5. Samantha
CHAPTER 5
Samantha
I couldn’t catch a break. It was like everywhere I went in this town, there he was. I barely registered the familiar scent of roasted beans and cinnamon that usually greeted me like an old friend. Because even my coffee shop had been invaded. My town, my library, my apartment complex. And now my coffee shop? I wanted to stomp my foot like my teenage daughter did when she thought I was being unfair. Because life was certainly being unfair right now.
There he was, sitting by the window, his tall frame slightly hunched over a steaming mug, his Bible open on the table in front of him. I rolled my eyes. The man was my baby daddy, for crying out loud. What an upstanding example of Christianity.
Ugh. That was catty, and obviously I knew that Christians made mistakes. I was the unmarried single mom, after all. But come on.
"Can I get you the usual, Samantha?" the barista's voice cut through my trance.
His eyes flew up at her words and I quickly turned away, embarrassed to be caught studying him.
"Um, yes, thanks," I murmured, quickly paying for my coffee and waiting at a nearby table.
I scrolled aimlessly on my phone, desperately trying to ignore his presence a few feet away.
“Mind if I join you?” I glanced up to find him standing next to me, his Bible now tucked under his arm and his coffee in his hand.
“Sure,” I answered, my voice a controlled whisper, though inside, I was screaming.
"Thanks," Evan replied, pulling up a chair. His eyes lifted to meet mine with a warmth that I wished didn't stir something within me.
We sat there, surrounded by the low hum of other patrons' conversations and the clinking of ceramic on wood, enveloped in an awkward silence. Holly brought my coffee, and I clung to it like a life raft.
I could feel Evan's gaze on me, patient and expectant.
Evan cleared his throat, a subtle signal that he was about to steer us away from the precipice of silence. Except, there was nothing for us to talk about. We weren’t friends, and I couldn’t pretend we were.
“I should go,” I said, pushing to my feet.
"Oh…” He almost looked disappointed. “Can I walk you out?”
"No," I said quickly—too quickly perhaps, feeling the facade crack just a bit. My gaze dropped to the table, focusing on the wood grain patterns as I fought to keep my emotions from spilling over.
Evan reached out, as if to bridge the gap, but stopped short. "If there's something you need to talk about—" he began, but I cut him off.
"Really, I'm fine." The lie tasted bitter on my tongue, but I swallowed it down with another sip of coffee. My heart hammered away, protesting the falsehoods, but I couldn't afford the truth—not yet, not now. “I just need to go.”
I could admit to myself that I was running. Except, there was really nowhere to run in Minden.
I managed to avoid Evan for the next few days. But a few nights later, after a long day of hauling boxes of old encyclopedias to the storage shed, I snuck out of the apartment after Sophia went to bed. The apartment complex had a postage-stamp-sized pool that Sophia loved, but it was the hot tub calling my name that night.
I dropped my towel on the chair and eased into the warmth of the hot tub, groaning at the almost painful heat. I found a seat and tipped my head back on the stone edge, letting the hot water loosen the tightness of my back and shoulders. The day's tension ebbed away with each ripple. Then a familiar voice sliced through the tranquility.
“Samantha?”
My eyes snapped open, and my heart kicked against my ribs. Evan stood at the edge of the hot tub, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression unreadable in the dim glow of the pool lights. Water droplets clung to his skin, and his damp hair told me he’d already been swimming.
“Didn’t peg you for a rule breaker,” he said, one brow lifting.
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
His lips twitched like he was fighting a smirk. “Pool closes at ten.”
I glanced toward the sign near the gate, scowling when I saw the posted hours. “Seriously?”
Evan shrugged, stepping closer. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell—if you let me join you.”
I shut my eyes, ignoring the temptation to trace his abs with my gaze. “It’s a free country,” I replied.
“If I get in, are you going to leave?”
My lips twitched. “Maybe.”
He sighed. “Does it have to be like this?”
“Like what?”
“You avoiding me at every turn? I said I was sorry, Sam. I know it doesn’t make up for the way I disappeared, but it’s true. That night…” He bit off his words. “That night changed everything for me.”
I barely contained the scoff that built in my lungs. It changed everything for him? I was the one who walked away as a single mom. What could have honestly changed for him?
My curiosity got the better of me and I whispered the question, my eyes opening at the sound of him slipping into the water. “How?”
He took a moment to answer, his head tipping back to look at the sky, exposing his throat and causing the muscles at the base of his neck to flex.
“The fire.” His voice was quiet, almost drowned out by the bubbling water.
I stilled. A strange prickle ran down my spine. “The one at the club?”
He nodded, dragging a hand through his wet hair. His jaw clenched so tight I swore I could hear his teeth grind. “Yeah.” He let out a sharp breath and finally looked at me, his gaze filled with something raw and unguarded. “That night didn’t just change everything, Sam. It wrecked me.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t—”
“My brother was there,” he said, cutting me off. “Mason.”
I blinked. “Your brother?” I met his brother briefly that week. I remembered his blonde hair and the way he’d teased Evan about me before we’d ditched him on the boardwalk.
He gave a hollow laugh and tipped his head back against the stone edge. “Yeah. He was barely eighteen. Just a stupid kid looking to have fun.” His voice wavered, but he pushed forward. “I brought him on the trip, did you know that? Told him we’d have a great time. Promised my parents I’d look out for him.”
A knot formed in my stomach. I already knew where this was going.
“I still feel like the night is all hazy. I know we were in the bathroom when the fire broke out,” he continued, his voice lower now, like he hated saying the words. “You and me.” He gave me a brief, unreadable look before staring at the water again. “I remember the smoke, the alarm blaring. The whole place was crazy. People screaming, shoving—” He exhaled sharply. “I lost you in the crowd by the exit. But I had to find him.”
My fingers tightened on the hot tub’s edge.
“I searched for him,” he whispered. “Fought my way through the smoke, tried to get back inside, but security dragged me out. And when the fire was finally out…” His voice broke. “He didn’t make it.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
I felt cold despite the steaming water. My memories were hazy too. Many times over the years, I’d wondered if someone hadn’t spiked my drink. Not Evan. No, that thought had never crossed my mind. I might have only known him a week, but I had known him. Some of his more obnoxious friends had mentioned that we needed to loosen up. A comment that could have been innocent. Or not.
After the fire, I watched the news, cried about the people who didn’t make it out. He’d been with me by the exit, so even though I’d never heard from him over the years, I’d never really considered that he hadn’t made it out. But I never imagined he’d lost someone. I’d been so heartbroken when I never heard from him. And then, after I found out about Sophia, I became terrified that I would.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered.
He gave a tight, humorless smile. “Of course, you didn’t. I didn’t have a way to tell you.” His hands clenched beneath the surface. “By the time I could think straight, you were gone. I tried, Sam. I tried to find you.”
I looked down, guilt twisting inside me. I had spent years believing I was the only one left to pick up the broken pieces of that night. But Evan… he had been carrying his own wreckage all along.
“You tried to find me?”
He grimaced, running a hand over his face. “Yes, of course I did. Sam, I just wanted to talk to you. I felt like the biggest jerk in the world,” he said with a groan. “What happened in that bathroom… I wasn’t… I’m not the kind of guy who does that. I didn’t–don’t–do hookups.” He jerked a shoulder. “Maybe it doesn’t matter now. After all, it’s been fourteen years, but I wanted you to know. I wanted to apologize. It never should have happened.”
A thousand thoughts flickered through my mind. He regretted it. He claimed he didn’t do hookups, but somehow we ended up in the club bathroom of all places? I’d spent fourteen years ashamed of the way my daughter came into the world. But I could never regret it.
Evan wasn’t done. “I hired an investigator about a year after the fire. To track you down.”
My blood turned to ice, despite the heat of the water. “You did?” The words squeezed through the tightness in my throat. It wasn’t as though I’d hidden from him. I wouldn’t even know how.
He huffed and lifted one corner of his lips. “Yeah. Apparently, Samantha Brown is common enough he was never able to track you down. Not that I had much to give him to go on. I knew you were from Indiana and went to school at DePaul. But he could never track you down.”
I pressed my eyes shut, my breath escaping in a rush. I didn’t know whether to cry or praise God for the misunderstanding. “I went to DePauw University, Evan.”
“Right. DePaul.”
“DePauw,” I corrected. “With a W.”
I glanced back at him then. His brow was furrowed in confusion. “What?”
“DePauw University. It’s in Greencastle.” Twenty minutes up the road. Other than my big trip to Florida as a college student, my world remained very small.
Evan sat up so fast, the water splashed up my neck. “You weren’t in Chicago?”
I shook my head slowly. “I’ve never even been to Chicago,” I admitted. I hadn’t had the opportunity before that trip to Florida, and I had certainly avoided the city ever since, knowing what I did about the Mercer family.
Evan gritted his teeth. I watched in shock as he dropped his head into the water, covering his face. I could hear a muffled sound, and a deluge of bubbles engulfed the sides of his face, like he was yelling under the water. Then, he lifted his head and ran his hands down his face, wiping away the droplets.
“Ummm, what was that?”
Evan sighed and muttered. “DePauw University. All this time I could have found you and it turns out I’m just an idiot.”
My lips twitched, tugging into a reluctant smile. “It’s an understandable mistake.”
He shook his head. “I remember every single thing you said to me that week. But I missed that.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “Like you said… it’s been a long time.”
He didn’t answer, and the silence settled comfortably around us. It felt like something was resolved now. He’d said what he needed to. He’d apologized. But my own secrets were still there, palpable as ever.
"Getting late," I murmured eventually, more to remind myself than him. I rose from the comforting heat of the hot tub, bracing against the cool night air as I wrapped myself in my towel.
In the glow of the patio lights, Evan's profile was etched with lines of thoughtfulness, his kind eyes shadowed by the weight of things left unsaid. "Let me walk you back," he offered, and something in the simple kindness of his gesture unraveled a thread of my resolve. He rubbed his hair with the towel, then slung it around his hips, his washboard abs deeply defined in the reflection and shadows of the dim lights.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. The last thing I needed was him to see something at my apartment that would tip him off about Sophia. Was her bike still in the front? Would she have woken while I was gone? I left her a note, but what if she opened the door?
“It’s dark. Better safe than sorry,” he said with a crooked grin.
“It’s also Minden,” I replied with a laugh, trying to cover my hesitation. “I know you’re new here, but surely you’re aware of our low crime rate.”
“Low isn’t zero,” he said firmly.
I sighed as though I was annoyed, but I couldn’t deny the little gleeful thrill his protectiveness sent through my body.
We reached the pool gate, his arm brushing against mine as he held the gate open —a touch that sent whispers of electricity skittering across my skin.
"Thanks," I said, suddenly conscious of the proximity.
His smile was gentle, but it tugged at something inside me, leaving me yearning for a reality where complications didn't loom over every interaction.
The air seemed to grow denser with each step we took toward my apartment, a pressure building in my chest that mirrored the tightening grip of anxiety. I couldn't shake the image of Sophia peeking through the window, Evan seeing her curious eyes on us and dunking me headfirst into a lifetime’s worth of questions I wasn't prepared to answer.
As we approached my apartment door, I hesitated. "Here we are," I announced prematurely, halting a good few paces away from the actual door. The words tumbled out, clipped and rushed. "Thanks for the escort."
He paused, a small furrow forming between his brows as he searched my face. "Sure thing. Is everything okay?”
"Everything's fine," I assured him too quickly, the lie leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. I fumbled with the keys, not trusting myself to meet his gaze any longer. "Good night, Evan."
"Good night, Samantha," he replied. “I’m glad we got to finally get everything out in the open tonight. I hope you’ll forgive me for the way things happened, if you haven’t already.”
With every word, he twisted the knife just a little deeper. I forced a smile, then hurried inside before I could betray how much he’d gotten to me.
The moment the door closed behind me, I leaned against it, the cool surface doing nothing to quell the fluttering in my stomach. The silence of the apartment pressed down on me.
I slid down to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees, trying to ground myself. But my thoughts wouldn’t stop spinning. How quickly he slipped past my defenses, just like before. And how, no matter what we’d said tonight, the biggest truth of all still hung between us.
The knowledge of Sophia's existence—and Evan's ignorance of his connection to her. The guilt twisted inside me.
"I hope you can forgive me ," I whispered into the stillness, though whether the plea was to Evan, to Sophia, or to God, I couldn't say. Maybe all three. Only silence answered back— a blank canvas upon which my doubts and desires waged their silent war.
My faith, usually my compass, now felt like another burden. The principles I held dear demanded an honesty that would shatter the fragile peace I'd built around my daughter.
I'd told myself that keeping the secret was to protect Sophia, to shield her from the complexities of a past she didn't need to navigate. To keep Evan’s powerful family from taking her away from me. But maybe it was also to protect myself from the vulnerability of opening my heart again—the possibility that I would be broken beyond repair this time.
The stakes were too high, the risks too great. I rose slowly. Tomorrow would come. And sooner or later, the truth would too. I could forgive him. But even if he found out about Sophia, I didn’t have to let Evan back into my heart. I wasn’t the same scared twenty-one-year-old who’d been afraid of the Mercer name. I had built a good life for Sophia. I had a degree and a good job.
And even though the bills had a tendency to pile up, especially the hospital bills, I wouldn’t let him or his family push me around. Sophia was mine.