Chapter 25 Sam
SAM
Time to take control of the situation and get rid of this guy. I clap my hands together, hard and fast. I haven’t forgot about his invitation to Olivia or that she hasn’t responded.
“Olivia already has plans.” I fill the space between her and the guy. “Sorry, pal, we haven’t met. I’m Sam.” I extend my hand and deliver the blow with a smile. “Olivia’s boyfriend.”
Shock flashes across his face before he glances at Olivia, who’s now scowling daggers at me.
He shakes my hand weakly. “Damn—sorry, I didn’t know.”
He looks like a man who just stumbled into a minefield, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. He thinks I’m about to deck him. I’m not. Violence isn’t my thing. But I’ve made my point.
“Hank, this is my friend Sam.” That one word—friend—hits harder than a punch.
“Sam?” He nods, recovering some composure. “Is this the guy from Montreal?” The edge to his tone is subtle.
Olivia stiffens, thrown by the question. The hint of accusation in his voice makes my blood simmer. I don’t like this guy.
“Listen, asshole.” My smile, big and bright, is firmly fixed in place. “I’m her boyfriend. That’s all you need to know. Good night, Hank.” I swing the door wider, inviting him to leave.
He lifts his hands. “I meant nothing by it. Goodbye, Olivia.”
She doesn’t reply, just glares at both of us until he finally takes the hint and steps out. I shut the door behind him with a solid thud.
When I turn around, she’s got her arms crossed, eyes blazing. “What the hell, Sam?”
“What the hell, me?” I poke at the center of my chest, incredulous.
Ignoring me, she brushes her hair from her face. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be here tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I know.” I jab the thumb still at my chest. “Your boyfriend—you know, me—wanted to see his girlfriend and spend more than three goddamn hours with her before he has to fly home. So he thought he’d surprise her.”
The words taste bitter, but they keep me from saying the one thing I’m actually thinking. I missed you too much to wait.
“Sam.” Her tone softens, her posture loosening. “Shit, I’m sorry. It was nothing. Just a date. Mrs. Preston’s been hounding me to go out with her nephew, so I caved. I only did it to get her off my back.”
“A date?” The word slices through me. “You know what’s easier than caving? Telling Mrs. Preston you have a boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?” Her hands slap against her sides. “Sam, this is casual.”
Casual.
The word grates, raw and sharp. She says it like a shield, but I can see the lie in her eyes. We’re not fucking casual. Never were.
I force the words out through clenched teeth, trying with everything I have to keep it together even as I go along with her falsehood. “It may be casual, but we both know it’s exclusive.”
The edge in my voice lands. Her lips part, eyes wide. We stand there, both stubborn, arms folded, neither backing down. The silence stretches—thick and charged—until I finally break it.
“Olivia.” My tone softens, the anger bleeding out. The last thing I want is to fight her.
She sighs, rubbing her temples. “Sam, I should’ve told you. You’re right.”
“Damn straight.” I step closer, every part of me thrumming with the need to close the distance between us.
In one swift move, I cage her against the door, my hands braced on either side of her. The tips of my thumbs graze the underside of her breasts, and her breath catches. Her nipples pebble through the thin fabric of her dress, and that’s it—my restraint is gone.
I lower my head, my mouth finding her breast through the soft fabric. My tongue flicks once, teasing, and she gasps as her hand tangles in my hair, holding me there.
She curses under her breath as I lick, suck, and nip, each sound from her mouth feeding something primal in me. I want to mark her, to remind her she’s mine.
When I finally pull back, there’s a damp spot on her dress where my mouth was. Satisfaction coils in my chest. My mark.
“Did you kiss him?” The question rips out before I can stop it, sharper than I intend.
Her eyes widen. “No, I told him I was seeing someone. I told him about you, that you were from Montreal. I made it clear it wasn’t a date.”
My fingers trail up her cheek, soft, possessive. “He clearly didn’t get the message.”
“Ah, I think you fixed that,” she says with a laugh, her lips curving into a grin.
I huff a short laugh too, tension easing. “Good.”
Then I lean in again, brushing my mouth against her ear. “I missed you, mon trésor.”
Before she can respond, I crush my lips to hers. The kiss is deep, punishing, desperate. I pour everything into it, every ounce of jealousy, every scrap of need. My tongue slides against hers, claiming, reminding, promising.
I press my mouth to hers, the words rough against her lips. “Only you and me, Livvy. Say it.”
Her breath hitches as her fingers tighten in my shirt. “Only you and me.”
That’s all I need.
With Drew gone and Paige at her father’s, we have the place to ourselves. Thank fuck.
We stumble toward the stairs, shedding clothes as we go, laughing breathlessly between kisses. Her skin is warm, her laughter soft, her hands everywhere.
By the time we make it to her room, we’re both lost. The rest of the world falls away.
The morning comes low and quiet, the air heavy with warmth and the faint scent of coffee drifting from the kitchen downstairs. I’d crept down to start it and snuck back into bed.
Olivia sleeps beside me, one arm thrown across my stomach, her breath soft against my skin. Her hair’s a tangle of dark silk over the pillow, the kind of beautiful chaos that makes me never want to move.
I lie there, still and content, feeling the slow, steady rhythm of her breathing. Each rise and fall of her chest presses something deeper into me, something I don’t want to name, not yet.
Because I know once I leave, this easy calm will fade. The world will rush back in—Bas, the restaurants, the distance, all of it clawing for space between us.
For now, though, it’s just her and me.
She stirs, turning toward me, her palm flattening against my chest. “You’re staring,” she mumbles, her voice thick with sleep.
“Guilty.” My thumb brushes over her bottom lip. “You’re beautiful when you sleep.”
Her eyes blink open, soft and full of that familiar warmth that knocks the wind out of me every damn time. Her fingers trace lazy shapes over my arm. Her touch is light, almost absentminded, but every glide of her fingertips burns.
She stops at my forearm, where the ink coils around muscle and bone. Her voice is barely a whisper. “You never did tell me…” She leans down to kiss the ink. “It’s stunning. What does it mean?”
I’m raw from last night, from the reality of how more than distance keeps trying to come between us and at times, we’re our own worst enemies. And now this. This question. It hits a little too close.
For a few beats I don’t answer. My throat tightens, like speaking it aloud might break something open I’ve spent years keeping shut.
Her fingers keep moving, tracing the curve of the snake, the outline of the flowers, soft and unhurried.
“The snake’s for survival.” The gruff timbre of my voice sounds foreign to my own ears. “For the times I had to fight. When there wasn’t anyone else to do it for me.”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t interrupt. Just listens. That’s what she does—she understands.
I stare at the ceiling, remembering too much. The nights on the streets. The quiet after my grandparents died. The faces that turned away. You learn early that the world doesn’t stop for your pain. You shed what hurts, build new skin, and keep moving. Even when it burns.
Her hand drifts over the flowers now—camellias, magnolias, rosemary. Then her gaze lifts to mine, curiosity softening her features. “The flowers?”
A small smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “They’re what came after. The people who found me when I didn’t think I was worth finding.”
She suspends her breath, fingers still on the bloom. “Bas and Alec.”
I nod, voice low. “Yeah.”
I don’t tell her the rest… That I added the rosemary later, after Bas got sick. Or that the magnolia reminded me of the tree outside their old apartment, the one that bloomed the spring I finally stopped running.
I don’t say that the snake and flowers together mean balance—that I can’t erase the parts of me that fought to survive, but I can choose what grows from them.
Olivia’s still touching the ink, her fingers slow and reverent. She has no idea what that does to me. No one’s ever touched it like that before. Not with curiosity. Not with care.
I look down at her, at the way her hair spills over my chest, her body relaxed, open. She’s softness and fire all at once. Someone who makes me want to stay when everything in me was built to leave.
She exhales softly, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s beautiful.”
I nod and press a kiss to her hair. “It’s a reminder, that no matter what I lose, I don’t have to stay lost.”
The words hang there between us, heavier than I meant them to be.
She frowns faintly, eyes still closed, and I feel it hit somewhere deep in my chest. Is she thinking about this push and pull we have between us?
And despite all that, she’s what scares me most. Because this—her, us—it feels a hell of a lot like home.
“Sam.” She gently kisses my chest before looking at me. “How long can you stay?”
“A few more hours.”
Her smile falters, and the air between us stretches thin and pointed, weighted with the ache of too little time.
My lips press against her forehead, then the corner of her mouth. “I’ll call you when I land.”
“You’d better.”
We move slowly, making breakfast half-dressed, sharing coffee in the kitchen. Every brush of her hand against mine feels heavier than it should. A quiet reminder that this isn’t just casual, no matter what she wants to call it.
She leans against the counter, sipping her coffee, wearing nothing but one of my shirts. The hem barely covers her thighs, and the sight nearly undoes me. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Can’t.” I shrug, completely surrendering to the truth. I never stood a chance with this woman.
It’s easy between us, almost too easy. And that’s what scares me most.
Because I can see it now—how quickly this could all unravel once I’m gone.
The texts, the calls, the distance. She’ll get busy with work, and I’ll get buried in mine. She’ll convince herself it’s easier to let go than hold on.
I’ve been there before. I know the signs.
But this time feels different.
When I leave, I pull her close, one arm around her waist, my lips finding the place just below her ear, her favorite spot. “I’ll see you soon, mon trésor.”
She smiles, but her eyes give her away. There’s worry there. Fear, maybe. The same kind that’s been sitting in my chest since the moment I met her.
As I walk down her path outside her front door toward the waiting car, I glance back. She’s still standing there, watching me. And for a second, I think she might call out, tell me to stay. I shouldn’t. Yet, I would.
But she doesn’t.
She just lifts her hand, a small wave, the kind that says I want to, but I can’t.
The door closes softly behind her, and that’s when it hits me. For all her talk of casual, there’s nothing casual about the way she looks at me. Nothing casual about the way she’s lodged herself under my skin.
And as the plane lifts off later that afternoon, I know I’m already gone—not just back to Montreal, but gone in a way that has nothing to do with geography.
Because the truth is, somewhere between her laughter, her stubbornness, and her quiet strength…
I fell.
And I’m not sure I know how to stop falling.