Chapter Four #2
“Icy as shit out here,” Cal muttered before slamming the car door shut. Nate followed suit. It was indeed icy, and his equilibrium was all off. But he didn’t go down like Cal did, swearing the whole way. Still, he slipped and slid and had to grab on to the gate for balance.
The car turned off and Sam came around to where they were both struggling for footing. Sam managed to somehow offer balance to both of them, even though she was small, and they were not. She got them up the porch, then took the keys from Nate when he fumbled with them.
She unlocked and opened his door, and Cal stumbled in first. “Thank Christ. What the hell am I doing in this frozen tundra when I could be in Texas?” he grumbled, moving inside.
Nate hesitated in the doorway. He hadn’t missed the way Sam’s gaze kept moving from the road to across the way where her aunt’s house stood.
She opened her mouth, no doubt to say goodbye, but Nate pulled the door closed—Cal inside, him and Sam out here on the porch.
“Maybe once this trial is over she’ll…”
“She won’t,” Sam said before he could figure out a good outcome for this. “She needs time to grieve it all over again. Maybe someday she forgives me, but it won’t be anytime soon.”
“She should.”
Sam shrugged. She managed to pull her gaze from Lisa’s house to Nate. “He’s her brother.” She said it like it was an excuse, when that was ridiculous.
“He’s your father.”
She inhaled sharply at that. “Yeah, well, she wouldn’t be the first to tell me that I care more about the truth than I should. Than what’s important.”
“You don’t.”
There was heartbreak in her eyes, or maybe that was just the moonlight and his own imagination.
“Thanks,” she said softly. She blew out a breath, and it puffed out between them illuminated by the porch light. She glanced at the cabin behind Nate.
“You’re going to have to tell them. About Bo. And we need to make a decision about … if we’re going to take him up on the whole … investigation for job thing.”
He knew that. He supposed she said it because she was aware he knew that. And procrastinating didn’t change anything.
Except not having to deal with it just yet.
“I will. I just…”
“Don’t want to?”
“Yeah, that.”
“I could tell them. If it’s easier.”
He studied her, because he couldn’t tell—was it selfless to help him? Or was it a way to keep that rift going between her and Landon and Aly? She said she was ready to move on, to get over everything that had come between them for fifteen years.
But he knew how much more comfortable rifts could be over fixing them.
“I’ll handle it. Tomorrow. Or this weekend. I just want the trial to be more a … thing we all know how to deal with.”
He could tell she wasn’t sold, but she nodded.
“I’ll hold Bo off until you tell them. I think once we hire him … it won’t be such a secret. So let me know when you do it.”
He sighed. He wanted to be resentful she was essentially putting pressure on him to do it. But he knew she wasn’t … being manipulative. Someone had come to her for help, and she wanted to help.
That was who she was. And no matter what shitty thoughts her aunt had put in her head, it was a good person who wanted to help. Who cared about the truth.
“Thanks, Sam.”
She shrugged, held out his keys for him to take. But he didn’t just take the keys, he wrapped his fingers around hers. He gave her hand a squeeze. Then ran his thumb across her knuckles before he’d fully thought the gesture through.
But it was a totally friendly gesture.
And maybe he was watching a little too intently to see how that friendly gesture was received.
She left her gaze on their hands for a few seconds. She didn’t pull away. Didn’t do anything.
Neither of them ever did anything.
“Since I’m already coming by in the morning, let’s just skip getting your truck,” she said, her hand still in his. “I’ll give you both a ride to the courthouse. United fronts and all that. We’ll get everyone’s vehicles sorted after.”
He didn’t want to make her feel like he was trying to get rid of her, because God knew it wasn’t that. He just … didn’t want her putting herself out for … well, him. “You really going to keep Honor’s Edge closed for the whole trial?”
“Not closed closed, but the offices don’t need to be open. Unless something comes up. I need to be at that trial too, Nate.” She made sure that was said firmly. “It matters to me.”
He supposed sometimes it was a little too easy to forget that. Since Benjamin wasn’t her father. His mother wasn’t hers. She didn’t have all the Bennet bullshit running through her veins. It seemed she was separate sometimes, or he let himself think that anyway.
But her life for fifteen years had been trying to prove this very outcome. It mattered to her in a deep, important way, even if she wasn’t a Bennet.
So, he went with instinct—an instinct he probably would have avoided if he hadn’t had that final drink at Cal’s insistence.
He used the hand he was holding to pull her closer, then leaned down—because no matter how she exuded all that strength and confidence she was a tiny thing—and wrapped her into a hug.
It was a friendly hug. Nothing … sexual about it.
Just two friends in the middle of a shitty year …
hugging on a cold, dark night. A little beacon of warmth here in all this frozen.
Because they were in the middle of some kind of shared trauma, and that was all a person could do sometimes. Hold on to the warmth.
Maybe sliding his hand down her spine was a little … more than necessary, but she didn’t stiffen or flinch.
If anything, she sighed. But she also pulled herself back on that sigh. Gently. An easing.
“Night,” she said, taking a step back without breaking eye contact, leaving the keys in his hand as the only point of warmth on his body now.
“Night,” he replied, not making a move to do anything but stand there.
For a moment, that was it. They both stood there, in one of those staring moments even an extra drink couldn’t convince him was something to handle.
Then she turned away and walked to her car, and he let out a long, slow breath. He’d taken a few steps before he’d realized it, then stopped himself. And watched her drive away.
“Don’t know why you’ve got to be so Landon about it.”
Nate slowly turned to Cal lounging in the doorway.
Everything inside of him was tied tight and tense and even the alcohol he’d ingested couldn’t smooth that out. Still, there was enough soldier still in him to sound blank. To appear blank. “About what?” Even though he knew about what.
“Her.”
“I’m not following,” Nate said, brushing past Cal into the warmth of the cabin.
“Yes, you are.”
But he wasn’t about to address that with his big brother, so he just walked to his bedroom to get ready for bed.
He wasn’t being Landon about anything.
He was just being … smart.