Chapter 36

Sam tensed,Natalia’s blunt question like an iron vice around her heart. Hearing Sofia’s name on her lips left her momentarily stunned, the air snatched from her lungs. She slowly turned to meet Natalia’s penetrating gaze, throat tightening.

“After all of these months,” Natalia seethed, her glossy eyes an odd contrast to her angry posture. “All the times you pushed me. Accused me of being closed off and meanwhile you were hiding a huge part of your life?” A vein in Natalia’s forehead beat to the rhythm of Sam’s racing pulse. “All this time you’ve been?—”

“She died,” Sam said, voice like a spider crack shattering thin glass.

Natalia’s expression changed, but it was no less hostile. “What?”

Sam closed her eyes and took a deep breath to slow her racing heart. She hated looking backward. Hated the way she couldn’t think of Sofia without going back to the day she lost her. Eight years of happiness trapped and inaccessible behind the wall of grief and pain.

Topless and slathered in a thick layer of aloe was not how she imagined having this conversation. She’d never imagined broaching the topic at all. Scooting over to give Natalia the chance to sit next to her on the couch if she wanted, Sam shook her head.

“Why would you want to know?” her tone was more defensive that she intended. “You’ve made it clear that you’re only interested in two things. Sex and the book rights.”

Natalia dropped the jar on the coffee table and crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, fuck that.”

“Are you saying that’s not true? Because I can?—”

“That’s an excuse and you know it.” Her tone was hard — and to Sam’s shock — hurt.

Getting to her feet, Sam pulled on the loose muscle tee she’d slung over the back of the couch. If they were going to have a blowout and end their entanglement, she needed to be clothed.

“When have you ever wanted to know anything about me?” Sam countered with a question, skin aching every time she moved.

“So now I’m supposed to guess that you have some critical shit in your past that I don’t know about? Okay, great.” Natalia’s voice rose with the color on her face. “Let’s see. Have you ever been to prison? To rehab? Do you have a kid somewhere?—”

“Why are you so angry?” Sam’s only emotions were an indefinable tangle knotting in her stomach and chest and throat. Chills she couldn’t blame on the sun made her hands tremble.

The question was a speed-bump in Natalia’s tirade. She faltered. Her lips parted and closed twice before she decided on, “Because you’re acting like a hypocrite.”

Sam dropped back onto the couch, surprised by how accurate the accusation felt. Tired like she’d been running a marathon since the day she received the worst phone call of her life, all Sam had left was a shrug.

Expecting to hear the sound of Natalia’s heels on the wood as she stomped away, Sam looked up when she sat next to her instead. She didn’t want her eyes to water in front of Natalia. Didn’t want to embarrass herself with an emotional display. But her chest ached and her skin hurt and she was just so fucking tired.

“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you,” Sam said quietly. “I could say it never came up, but… I don’t know. I just didn’t.” She wanted to make a case for herself. To blame Natalia’s detachment and clear emotional boundaries, but she knew she could have modeled emotional intimacy for her if she’d wanted to make herself vulnerable.

Natalia peered into her, expression softening to something more neutral. Something closer to interest rather than rage.

“We met in line to get our fingerprints taken for the teaching certification,” Sam explained, testing the waters to see if Natalia really wanted to know or whether she just wanted to be right about something. If she just wanted to win the upper hand and rub her face in it.

When Natalia didn’t cut her off or start yelling, Sam took another deep breath. Going back to that place was like dragging herself over barbed wire. She should stop. Should tell Natalia that she wasn’t going to air her trauma for someone who wasn’t going to stick around. But despite her words, Natalia was, in fact, staying. If she hadn’t cared, it wouldn’t have bothered her that Sam hadn’t told her about Sofia.

Taking a gamble, Sam continued. “She taught high school biology, and I was registering as a substitute to make extra money during grad school.”

If Sam closed her eyes, she could still see Sofia in that line. They’d waited forever, and in the days before smartphones, there was nothing to do to pass the time but chat. By the time she’d gotten her fingerprints taken, she was in love.

“We, um, never got the chance to make it legal,” Sam’s voice failed her again, and she had to look down at her bare feet to avoid Natalia’s unreadable face. “It was right before Florida was forced to recognize marriage equality. She um?—”

Natalia shifted toward her, but didn’t touch her. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said so softly she didn’t sound like herself.

Sam forced herself to look her in the eye. “It was a car accident,” she said, because she wanted Natalia to know. Because she hadn’t said it out loud in so long. Because if this was going to end, it might as well end now. “We lived in this crappy little apartment.”

Her chest tightened, the scent of the fried egg rolls from the Chinese restaurant they lived above wafting through her senses. “Anyway, she, um, she was driving home later than usual. Teacher-parent night and she’d been having a hell of a time with this one kid. And his parents didn’t?—”

Sam tried to organize her thoughts. They were messy and jumbled, and she struggled to bring herself to the point.

“It was dark and rainy when she saw a car pulled over on the shoulder of the Palmetto with a flat tire. And there was all this construction, like always, and she must have seen that the driver was stranded.” She tried to catch her breath, but couldn’t. “I don’t know if she saw that the girl was pregnant, but she stopped to help.”

Pain, dark and sharp and agonizing, seized her bones. Pulling at her jaw and drawing out her tears like she hadn’t even put up a fight.

“She’d already finished changing the tire,” Sam said, like it was the worst part of the entire nightmare. “She was done.” She shook her head, body trembling. “And then some asshole cut through the shoulder at a thousand miles an hour.” A sob broke free just as Sam managed, “he didn’t even stop after he hit her.”

Natalia clamped her hand over Sam’s wrist. It might have been comforting if it wasn’t strong enough to pulverize stone. “Did they catch the piece of shit?”

Sam shook her head. “The poor girl said it happened so fast. She wasn’t even sure about the color of the car. One second Sofia was standing next to her and then she was gone.” Sam closed her eyes. “She went into premature labor, and I lost my wife. Just like that. Just because someone was in a hurry.”

At her side, Natalia stiffened, rage vibrated off of her, blinding and renewed. “Did you offer a reward for information? Someone could still know something. There would have been damage to the car that had to be fixed. Cameras. Records. People leave a trail no matter what they do. Over time, they even confess to assuage their guilt?—”

Sam put her hand over Natalia’s and met her gaze again. “Those first few years, I did nothing but hunt for the perpetrator. I hired private investigators to get every single piece of evidence they could find. I thought about nothing else but finding the person responsible for my misery and making them pay until they regretted having been born.” She paused, letting the old anger leak from her tense muscles. “And it nearly consumed me. I was so bitter for so long, and I knew that’s not what she would want. She wouldn’t have wanted us both to end in that unspeakable moment.”

Shaking her head, Natalia was still mad. Still seething with impotent rage.

“Until I met you, I’d wear both of our wedding bands around my neck.” She touched the place on her chest where the rings usually rested.

“You shouldn’t stop,” Natalia snapped. “Not for me or for anyone.”

With nothing left to say, Sam leaned back before pain shot over her crispy skin and forced her to sit up again.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Natalia repeated, a fraction less enraged.

“It hurts to remember her, even more so her last moments. It’s not right that your entire life is defined by the end.” She held her gaze and asked the question that had been burning hotter than her skin since they arrived in the Keys. “Where are we going with this, Natalia?”

The question forced Natalia back. She withdrew her hand and Sam guessed what would come next. She hated being right. Hated that Natalia couldn’t stand more than a flash of vulnerability before bolting.

“What do you want from me, Samantha?” The question might have been meant as a defensive response, but there were no hard edges to it. No bite.

“What are you willing to give?” Sam knew it was a line in the sand. A showing of cards she couldn’t take back.

Natalia slid further away. “I’m never going to be some sweet housewife. I’m not going to rub your feet after a long day and ask you how you’re feeling. I don’t know how — I’m not interested in some domestic pipe dream.”

Sam looked at her for a long time. Looked at Natalia until she could see beyond her defenses. “I never said I wanted that, did I?”

Natalia shifted under Sam’s sharp tone but didn’t reply.

“I have no idea what you want, Natalia.” She leaned forward, hoping Natalia would really listen to her. “You being here with me. With my family —” She stopped herself and adjusted her tactic. “You scare the shit out of me, but that doesn’t seem to change the fact that I want to get to know you for real — not just your body — you.”

She didn’t add that Natalia was so close to having the power to hurt her. That she’d be crushed if Natalia walked away.

“And I don’t need you to be anyone you’re not. I like that you’re a pain in the ass, and don’t take shit from anyone, and that you’re so much smarter than anyone I’ve ever met. That you see ten steps ahead and call out bullshit when you see it. I —” Sam stopped herself again and made her point as simply as she could. “I just want to get to know you. I want to date you without pretending that all I want is the fun parts. I want the complicated with the exciting. I want all of it.”

Natalia’s brow furrowed but didn’t crease. For the longest few seconds of Sam’s life, while she sat there with her chest open and her pounding heart exposed, Natalia peered into her without a word. Sam couldn’t tell if she was going to kiss her or slap her or run away.

She did none of those things. Instead, she rose slowly from the couch. “I need to take a shower,” she said before slinking away.

Deciding that was better than her packing her bags, Sam crumpled into a useless heap on the couch, the fabric like sandpaper on her raw skin. Depleted, she swallowed the pain and closed her eyes.