Chapter 21
Twenty-One
SAM
Brooks kisses me back like he's been waiting two years and one terrible storm for permission.
For a few seconds, I forget the parking lot. I forget the folding table, the cooling burgers, the radios muttering from the open tailgate of Hershel’s truck. I forget that half the team is ten yards away and absolutely pretending not to watch us.
All I know is Brooks’s shirt is bunched in my fists, his mouth is on mine, and the rough sound he makes when I pull him closer drives me a little crazy.
His hands stay at my waist.
Careful. Shaking. Waiting.
That should hurt, maybe. Once, Brooks Carlisle touched me like he had every right in the world. Like my body was the place his hands knew best. Now he holds me like I’m something he's terrified of breaking.
I pull back just enough to breathe against his mouth. “If you ask me if I’m sure, I may actually kick you.”
His eyes open. Dark. Wrecked. “Sammy Girl.”
“Don’t Sammy Girl me unless you’re about to move.”
His mouth twitches, but the smile doesn’t quite survive. “Your room or mine?”
The old answer rises without permission.
"Which one's closest?"
A laugh breaks out of him, low and disbelieving, and it does something dangerous to my chest. Then his hand slides into mine, fingers threading through mine, and we walk across the lot like two people trying very hard not to run.
We fail somewhere near room twelve.
Brooks gets the key card out on the third try because his hands are still shaking. Mine aren’t doing much better. The little green light finally blinks, and when the second the door shuts behind us, I’m on him again.
Or he’s on me.
Hard to tell.
The room is ugly in the way cheap motel rooms are ugly.
Brown carpet. One queen bed with a comforter that has seen unspeakable things.
A lamp that buzzes when Brooks bumps the table.
Wet storm gear piled near the wall. My muddy boots kicked off beside his.
The whole place smells like rain, road dust, cheap soap, and him.
It feels like being twenty-two again.
It feels like every motel room we ever tumbled into after chasing something mean across three counties with no money, no sense, and enough heat between us to fog the windows.
Only this time, when Brooks backs me toward the bed, he stops.
His forehead rests against mine. His breath drags rough over my mouth.
“Tell me,” he says.
I swallow. “Tell you what?”
“Tell me you want this. Tell me to slow down. Tell me to stop. Tell me anything, Sam. I’ll listen.”
My throat tightens so fast it hurts.
Because he means it.
Not just here. Not just with his hands at my hips and his body warm against mine. He means all of it. The field. The team. The life. My body. My choices.
I lift my hands to his face. His stubble scrapes my palms. “I want this.”
His eyes close.
“I want you,” I say, and the words shake because I hate that they are still so easy. “I’m mad at you. I still have hurts stacked up high enough to need their own county warning system. But I want you.”
“Then that’s what I can have tonight,” he says quietly. “What you choose to give me.”
I kiss him before I start crying.
Brooks makes a broken sound against my mouth. His hands tighten once at my waist before one slides up my back and the other cups the side of my neck. He kisses me deep and slow now, like the first rush burned through and left something hotter underneath.
I get his jacket off, careful of his shoulder. He winces anyway.
“Don’t be heroic,” I mutter.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don't yes ma'am me unless you mean it."
His mouth brushes the corner of mine. “I’ve missed that.”
“Me bossing you around?”
“You being there to do it.” His fingers skim my jaw, avoiding the bruise. “Beside me in the truck. At three in the morning with bad coffee and worse gas station sandwiches.
"I missed waking up and finding your cold feet shoved under my legs,” he says. “I missed you pushing me off my own damned pillow. I missed you telling me I was pretty enough to be useful when I was being an ass.”
“You were an ass a lot.”
“I know.” His thumb strokes once beneath my ear. “I missed that too. You calling me on it.”
I look down.
For so long, I thought the small pieces of me had become inconveniences to him. My instincts. My stubbornness. My need to be where the storm was. My voice in his ear telling him what he didn’t want to hear.
Brooks tips my chin up. “I missed all of you.”
There is no clever thing to say to that.
So I drag his mouth back to mine and unbutton his shirt with hands that are steadier now for a different reason.
His skin is warm beneath my fingers, marked with bruises from the storm, a strip of bandage over one shoulder.
I touch him carefully, and he looks down at me like even that is more than he expected to receive.
“Sam,” he whispers.
I push the shirt off his good shoulder first. “I’ve missed you too.”
His chest stops moving.
“I hated it,” I admit. “I hated wanting you. I hated sleeping alone and still reaching for you. I hated watching her climb into my seat and thinking maybe you didn’t notice the difference.”
His jaw clenches. “I noticed.”
“Did you?”
“Every time.” His voice drops low, ragged. “She never had what you had. No one did. No one ever could.”
The old wound twists. “It didn’t look that way from where I was standing.”
“I'm sorry.” He lowers himself to his knees in front of me, not theatrical, not polished, just Brooks with his hands braced lightly at my hips and his face tipped up to mine. “I can’t take that back. The clinic. The truck. The way I let her stand where you belonged because it was easier than looking straight at what I’d done. ”
My eyes burn.
“I wanted to fix the night we lost the baby,” he says. “I thought if I controlled enough things, if I kept you far enough from danger, I could make sure nothing like that ever touched you again.” His breath shudders. “Instead, I became the thing hurting you.”
“Brooks.”
“I can’t give you those two years back. I can’t erase what I said when you were packing. I can’t undo making you believe I blamed you when the truth is I blamed myself so much I couldn’t breathe.” His hands flex against my hips. “I doubted you instead of talking to you.”
A tear slips down my face. Brooks doesn’t wipe it away until I nod.
His thumb is gentle.
“If you give me another chance, I won’t spend it trying to become a man who can promise nothing bad will ever happen,” he says. “That man doesn’t exist. I want to be the man beside you. The man who trusts you. The man who tells you when he’s scared before the fear turns into a cage.”
I press my fingers into his hair.
“I can’t promise I won’t be afraid,” he says. “I can promise my fear will never make your choices for you again.”
For a second, I only hear the air conditioner rattling in the window unit. The distant murmur of voices outside. The rain dripping from the roof in uneven taps.
Then I sink down with him.
My knees hit between his, and his arms come around me as if he has to remind himself he’s allowed. I kiss him hard enough that he groans.
Brooks lifts me carefully, and then we’re on the bed, laughing once because my elbow hits the remote and the television blares static before he swears and fumbles it off. The laugh dies when he looks down at me.
I reach for the hem of my shirt.
He catches my hand. “Let me?”
The softness of it nearly undoes me.
I nod.
He peels the shirt up slowly, his mouth following every inch of skin he uncovers. Ribs. Stomach. The place where loss used to feel like a bruise no one could see. His breath catches there, and for one sharp second, grief flickers through the room.
I touch his cheek. “Stay with me.”
His eyes lift to mine. “I’m here.”
Then his mouth presses to my skin, warm and reverent, and want rolls through me so hard my back arches off the mattress.
He undresses me like he remembers every inch and refuses to assume he has any right to it.
My bra lands somewhere near the ugly lamp.
His belt hits the floor. My jeans fight both of us because damp denim is a punishment no one deserves, and I make an undignified noise that has Brooks laughing against my thigh.
“Don’t you dare,” I warn.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He parts my legs slowly, looking back up at me as if asking permission one last time.
"Brooks." I try to sound menacing, but it only sounds like a plea.
When his mouth finds me, there's nothing in this world that can stop my hips from bucking up into him. His tongue finds my clit, licking and sucking until I'm panting, riding him, and calling out to God in a shoddy motel room somewhere in Oklahoma.
His fingers slide inside me, crooking upward and I gasp, looking down at him. Our eyes meet and the hunger in them is so furious that my release shatters around him.
And he doesn't stop.
Pleasure builds, hot and bright, too much and not enough. I lose any hope of staying quiet, no doubt anyone even slightly close by hearing what's going on in this room, as if there was any doubt.
I come calling out his name, shaking under him while he works me through it, while the cheap sheets twist beneath my hands and rain taps hard at the window like the storm hasn’t quite finished with us yet.
When he crawls back over me, I pull him down by the back of his neck. He kisses me, and I taste myself on his mouth. It should feel filthy. It does. And I love every minute of it.
He settles between my thighs, hot and hard against me.
"Sammy Girl."
Then, slowly, he pushes inside me.
My eyes close. My whole body goes still around the stretch and heat of him. It has been so long since I felt this full of him, this close to the man I married, this furious with him and hungry for him and stupidly, painfully in love with him.
Brooks buries his face in my neck. “God, Sam.”
I wrap my legs around his hips. “Move.”
He does.
Slow at first. Careful of my bruises. Careful of his shoulder. Careful until I bite his lower lip and tell him I need more, faster, harder.
That gets me the Brooks I remember.
His hips snap into mine, and the bed knocks against the wall.
I laugh, breathless, and he swallows the sound with his mouth.
Then there’s no room for laughter. Only skin and heat and the rough pull of his breath.
Only his hand locked with mine beside my head.
Only my body remembering him in ways my pride would have preferred to forget.
He says things against my mouth, my throat, my breast.
That he loves me.
That he missed me.
That I’m beautiful.
That there is no one else. There never was. There never will be.
I roll us carefully, mindful of his shoulder, and I ride him, feeling every inch of him inside me until I'm not sure where I end and he begins. His hands fall to my hips, but he doesn’t guide me until I cover them with mine and press.
The sound he makes is almost enough to finish me again.
I ride him with my hands braced on his chest, watching his face in the yellow motel light. He looks ruined and beautiful.
"God, Sam, you feel so good."
If there was any worry of anyone outside the room hearing us, it's gone. We're lost to the rhythm that's the both of us together.
The sensations become too much and he holds me to him, bucking up inside me until I'm shattering around him, crying out for him, not sure if I'm begging for more or begging for mercy.
He thrusts upward once more, releasing inside me with a sound so filthy and low that I swear I'll hear it for the rest of my life in my dreams.
I collapse against him, feeling his heart pounding beneath me as I remain connected to him.
"Sam," he says into my hair as his lips press to the crown of my head, and somehow, that feels like the most intimate part of it all.
For a while, neither of us moves.
Eventually, the room settles around us again. The buzzing lamp. The damp clothes on the floor. The ugly carpet. The storm gear stacked near the door like we might have to run at any second.
I reluctantly move, heading to the bathroom and then emerging and throwing on one of Brooks's shirts. It hangs loose on me, soft from years of washing, the collar stretched out. He watches me button it with an expression that makes my fingers clumsy.
“What?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“I missed seeing you in my clothes.”
My mouth trembles, so I climb into bed before he can see too much.
He follows, careful, giving me space he never used to think twice about crossing. I solve that by scooting back until my spine meets his chest. His arm comes around me, loose at first.
I take his hand and pull it against my stomach.
Behind me, he exhales.
Outside, someone laughs in the parking lot. A truck door shuts.
“I’m still scared,” I whisper.
"I am, too, but I guess you already knew that."
“This doesn’t fix everything.”
"I never thought that it did."
His thumb moves once over my knuckles.
“But tonight?” I ask.
His mouth touches the back of my head. “Tonight, I’m yours. Just like I will be until the day I die."
My eyes close.
For the first time in years, I don’t feel him gripping me like he can keep the world from taking me if he holds tight enough.
I feel his arm around me, warm and steady.
I choose to stay.
And Brooks lets that be enough.