Chapter 35
35
“D amon?” Sam whispered. She could hear Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life” through the headphones. Part of her didn’t want to disturb whatever mysterious forces were at work that made it possible for Damon to listen to the CD.
Damon had closed his eyes, relaxed his shoulders and now he was still. So still, in fact, that she wasn’t entirely sure if he was even breathing. She put her head on his chest and heard the frantic boom boom boom of his heart, but he wasn’t responding to her touch, or her voice.
Was this how she’d been when Bonnie had found her the other night—unresponsive? She poked Damon’s shoulder, scratched a fingernail down his beard.
“Woah,” she said.
Damon was totally and utterly immersed in the song, or a vision—but either way, he was going through something.
He let out a breath, lurched forward and began to cough uncontrollably. She hurried to grab a glass of water as he took the headphones off. His eyes were wide and clouded as he took the glass from her and gulped it down.
“Well?” she impatiently asked. “What happened?”
He set the glass down and abruptly stood from the couch. “What the fuck was that?”
“You saw it?” She was relieved, and hopeful and overwhelmed from the fact that she wasn’t making this up.
“Yeah, I fucking saw it.” He pulled on a wad of his hair until it stood up at all angles. “How could you not tell me about this?”
“Believe it or not, I didn’t want to frighten you,” she said. “But come on, what did you see?”
Damon sat back on the couch and put his head in his hands. He spoke to his lap. “I saw us. High school. The night I asked you...” He drifted off, then looked at her. “But this time, you kissed me.”
“Yes, that’s what I saw, too!” She was excited. Too excited, because she wasn’t alone in this anymore.
Damon, on the other hand, looked like he’d just been punched in the gut. “Why didn’t you tell me how bad my hair was with those red highlights and all the gel?”
“ That is what you’re thinking about right now?” Sam chuckled.
Damon swallowed and picked up the player. He rotated it with awe and horror. “What, uh, what is this, Sam?”
“I don’t know.” She threaded her fingers together in her lap. “I’ve been trying to figure that out. I was hoping you might have an answer.”
“So every time you play a song, you get a new...?” he cautiously asked.
“Exactly.” She nibbled her lower lip. “It’s like, the memories I have from that time are a different version of our life.”
Damon exhaled, then leaned back into the couch and put the headphones on. “Again,” he said. “Show me another one.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice was full of caution, but she still sat next to Damon. “You could take a minute,” she said, thinking of how long she’d waited in between songs, and how she’d needed time to process.
“I need to understand. I need to know what you know.” He handed her the CD player. He could’ve just as easily hit the play button himself. But maybe having Sam there with him was a comfort.
She waited for him to close his eyes and, when he did, she pressed Play.
“Wow, Myles,” Damon said after listening to the next track. He pulled the headphones off and wiped a hand down his face.
“I tried to tell you, but you seem to think he’s a nice guy.” Sam sat cross-legged next to him. Should she warn Damon about Myles, and what she was going to do with him later?
“When you saw this last vision, did you also see...baby Marissa talking to me at the end?” Sam wasn’t sure if Damon’s vision was exactly as hers, or if he was seeing more through Alt-Damon’s eyes.
“Marissa?” He looked off, as if trying to remember. Then shook his head. “No. The last thing I saw was me, or the other me, walking away with a big grin.”
“Gotcha.” Sam opened up her notebook and glanced at the track list. If he was experiencing these visions, but through the lens of his teenaged self, then he may not see all of the details she had. He was present in every single song, up until “The Curse of Curves,” when he showed up at the ice cream shop in the middle of Myles flirting with Alt-Sam.
“What’s on there?” he asked while reaching for it. She tucked the pad of paper to her chest, though.
“You can have a look once you’ve seen a few more, otherwise the notes won’t make sense,” she said.
He sat back into the couch and centered the headphones over his ears. “Then let’s play the next one.”
Sam put the notebook aside, leaned over and hit Play.
Two hours later, he’d gotten through twelve tracks, with just one more song to go. They’d had to take breaks. Damon had excused himself to the bathroom at one point, emerging red-eyed and sniffling.
“It’s not real,” she offered, but knew what he was going through. The feeling that it was real, and was happening, made it hard to unsee.
Damon wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand as he sat down next to her. “Can I see your notes?”
She pulled the notebook out from behind the couch cushion where she’d hid it, and opened to the page with her thoughts.
“Sam and Damon’s Magical Playlist,” he said with a smile. The smile faded, though, as he scanned the songs.
“I’ve been taking notes on everything I saw. I’m not able to replay anything, so this is the only way to keep track of what happened to us.”
“We break up?” He’d jumped ahead to number thirteen. Of course he had. She should’ve thought to warn him.
“We do,” she said. “ They do.”
Damon pushed himself off the couch and walked toward the back door. “Give me a minute,” he said without looking back. He went onto the porch, pushed his palms into the deck railing and hung his head.
Sam stood to follow, but stopped herself. He’d asked for a minute, and she’d give him that. One minute turned into several, and after a full ten, she decided she’d earned the right to check on him. She slid the door open, and he turned at the noise.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you in there like that,” Damon said. “I just feel overwhelmed by all of this.”
“Yeah.” She stood next to him. A big puffy white cloud blocked out the sun and shaded them, making the air unexpectedly cool. Damon pulled her into his side and attempted to warm her. He smoothed his hand up and down her arm.
“Well, the good news is you’re not making this up,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. “As you can imagine, there were times when I absolutely worried Pearl was spiking my food with hallucinogens.”
A minute, maybe more, passed. “So, we didn’t make it,” he eventually said.
“No,” she said, her voice low and hushed. “I really thought they would.”
“Myles would be thrilled with how things turned out.” Damon sighed. “He’s asked me for your number every time I’ve seen him. Who knew he had a big crush on you all these years.”
“Alt-Sam did.” Then she clarified, “That’s what I call the other Sam.”
“Ah, so then I’m Alt-Damon.”
“Or Emo Flame-Tipped Damon,” Sam joked. And at least this made Damon crack a smile. “Why do you think we’re being shown this?”
Damon looked at her through his dark lashes, so vulnerable and unsure. “I don’t know,” he said, then his jaw clenched.
But part of Sam already knew why they’d been shown the answer to her biggest what-if: so that there would be no gray area when it came to them. They weren’t meant to be together. Even if she did want to be with him, she’d seen what happened when she wasn’t living her life’s purpose. What happened to Leto women, in general, when they felt stuck. And while she might be a little in love with Damon, their lives were just too different. Nothing would change that.
“Maybe the visions are just telling us the truth.” She looked at Damon. “We aren’t meant to be together, in that timeline or this one.”
Sam swallowed down the sick feeling, pushed off the porch railing and turned to head back inside. She’d quickly get her things and leave before she started to cry.
“Sam, stop.” The tone of Damon’s voice did stop her. And when she saw his chest rise and fall with heavy breaths, his shoulders tense and the way he looked at her, like she was the last life raft on a sinking ship—that stopped her, too.
“What is there left to say?” Her voice was so stoic she barely recognized it.
“You are not just walking away from me. Not again.” And then he walked toward her, as if to prove his point, with powerful strides that shook the ground beneath her. “Do you really think I would just let you leave? After everything we’ve been through then and now, do you actually think that you’re just going to leave?”
And Sam didn’t really know what to say to any of that. Her mouth fell open, as if to say something, but she couldn’t. She’d never seen Damon this forceful with anything, certainly not with her.
He cleared his throat and their eyes met, and she finally felt her body relax under the weight of his gaze. He was annoyingly calming that way. “All those years ago, I thought we’d be together. I really loved you. You broke me when you left. Maybe you don’t know that, but you did. I thought what we had was going to be forever. And you left, like I was nothing. Like we were nothing.
“I hoped that you would come back. But then months passed, and years, and I gave up. I gave up on ever seeing you again. But then you did come back. You’re here. And when I saw you, I realized that I’ve been waiting for you all this time. Just standing in this same spot and waiting. I can’t just let you go and pretend like there’s nothing between us.”
Sam realized she hadn’t blinked in quite some time, and when she did, the tears she’d been holding back fell quickly down her cheeks. She bowed her head and wiped them away with her fingertips.
“Sam?” Damon closed the space between them, and his index finger gently lifted her chin. “I can take it. I lost you once, and I can do it again. But you can’t just run. You need to tell me you don’t want to try.”
And he looked like he was bracing himself for the inevitable letdown that Sam always brought with her wherever she went. She’d always, without fail, manage to disappoint Damon. Because while Damon was perfect in every possible way—thoughtful, caring and he loved her—Sam’s default was to run. And while she may not want to run from Damon in this exact moment, eventually she would. And she wasn’t going to let that happen. She couldn’t say yes to him when she knew that she’d inevitably need to leave.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” She grabbed his wrist and held him there. “You saw what happened in those visions. If we can’t work then, why would we work now? I think that’s why we’re being shown these—a warning that we’d never work out.” Sam hated how harsh it sounded; it made her sad, too. But she didn’t see any other meaning to the visions. She was always destined to leave Tybee, and Damon was meant to stay.
His gaze fell to the ground and the finger that had lifted her chin fell, too. “If you really think you’re going to leave here and never come back, like you did before, then maybe you’re right,” he said.
She didn’t know how to answer him then. Damon loved her. She loved him. It was that simple, and also that complicated. She knew that whatever answer she gave would have to be her final answer. There was no middle road with them, not when both of their hearts were on the line.
Her phone rang and snapped her out of her trance. She pulled it out of her pocket. “That’s Pearl,” she said.
“Take it,” he said.
Sam answered the call. “Grandma?”
“Sam.” Her grandma’s voice was tight and high.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.
“I need you to come home,” Pearl said. “Hurry.”