Chapter Eighteen
The Bennet Ranch
Sam stood opposite Aly. Sam’s expression betrayed nothing, but her mouth was ever so slightly curved upward as Nate moved around Aly and disappeared inside.
Sam and Nate had been kissing. Like, really kissing. Not that it was shocking in and of itself. Aly figured even Landon had noticed the sparks between those two, little as he might want to. She just wanted to know…
Everything.
“Well?” Aly demanded.
“Well what?”
Aly reached out and took Sam by the shoulders, gave her a little shake while a grin spread across her face. She just couldn’t hide her amusement. Or the way something, anything that felt like a positive was a light to grab on to and nurture right now. “Sam. Oh my God.”
It was such a weird feeling, pulled in two directions. Because it reminded Aly, in a flash, of the friends they’d been. The easy life had been. Before everything had shattered. If they were the friends they’d been, she’d already know this. She wouldn’t have to walk in on kissing to know it.
But for a moment, this tiny moment, she could feel that little glimmer of who they’d been. The simple joy of oh my God over a boy. And all the aches and pains and traumas of fifteen years could take a little back seat for a minute or two.
God, she wanted that. Even if wistful and bittersweet were mixed up in the glimmer and the joy. It hooked in her chest like a laugh or a sob. Probably just both, but she swallowed down the extremes.
“When did this happen?” Aly demanded when Sam didn’t say anything.
Aly smiled brightly and blinked back the weird moisture in her eyes before releasing Sam’s shoulders. Sam shrugged. Her mouth was faintly curved, so Aly knew she wasn’t totally uncomfortable. But there was still that careful way she held herself back.
Aly couldn’t blame her for it, didn’t fully know how to bridge that gap, but the longer all this went on and Sam was just … in her life again in a positive way, the more she wanted to bridge it, fix it. Be real friends again.
“You can’t shrug. You have to know when. You definitely weren’t kissing this summer when you both spent the night here. I was watching.”
“Watching what, you weirdo?” Sam muttered, very much reminding Aly of the girls they’d been.
Because even before their lives had changed, Aly had been the … more optimistic of them. The more hopeful.
And then … well, Aly didn’t want to think about the and then right now. “All that tension. It was like a force field around you two then. But there’s no tension if there’s active kissing. So, you weren’t kissing then, because the tension was palpable.”
“Aly, we’re not in high school anymore.”
“Exactly, which is why I want to hear the story. Not giggle over kissing.”
Maybe she hadn’t been friends with Sam for fifteen years.
Maybe they had even been active enemies, but Aly still thought she understood the core of Samantha Price.
Aly had hoped for good, naturally and maybe as a product of her father being good, giving her so much good before he’d died.
That hope had certainly taken hit after hit in the years since, but even before Marie’s murder, Sam had been more cautious.
She had feared the good or mistrusted it—or maybe it was more she’d feared the potential bad on the other side of good. Sam reminded Aly of Landon that way.
Which was why, right now, she was determined to bring a little high school into this conversation.
She lowered her voice, leaned close. “Was it good?” she whispered, more out of humor than the need to be quiet.
“You think I’d be complicating my life this much for mediocre sex?”
Aly barked out a laugh and linked arms with Sam. It was too cold to stand out here and talk even if Aly wanted the privacy. Though Sam’s responding laugh warmed her up some.
Aly didn’t know why, but as much as Jill was her closest friend these days, she didn’t feel comfortable talking to her about the more …
intimate details of her relationship with Landon.
Maybe because Jill was secluded on that mountain with her grandmother, the hope of having much of a life outside that very slim.
Maybe it was some ingrained belief an outsider couldn’t understand that the Bennets were complicated. Landon was complicated.
But Sam understood. Better than anyone. She’d been Aly’s friend when those first seeds had been planted. She’d lived through the enduring hell of fifteen years after Marie’s murder.
So, Aly wanted to nurture this seed of friendship. Of something they could offer each other. Understanding over the men they were kissing.
“Remember when we used to hang out after school and very studiously pretend we weren’t watching track practice when Nate was doing hurdles?”
Sam bit her lip, clearly trying to bite back a grin. “I have no idea what you mean, Aly,” she said loftily as they stepped into the living room. But then she lowered her voice. “Gonna let Landon in on the fact we used to ogle his brother together?”
Aly pretended to consider it. “Maybe next time I’m mad at him.”
Sam snorted out a laugh. There was a real smile, not held back. “Always knew you had a mean streak, Al.”
“You’re the only one,” Aly replied.
And it was true. In some ways, Sam was the only person she’d ever been her true self around without … fear or concern. Even before Marie had died, Aly had known her situation at the Bennet Ranch was precarious, so she’d always striven to be seen as good. Perfect.
She was learning to let some of those pieces of herself she’d hidden from Landon be visible now, but it was an effort. An effort born of wanting to build a life together. And that was good, and important.
But right now reminded her that it wasn’t and had never been an effort with Sam. And that was something to work toward having again.
*
Landon looked up at the sound of laughter. He noted that Nate did the same from his spot leaning against the counter. Cal kept his head resolutely down where he was sitting at the little kitchen table.
Aly and Sam tromped into the kitchen, arms linked, like they were old friends instead of recent enemies. It was … weird.
Landon couldn’t hate Sam anymore. Maybe he didn’t even dislike her anymore. But he wasn’t sure he liked her. He’d had to trust her. He didn’t think she was after anything. Still, something about her just left a feeling of discomfort he wasn’t sure would ever fully go away.
Maybe Aly could forget fifteen years of being at odds—Sam being shitty to them, and them being shitty right back—but Landon had a harder time.
Still, he did like seeing Aly happy, and she looked really, really happy about whatever she and Sam were talking about.
“Go on into the dining room, guys. There’s some bread and salad already on the table. Landon? Help me with the hot dishes?” She smiled oddly at him—a little too bright, but he moved over to the oven with Aly while Nate, Sam, and Cal went into the dining room.
He grabbed the platter with the ham while Aly hefted the bowl of green beans. She jutted her chin out toward the dining room. From their vantage point in the kitchen all he could see was Nate’s and Sam’s backs.
He looked back at Aly. She jutted her chin again.
First at Nate, then at Sam. She made her eyes really wide.
Landon looked at them. They were seated next to each other, just like they always were.
Nate was leaning toward Sam, saying something to her, his arm resting on the back of her chair.
Landon couldn’t see either of their faces to know what they were saying.
He looked back at Aly again and shrugged. “What?”
“Ugh. Men.” She shook her head and sailed into the dining room.
Not like she was mad at him, just like he was dense.
Which was a little insulting but probably true.
She’d fill him in on whatever he was dense about later.
So he followed her into the dining room and put the food on the table.
As they settled into their seats and began to fill their plates, Aly conducted a lot of small talk about the snow, the ranch, and so on.
It was getting to be almost normal, these little family dinners.
Of course, they often revolved around something terrible, and Landon had no doubt Sam and Nate were here with more of that. But it was nice to pretend that wasn’t the case for a little bit.
“I’d say it was nice not to have to go to court today, but we had some … other things crop up,” Nate said, introducing the topic that would change the tenor of things, no doubt.
Landon watched as Nate and Cal exchanged a look Landon couldn’t read. Except that Cal seemed pissed. What else was new? Landon thought Cal had been making progress, but he’d been an asshole ever since … he’d gone to the Harringtons’.
Which made sense as Nate and Sam laid it all out—Cal’s call to Nate, Detective Hayes’s visit to Honor’s Edge.
Cal didn’t interject, just looked more and more mutinous. But he ate. That was some kind of improvement to the last time they’d had one of these meals where he hadn’t touched his food.
So maybe even if the shit that had gone down with Glenda had sent him spiraling a little backward, it wasn’t a full step backward. Maybe just a skid.
Landon didn’t love that he blamed himself for that. How could he have known? But if he had known, he wouldn’t have sent Cal up there. And he couldn’t help but wish he hadn’t.
Cal looked more and more miserable as Nate related what Cal had told him this morning. Landon tried not to be frustrated Cal had gone to Nate and not him. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t anything.
If Cal had told Landon, Landon would have told Aly, and that would have gotten back to Jill. Which maybe was the right course of action in Landon’s estimation, but he couldn’t blame Cal for his own estimations.
He was trying really hard to learn that lesson.
“I think it was the right call to fill us all in,” Landon said after Nate finished up and the table had sat in an awkward, hurting silence for too long.