selfish. But she didn’t really care.
She knew his stuff. He knew hers. The only excuse she had for not telling him how she felt was self-protection.
She knew where self-protection got her. Absolutely nowhere.
Treading water in a stagnant pool of her own failings, never advancing any further on in her life.
In her existence. It left her lonely. It left her without any real, true friends.
She didn’t want that. Not anymore. And if she had to allow herself to be wounded in the name of authenticity, in the name of trying again, then she would.
An easy decision to make before the injury occurred. But it was made nonetheless.
“Why?” Sam asked, rolling away from her, getting up out of bed.
She took that opportunity to drink in every detail of his perfect body.
His powerful chest, his muscular thighs.
Memorizing every little piece of him. More Sam for her collection.
She had a feeling that eventually she would walk away from him with nothing but that collection.
A little pail full of the shadows of what she used to have.
“Because I would like to have a date.” She was stalling now.
“You want to make your dad mad? Is that what we’re doing? A little bit of revenge for everything he put you through?”
“I would never use you that way, Sam. I hope you know me better than that.”
“We don’t know each other, Maddy. We don’t. We’ve had a few conversations, and we’ve had some sex. But that doesn’t mean knowing somebody. Not really.”
“That just isn’t true. Nobody else knows how I feel about what happened to me. Nobody. Nobody else knows about the conversation I had with my dad. And I would imagine that nobody knows about Elizabeth. Not the way that I do.”
“We used each other as a confessional. That isn’t the same.”
“The funny thing is it did start that way. At least for me. Because what did it matter what you knew. We weren’t going to have a relationship after. So I didn’t have to worry about you judging me. I didn’t have to worry about anything.”
“And?”
“That was just what I told myself. It was what made it feel okay to do what I wanted to do. We lie to ourselves. We get really deep in it when we feel like we need protection. That was what I was doing. But the simple truth is I felt a connection with you from the beginning. It was why I was so terrible to you. Because it scared me.”
“You should have kept on letting it scare you, baby girl.”
Those words acted like a shot of rage that went straight to her stomach, then fired onto her head.
“Why? Because it’s the thing that allows you to maintain your cranky-loner mystique?
That isn’t you. I thought maybe you didn’t feel anything.
But now I think you feel everything. And it scares you. I’m the same way.”
“I see where this is going, Maddy. Don’t do it. Don’t. I can tell you right now it isn’t going to go the way you think it will.”
“Oh, go ahead, Sam. Tell me what I think. Please. I’m dying to hear it.”
“You think that because you’ve had some kind of transformation, some kind of deep realization, that I’m headed for the same.
But it’s bullshit. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.
Wishful thinking on a level I never wanted you to start thinking on.
You knew the rules. You knew them from the beginning. ”
“Don’t,” she said, her throat tightening, her chest constricting. “Don’t do this to us. Don’t pretend it can stay the same thing it started out as. Because it isn’t. And you know it.”
“You’re composing a really compelling story, Madison.” The reversion back to her full name felt significant. “And we both know that’s something you do. Make more out of sex than it was supposed to be.”
She gritted her teeth, battling through.
Because he wanted her to stop. He wanted this to intimidate, to hurt.
He wanted it to stop her. But she wasn’t going to let him win.
Not at this. Not at his own self-destruction.
“Jackass 101. Using somebody’s deep pain against them. I thought you were above that, Sam.”
“It turns out I’m not. You might want to pay attention to that.”
“I’m paying attention. I want you to come with me to the Christmas party, Sam. Because I want it to be the beginning. I don’t want it to be the end.”
“Don’t do this.”
He bent down, beginning to collect his clothes, his focus on anything in the room but her. She took a deep breath, knowing that what happened next was going to shatter all of this.
“I need more. I need more than twelve days of Christmas. I want it every day. I want to wake up with you every morning and go to bed with you every night. I want to fight with you. I want to make love with you. I want to tell you my secrets. To show you every dark, hidden thing in me. The serious things and the silly things. Because I love you. It’s that complicated and that simple.
I love you and that means I’m willing to do this, no matter how it ends. ”
Sam tugged his pants on, did them up, then pulled his shirt over his head.
“I told you not to do this, Maddy. But you’re doing it anyway.
And you know what that makes it? A suicide mission.
You stand there, thinking you’re being brave because you’re telling the truth.
But you know how it’s going to end. You know that after you make this confession, you’re not actually going to have to deal with the relationship with me, because I already told you it isn’t happening.
I wonder if you would have been so brave if you knew I might turn around and offer you forever. ”