Chapter Twelve #2
Why that sent twin flutters of panic and something she was not going to acknowledge right now, she wasn’t going to figure out. She stood perfectly still.
But he didn’t cross the invisible line she’d created.
He meandered over to the big window that looked down over the street below.
He no doubt noted the pile of papers on her coffee table, the discarded stack of books—most she’d started and never finished, including one of Jill Harrington’s—on the end table next to the couch.
Sweatshirts and blankets strewn about every piece of furniture.
She never had people up here, so she never worried about if it was tidy or not. Not that it mattered. As Nate had said, he’d seen her desk. He knew she was a slob. And who cared? It wasn’t his apartment.
He was just a shadow over there, standing looking through the window, so tall he nearly took up the entire length of it.
Sam didn’t know what else to do but cross the room and stand next to him. There wasn’t anything really going on out there. Just a quiet Marietta night, winter swirling in. So, they stood shoulder to shoulder, looking down at Main Street. Snow fell in big, heavy flakes in the glow of streetlights.
It didn’t feel like a celebration, but maybe that was just the trial hanging over them. Maybe nothing could feel good—new homes, friends getting married, any of it—until the trial was over.
“They’re, uh, predicting something like a foot of snow,” Sam said lamely, because the silence she was usually so comfortable with was getting to her.
“I saw that.”
Silence descended again. Then Nate turned and with very purposeful moves put his glass down on her coffee table. He turned to her and took her glass from her. Set it down next to his.
Sam wasn’t sure what moved through her then, some kind of personal earthquake. Particularly when he fixed that intent, serious gaze to her and closed the space between them.
She should have backed away, but she was rooted to the spot. Even more so when his hand curled around her head. His fingers were tangled in her hair. He was looking at her with that intensity that they sometimes shared, but never while touching.
Everything stopped. Her breathing. Time, she was pretty sure. Because she didn’t know what was happening, and if she let herself consider what might be happening, she’d have to laugh, because of course it wasn’t.
Except he was drawing her closer to him. The heat of him, the hard wall of him. And he could have stayed up there, a good foot taller than her, but he bent down. And she really had no thoughts in her head. Just a buzzing there, a thudding in her heart, and a yearning way deep inside.
She kept expecting him to stop or say something or stop, but then his mouth was on hers.
Just a gentle brush of lips. She could almost call it casual. Except his hand was still cradling her head, and his body was against hers, and his mouth was still right there, just a whisper of air between them.
She felt too many things at once, worst of them hope, and that might have given her the sense to pull away from this, but his mouth touched hers again, more urgent this time.
She still felt a million tangles of too many things to name, but she didn’t have the brain power to do anything but kiss him back. It seemed the most natural thing in this moment to meet him move for move, sigh for sigh, even when internally she was vibrating apart.
She had wrapped her arms around his neck, not quite cognizant of doing it, but cognizant of the way his hair felt against her fingertips.
God, he could kiss.
Nate had … purposefully come up here and kissed her. Purposefully. It had clearly been his plan. It had to have been thought out. Even though they’d fought this morning. Even though they’d been avoiding this very thing for months now.
She pulled back, fear a dark, horrible wriggle in the back of her brain. “Is this … is this about the break-in?” she asked.
Had to ask, because she didn’t understand what else had brought this on, this very purposeful, planned crossing of that barrier they’d both kept erected. Maybe he thought he had to in order for his protection to be accepted, and no matter how amazing that kiss had been, that would be awful.
“Because … that’d be kind of a dick move.”
Nate sighed, but he didn’t let her go. His hand smoothed down her neck and back. Then he used his free hand to brush some hair off her cheek.
It was all so gentle. All so … something that felt like it had the weight to just destroy her if she let it.
And he only made that worse when he spoke, without letting her go, without stepping away. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to kiss you, Sam?”
*
Nate had been fascinated by Sam Price since they were teenagers. He’d never understood what had given her the courage or the empathy to help him out of town when he’d been broken and desperate.
When she’d tracked him down earlier this year, all determination and fire, unafraid to face down anything, the fascination had only grown.
Then over the past six months, he’d seen her soft spots, her vulnerabilities, her weaknesses.
But this was a whole new layer to her. She hid it very well. That uncertain girl so sure everyone would abandon her.
He wouldn’t.
He’d grown up in a house of barbs and bombs and manipulations without fully understanding all the shadows in the corners he’d ignored. He was direct with his family now. He’d be direct with her. No more shadows. No more ignoring what existed.
All he’d ever wanted to do was take care of something and know it wouldn’t crumble in his hands.
Sam wouldn’t crumble.
“I know there’s this … thing between us,” she said in that careful way, ignoring his question and what it meant.
But her arms were still around his neck, her body pressed to his. And he could see the pulse throbbing at her neck, hear the breathiness in her voice that he’d put there, because he’d certainly never heard that before.
He raised an eyebrow at her. Thing. What a word.
“I’d just hate for it to ever be…” She was clearly searching for the right word.
But it’d only be the wrong one. He couldn’t even be offended, because he knew what it was like to need to protect yourself from anything that might be good but delicate, fragile, so easy to be here one day, gone the next.
But this wasn’t going away. And he’d finally come to the conclusion he didn’t want it to.
“Sam.”
“What?”
“This has been inevitable for a long time.”
He was glad she didn’t argue with him. Surprised and glad. Of course, that didn’t mean she was going to make it easy. “So why now?”
He thought about yesterday—the almost fight with Cal, telling his family about Bo Lake.
He thought about walking through that house with her and the way he’d floated through this thing he knew he had to do to move forward, and she’d been the anchor.
She’d asked questions. She’d gone to the Wolf’s Den with him because of Cal.
They could keep dancing along the line of friendship, but wasn’t that just another lie? Another fiction. He was done with pretending. Or he was going to try to be done with it.
“Because I’m going to start reaching out for the good things in life, instead of keeping them at arm’s length hoping that won’t hurt.”
He saw the way those words landed. He knew she understood, even if she hadn’t quite made the same progress he had. She would. She was too strong not to.
So he lowered his mouth to hers again. Was it the truth or something else that made it a little more desperate every time their mouths touched?
Sam Price was all sharp angles and hard edges, but her skin was soft. Warm. He could feel when she finally let go—maybe not of all her worries, but enough. Enough to throw herself into the kiss, into this.
And with that, any stray thoughts of careful or gentle were obliterated. Maybe they were both a little too used to fighting for their lives to sustain gentle or careful. Maybe they’d let this build too long, too much, and an explosion was the only end result.
At least it was an explosion he’d chosen. He made quick work of the buttons of her shirt, and she undid his tie, discarded it, while their mouths fused and their hands took detours on the way to try to get rid of each other’s clothes.
When her hands found the button of his pants, he stopped her forward progress by grabbing her wrist, more instinctual reaction than because he actually wanted to stop her. It was just…
“You’re not really stopping me now,” she said, enough incredulity in her tone he had to smile despite how little this was funny.
“It’s not about stopping. It’s … my leg. My injury. It’s not … pretty.” He’d gotten used to the scars, but he couldn’t imagine someone who’d never seen that kind of damage wouldn’t be … affected.
“You’re kind of going to need to take your pants off for the next step.”
He supposed he was, but… “It’s … a lot, Sam.”
She looked up at him, lips pursed, dark eyes wide and luminous as she thought those words through. She did that. Took the time to parse the weight of things. In ways that weren’t always comfortable.
In ways maybe he hadn’t yet. Because, yes, he’d physically healed from his injuries. He’d accepted his military career was over. But he’d dived into the trauma of his mother’s murder without ever dealing with what life looked like.
Things like someone seeing his injuries. Easy not to concern himself with when he was kissing her, a little harder when the reality of what the end result of those kisses required.
“It won’t bother me. It’s just part of you,” she said with a certainty he wished he could believe.
Before he could mount an argument to that, she pulled her hands away.
“But it bothers you. Okay. Come on then. I’ve got an idea.
” She grabbed his hand, pulled him deeper into the apartment. Her … bedroom.
It looked like a bomb had gone off in here. Worse than the living room. Worse than her desk. But she just dragged him along, nudged him onto the edge of her bed. So, he sat there, and she stood before him. Like this they were close to the same height, though she had the tiniest advantage.
Her shirt hung open since he’d unbuttoned it. The plain, serviceable bra suited her and reminded him that everything positive in his life had come on the other side of pain. And none of it ever got rid of the pain. It was there, just like his physical scars.
She cupped his face with her hands, lifting his gaze to her.
She searched his expression for something, but he didn’t know what. “Trust me, Nate?”
Trust. For years as a kid, he’d trusted no one but his mother, and then no one at all.
But the army had required a certain level of trust. In his fellow soldiers, in his commanding officers.
In what he was meant to do. He’d rebuilt that muscle, but it felt weak here in Marietta, where the ghost of an old Nate who’d learned not to trust anyone still existed.
“I do.”
“Good. Because there’s no going back now.”