by Aly Martinez
You could look like this every single day and I’d still want to see you. Pick up the phone tomorrow.
I looked at that picture for over an hour, until I fell asleep with my phone in my hand and a smile on my face.
Over the following weeks, Sam and I talked every single day. Yes, via FaceTime. He also sent me a new picture of us “together” each night when we hung up. They were all different, but he always looked like an Adonis and I always looked like shit. How he found that many terrible pictures of me was alarming. But there was always a funny message at the bottom that made the momentary embarrassment totally worth it. In Sam’s nightly images, we were traveling the globe together. From the Eiffel Tower to the Grand Canyon, I’d fallen on my face all around the world.
My favorite picture of all was us in Thelma and Louise’s green Thunderbird convertible. Sam had the signature scarf around his neck, which should have been humorous, but with those tattooed forearms resting on the steering wheel, he was still sexy as hell. For me, he had used a photo from when I had been riding a rollercoaster with a little girl from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. My mouth was wide open, and a terror-filled scream was being forced from my throat. He’d even gone so far as to add a bug flying into my mouth when he’d placed me in the car beside him. When I noticed that the front license plate read Sam & Levee 4-eva, I melted.
I was falling fast for that man, and I could only hope I was taking him with me.
A month ago, I had been standing on a bridge, contemplating jumping off, but with him at my side, even just in a Photoshopped car, I’d never been happier in my life. And it scared the hell out of me. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever be able to cope if he didn’t feel the same. Drugs might not have been my problem, but I was absolutely addicted to the quiet high he offered my mind.
For two full weeks, Sam and I lived in a bubble of new-relationship bliss.
It wasn’t all laughs and smiles, but that was what made it feel real.
I loved bickering with him. We’d found a ton of trivial crap to disagree about. But that’s all it was—meaningless crap. Slowly, it became obvious that Sam and I did in fact come from different worlds. But it also became blindingly obvious that that was exactly why I needed to hold on to him.
Sam: Umm…why did four $6,000 guitars just get delivered to my house?
Me: It was my subtle way of telling you I want some bookshelves.
Sam: With brand new custom Gibsons? Are you insane?! I could have gotten broken guitars for fifty bucks at the music store.
Me: Slow down, cheapo. Those are my favorite. I use them exclusively.
Sam: No.
Me: No what?
Sam: No, I’m not destroying $24,000 worth of guitars.
Me: Why the hell not? You can’t return them now.
Sam: The fuck I can’t, princess.
Me: That was a low blow, asshole.
Me: Really? You’re just gonna disappear now?
He didn’t respond for three full unnerving hours. But, when he finally did, a photo of two guitar bookshelves leaning against his bedroom wall preceded it. They appeared to be generic acoustics—definitely not my Gibsons.
Sam: I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m an asshole. It’s just hard when your woman has Gibson taste and a thrift store man. I made these for you last week. I’ll start on your guitars tonight.
Sam: P.S. I’m really sorry about the princess thing.
Sam: P.P.S. I’m a dick.
Sam: P.P.P.S. Here’s a picture of my cock to make up for it.
Attached was a photo of a chicken.
Sam: P.P.P.P.S. I named him Curtis.
Sam: P.P.P.P.P.S. I can’t wait for you to meet him.
I didn’t respond for half an hour—because I was sobbing. Of course I felt bad for having made him feel like he was my thrift store man, but that wasn’t why I was crying.
He’d already made me bookshelves.
And implied that I was his woman. A fact I knew but had never actually been verified.
And he’d made me laugh when I should’ve still been pissed.
But, most of all, I was crying because I knew that that was the exact moment I’d fallen in love with Sam Rivers.
There was no going back now—not that I wanted to.
I also knew I couldn’t make it two more weeks without him.
Me: Come see me.
Sam: Tell me when and where.
Me: Tomorrow. It’s family day and Henry is supposed to fly up, but I really need to see you.
Sam: Then I’ll be there, Levee.
I squealed like a teenager as my heart exploded in my chest.
He’s coming.
Sam: I’ll see if I can find someone to watch Curtis.
I burst into laughter with tears still sliding down my cheeks.
Yeah, I’m absolutely and hopelessly lost in this man.
I WAS AT the airport an hour after Levee had asked me to come see her. Before that moment, I hadn’t even known visiting her was an option or I probably would have taken up residence in Maine weeks ago. The trip was long, and I flew standby the whole way, but finally, at seven the next morning, after having slept in the Philly Airport, I was back in the same state as my Designer Shoes. I grabbed my rental car and headed directly to the address she had texted me the night before.
At nine o’clock on the dot, I marched through the doors and up to the receptionist desk.
“Hi. I’m Sam Rivers. I’m here to see—”
The thin blonde sitting behind the desk immediately cut me off. “For privacy, we don’t use guests’ names.”
“Oh, right,” I said awkwardly, trying to figure out how to explain to her why I was there without using Levee’s name. “Well, my name is Sam—”
“Rivers. Yes, I got that. Please allow me a minute to look you up.” She smiled, but it came off as more of a grimace.
Well, isn’t she a bitchy ray of sunshine.
I anxiously tapped the toe of my boot as I imagined Levee sitting somewhere nearby. She was probably chewing her manicured thumbnail into submission. I dropped my gaze to my shoes in an attempt to cover the shit-eating grin I was hopeless to hide.
A deep voice interrupted my thoughts. “Please come with us, sir.”
Two men in dark suits, who might as well have stepped out of the movie Men in Black, suddenly appeared at my side.
I nodded with a smile, my stomach bubbling with excitement as I followed them through a set of double doors.
She’s so close.
Only she wasn’t close at all.
They led me to a set of glass doors that opened to the back parking lot.
“Uhh…” I mumbled when Agent K shoved it wide.
“You’re not permitted on the premises, Mr. Rivers. If you return, the local authorities will be notified immediately. This is your first and only warning.”
“I’m sorry. There must be confusion.” I lowered my voice to a whisper as I said, “Levee Williams is expecting me.”
“There’s no guest here by that name. Please don’t make this difficult,” Agent J bit out.
My anticipation quickly swung to anger as disappointment settled like acid in my stomach. Stepping forward, I seethed, “She gave me the address. I’m not leaving without seeing her.”
“Get. Out.” He snapped a finger to the parking lot and leveled me with a menacing glare.
I didn’t budge. Fuck this asshole if he thinks he’s keeping me from her. “Find. Levee.”
“I won’t ask you to leave again,” Agent K declared as J slipped around behind me.
“Fuck you.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed Levee’s number.
She answered on the first ring, and if my head hadn’t been about to explode, I would have given her shit about it.
“Are you here yet?” she asked.
“Yes, and no. Security is kicking me out.”
“What?” she shrieked so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear.
“Goodbye, sir,” Age
nt J growled, shoving me toward the doors.
I stood my ground as rage boiled in my veins. I poked a hard finger into his brick wall of a chest. “Don’t fucking touch me again.”
“Sam, what the hell is going on? Let me talk to them.”
Gritting my teeth, I lifted the phone. “Levee wants to talk to you.”
They glanced at each other in unspoken agreement.
Neither took the phone.
One did take my arm though—and twisted it behind my back. The other held the door open while he shoved me out of it. My phone skidded across the concrete as I stumbled forward, barely staying on my feet as the door shut and locked behind me.
What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened?
The muscle in my jaw twitched as I fought to regain some sort of composure that didn’t have me shattering that fucking glass door and killing two men. Then I heard Levee’s voice coming from my phone on the ground.
“Sam!”
Snatching it up, I was only able to grit out, “I’m going to jail. It may be for a long fucking time.” I stomped toward the door and banged on the glass, but the MIB had already walked away.
“What? Sam, stop and tell me what’s going on!”
“I just got fucking thrown out for trying to come visit you!” I shouted. I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath, fully aware that this wasn’t her fault. “I’m sorry,” I quickly apologized.
“Just calm down, okay? Let me go talk to them, and I’ll call you back. Don’t. Leave.”
“Funny. That’s not what they said as they tossed me on the street,” I snapped then sighed. “Sorry. Again.”
“It’s okay. You want me to have them fired?” she asked in jest, and if I could have slowed the adrenaline pumping through my system, I probably would have smiled.
I raked a hand through my hair and huffed, “That would be fan-fucking-tastic.”
“Consider it done. Now, chill out and I’ll see you in a minute.”
Chill out.
Yeah, that wasn’t at all what I wanted to do, but with the promise of seeing her in a minute still ringing in my ears, I managed to pack it down.
I stomped around the side of the building to my rental car.
Then I waited.
And waited.
And fucking waited some more.
For over an hour, I sat in the car, staring at the entrance of the building. My phone wasn’t ringing, and Levee’s had started going straight to her voicemail. I was already tired from having traveled all night, and as the adrenaline drained from my body, I was suddenly exhausted.
Grabbing my phone, I shot out a quick text letting Levee know that I was going to grab some coffee but wouldn’t be far.
She didn’t respond.
“Who did this?” I screamed like the diva I prided myself in never becoming. But, then again, no one had ever meddled in my personal life before.
“Calm down, Miss Williams.” Doctor Post and someone, whose name I’d promptly forgotten but had been introduced as the center’s head administrator, were sitting in a small conference room, attempting to defuse me.
“I swear to God, you either show me those fucking papers or I will ruin you! You won’t be able to pay someone to come to this place when I’m done with you.”
“We are attempting to locate the physical copy of your sign-in papers. Our records are digital.”
“Try harder!” I yelled as they both scurried from the room.
I snatched the telephone off the hook. My cell phone had died shortly after hanging up with Sam, but I’d been using the phone in the conference room to repeatedly call Henry. I knew he was traveling to see me, but his flight should’ve landed already. The really unnerving part was when I got the same radio silence from Devon as well. Something was going on, and clearly, I was the only one in the dark.
“Hey, beautiful!” Henry purred when he fucking finally answered.
“Swear to me you didn’t know about this shit with Sam,” I gritted out through clenched teeth.
Henry gasped. “What did my lover-boy do?”
“Sam didn’t do anything. But someone put his name on my list of banned visitors. You filled out my paperwork, Henry. Please, please, please, tell me you didn’t do this.”
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered then sighed.
My pulse raced for whatever answer he was about to give me.
“I didn’t fill out your paperwork, Levee. I started chatting with the male orderly, so Devon filled out your papers.”
My heart splintered. I almost wished it had been Henry instead. We could’ve had a huge-ass fight where he explained why he had done it, and I would have put him in his place for interfering. We wouldn’t have spoken for a week, but we would have eventually gotten over it.
I couldn’t say the same for Devon. While I considered him part of my family, I couldn’t lose sight of the fact that he was also my employee who obviously didn’t know his role. I was supposed to be able to trust this man with my life, and he was taking advantage of that trust for some reason that was lost on me completely. Fine, he didn’t like Sam, but he wasn’t required to. His only job was to make sure I was safe. And the way my stomach knotted at this little revelation made me feel anything but.
“Shit,” I hissed into the phone.
“I’m sorry. Look, Carter and I will be there in about an hour. Devon’s on the flight behind us. We’ll all come together and figure this out. Just tell them to let Sam in. They can’t keep you from seeing him.”
I groaned. “Apparently, they can. They’re refusing to let me see him until they speak to a member of my family. I’m not calling my parents to ask permission to see my boyfriend, Henry.” Tears welled in my eyes.
It was too much.
All of it.
I was supposed to be relaxing and getting things under control. Instead, I felt like a prisoner inside not only these walls, but my entire fucking life as well.
And just like that, the familiar free fall engulfed me.
I closed my eyes and fought the ache in my lungs.
“Is Sam still there?” Henry asked.
“I think so,” I managed to squeak.
“Just tell him to wait. I’ll be there soon. We’ll get this fixed, okay?”
But I didn’t want to tell Sam to wait. I wanted to see him.
And go home with him.
And let him do exactly what he had unwittingly been doing since the day we met—healing me from the outside in.
Suddenly, my eyes popped open. Why couldn’t I have that?
Yes, my life had spiraled out of control. But the only person who was stopping me from taking charge of my own future was me.
Levee Michelle Williams was a fighter. I hadn’t gotten my success in the music industry by sitting around and letting people tell me how to run my life. I had done it by clawing my way to the top with nothing more than a guitar and head full of dreams.
Fuck this place. No one was going to tell me how to run my life—a life I suddenly realized I never wanted to leave. And that epiphany hadn’t come from the bottom of a prescription bottle or inside those walls. It had come in the shape of a gorgeous man who’d saved me with nothing more than a quick wit and a simple conversation. And he was sitting only yards away in a parking lot because his name was on a magical fucking list.
I dropped the phone from my ear and pushed the conference room door open, then the hallway door, and finally, the front door of the entire building. I didn’t stop until my high heels hit the asphalt of the parking lot.
Voices called my name behind me, but they were all muted by my newfound determination.
My feet kept moving in search of a pair of golden eyes that I soon realized were nowhere to be found. As I came up empty, nerves didn’t take over. I didn’t have a million thoughts of guilt and worry. I was no longer allowing the free fall to dictate my life.
I squared my shoulders and smiled proudly, feeling like myself for the first time in months.
“Leve
e!” Doctor Post called, but I quickly slipped behind a car, squatting low until the voices disappeared.
I wasn’t going back, not even to explain that I wasn’t going back. I wasn’t in the mood for an argument. I was in the mood to start living.
Without my phone, I couldn’t call Sam, but there was only one place I needed to go. So I started down the sidewalk and hailed a cab.
He’d know where to find me.
AFTER ALMOST THREE hours of chugging coffee, smoking cigarettes, and talking myself off the ledge of rage, I decided to head back and see if I could charm my way in to see Levee. As I pulled into a parking spot, I was thrilled to see a familiar face. Carter, the barrel-chested bodyguard who had driven me home from Levee’s house after our fight the first night together, was standing out front, barking into a phone. I threw my car in park then jogged up to him. Maybe he could get me inside.
His eyes grew wide as I approached. Using his hand to cover the phone, he asked, “She’s not with you?”
“Levee? No. They won’t let me in. I was hoping—”
He lifted the phone back to his ear. “Sam just arrived, Mr. Williams. She’s not with him. We’ll keep you updated.”
Mr. Williams? Levee’s dad?
He hung up. “Come with me, Sam.” He walked toward the door.
I grabbed his arm. “What the hell is going on? Why would you think Levee was with me?”
“Follow me,” was his only reply.
The receptionist glared at me as Carter escorted me past her and into a back office. I was already a bundle of nerves, but the moment I caught sight of Henry’s hollow eyes, I realized something was terribly wrong. He stopped midpace, and hope filled his empty expression.
“Oh thank God!” He rushed in my direction and peered over my shoulder. “Where is she?”
“I have no idea.” Bile rose in my throat.
He threw his hands over his mouth and spun in place to face Devon and the Men in Black conferring in the corner. Several other people lined the walls, all looking equally as devastated by this realization.