Chapter 28 - Sam
Sam
Jamie had asked me to move in before she left for New York.
I'd told her I wanted to. But moving in wasn't a matter of a suitcase or two—it meant closing out my apartment, figuring out what to keep and what to sell, and deciding whether we could fit everything into her place or whether we needed to look for something bigger.
That was a real conversation, not a quick one.
And Jamie had spent the last two weeks emptying out her life in New York.
I wasn't going to pile my logistics on top of hers.
I was at her door a little after noon.
I let myself in with the key she'd given me and called her name from the entryway. She was at the kitchen counter. She turned when I came in. I crossed the room and kissed her, and she let me, but her hands didn't come up to my jacket the way they usually did.
"Hey."
She smiled at me but it didn't reach her eyes.
Something in my chest tightened before I'd done the math on it.
"Is everything okay?"
She didn't answer for a second.
"You're late."
"Yeah. I went back to my apartment. I needed a shower, and I was low on clothes here." I opened the fridge and grabbed a drink. She was still at the counter, looking at nothing.
"Jamie?"
She turned around.
"I saw Amber yesterday."
Amber's name landed in the middle of the kitchen.
"She gave me this."
She picked up an envelope and held it out to me.
I took it. It was an acceptance letter that had my name in bold, a start date in the fall, and the logo of a university I had never sent an application to.
"I don't know what this is." I read it again, because I wanted to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. My name was spelled right. The address was mine. The start date was September. "Jamie, I never applied anywhere. I've never seen this letter. I never filled out—"
"She told me you were planning to go to college together."
"Her father offered to pay for college when we were still together.
I told Amber no. I've told her no at least three times since we broke up.
" I set the letter down on the counter. My hands were starting to shake and I put them on the edge of the counter to keep them still.
"I don't know how she got this. I don't know who would forge something like this. But I never applied."
"Are you still seeing her, Sam?"
"What? No. Jesus. No."
"Then why does she still have your apartment key?"
Those goddamn keys.
I'd given them to her months ago so she could let herself in when I was on shift. I'd meant to ask for them back when I broke up with her. Then Jack died, the whole world went sideways, and I forgot.
"I forgot," I said.
"You forgot?"
"Jamie, I swear to you. I broke up with her. I haven't seen her except once outside a bar. She still has the key because I forgot to ask for it back. That's the truth."
"You saw her at a bar?"
"I didn't meet with her. She just happened to be there. She asked if we could get back together. I said no."
She was looking at me the way she looked at a source she didn't believe.
"I know how it sounds," I said. "I know what it looks like. I'm telling you the truth. The key doesn't mean anything. She kept it. I didn't think about it."
"Did you also forget to tell me that Jack wasn't supposed to be working the night he saved Jenna and Quinn?"
The floor of my chest dropped out.
"Jamie."
"Answer me, Sam. Was Jack supposed to be there that night?"
I should have told her a long time ago. At the funeral. The first night she came back to Havensworth. Any of the mornings since. I hadn't because I still hadn't figured out how to live with it myself and I wasn't going to hand her something I couldn't carry.
"No, he wasn't. I asked him to cover my shift that night."
Something went out of her.
"So it's true, then." A tear slid down her cheek.
Every instinct in me went toward her. I wanted to close the space. I wanted to wipe the tears off her face. I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her. "Jamie—"
She stepped back. "No, Sam."
"Jamie, please."
"So all this time, everything you've done for me and Rosie has all just been from guilt?" Her voice cracked.
"What? No. No, Jamie—where did you get that idea?"
"Amber told me everything."
"Amber is lying."
"Did she lie about you asking Jack to cover your shift?"
I couldn't answer her. "Jamie, please."
"I need some time and space to think about this."
"Jamie—"
"Please, Sam."
I looked at her.
Her face was wet. Her hands were at her sides. She wasn't going to let me near her.
Something in me went cold.
I picked up my keys off the counter, walked to the door and closed it behind me. I was in my truck before I let myself breathe.
Amber.
I needed to see Amber.
The Henderson estate sat at the end of a tree-lined drive in Mount Pleasant.
I'd driven it a hundred times. Every one of those drives, some part of me had felt like a guest being tolerated—boots too heavy for the floors, the wrong kind of watch on my wrist, the wrong kind of everything.
Today I didn't feel that. Today the house was just a house and Amber was just a woman who had hurt the person I loved.
The housekeeper opened the door a few seconds after I rang the bell.
"Sam."
She was on her feet before the housekeeper had finished backing out of the doorway. She crossed the patio and came at me with her arms already opening.
I held up a hand and stopped her.
She stopped.
"Amber. What is this?"
I held out the letter.
She looked at it. Then at me. A small smile started at the corner of her mouth.
"Oh good. You got it."
"I never submitted an application."
"My father took care of it."
"I said no. And you still sent an application in my name anyway?"
"Sam." She tilted her head. "Don't be like that. He did it because he believes in you. We both do."
"You used my name. My information. Without asking me."
"You would have said no."
"I did say no."
"You would have kept saying no. You say no to everything, Sam. It's a reflex. Daddy thought if you actually held the letter in your hand, you'd think about it differently."
"You and your father decided my life for me, Amber."
"We opened a door for you."
"A door that I didn't want to walk through."
"We were doing something good for you, Sam—"
"Yeah, it's good." I cut her off. "Just not the kind of good I want for myself, Amber."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means college is good. Your father's money is good. The life you were planning—it's a good life. For someone else. Not for me."
"I was building us a future."
"No. You were building your future. And you just expected me to follow along."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. She didn't have anything to say.
I let her sit in it for a second.
"And Jack."
Her face moved.
"You told her about Jack."
"Doesn't she have the right to know the truth?"
"From me, Amber. She had the right to know the truth from me. You used my guilt and her grief to get what you wanted. That's what you did."
Her eyes filled.
"I did it because I love you, Sam."
"This isn't love, Amber. This is something else."
And standing there, looking at her, I saw it all at once.
The dinners at her father's club where I'd been seated next to someone "I ought to meet.
" The shirts she'd bought me in a size I'd never said I wore.
The way she'd talked about our future like it was a plan she was halfway through executing and I'd been filled in on the wrong page.
I hadn't been her boyfriend. I'd been a renovation.
She didn't answer.
"Give me the keys."
She stared at me.
"My apartment keys. The ones you still have. Give them to me."
"Sam—"
"Now, Amber."
She didn't move.
"Are you going to handle this like a grown woman? Or do I have to speak to your father to get you to do anything right?"
Her face went red.
She turned without saying anything and walked into the house. I stayed where I was. I didn't follow her. I didn't want to watch her walk through her hallway to her bedroom to retrieve a thing she should never have had in the first place.
She came back a minute later and dropped them into my palm.
I closed my hand around them.
"Stay away from Jamie. Stay away from Rosie. Stay away from me."
I turned and walked out.
I made it to the truck before my hands started shaking. I sat behind the wheel and put both hands flat on it and tried to breathe.
Jamie.
Jamie had asked me to leave.