I looked back at the tent, and wanted to wake her right up and tell her the truth of all of it. Even though I didn’t know how I really felt about her yet, I didn’t want her to keep thinking that I was a piece of shit who had thrown her away.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out.
Della: I got more. Let me know when you’re back.
I curled my hand into a fist. I hated that she was in my phone, hated that just the words she’d typed had made my mouth tighten. Suddenly, the desire for a pill was so strong that it was if I’d had a Pavlovian effect with her just saying the words.
I wondered if I’d ever be rid of them. Of her. And I did something stupid, I texted her back, Get out of my life, Della. For good.
Her reply came quickly.
Della: You don’t mean that. You’ll be begging when you get home.
“Excuse me,” I said to the guys and went back to the tent. It was like I couldn’t get enough of the pills to satisfy me then. As quietly as possible, I unzipped the tent and stepped in, closing it behind me. Lotte was still asleep, facing the other side of the tent.
I rifled through my bag until the trusty bottle fell into my hand. The pills made a loud sound, reminding me that there were so few left.
We wouldn’t leave for two more days still, which felt like a lifetime.
I shook out one pill, but a second one fell into my hand. Temptation, sharp as a knife, sliced through my resolve and before I could stop myself, I popped them both into my mouth and swallowed them dry.
“Sam?”
I froze. Her scratchy morning voice made my blood run cold. After a steadying breath, I turned around.
She was sitting up on the air mattress, rubbing sleep from her eye. Her hair was a riot of blonde strands, sticking out in a hundred different directions. She looked so sweet, ethereal even. “What was that?”
I tried to gauge her reaction. She appeared to be confused more than anything, and I knew she didn’t have reason to suspect anything wrong of me. “Just some medicine.” I leaned back until I was sitting beside her on the air mattress and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Morning, sleepyhead.”
She turned her head into my palm and closed her eyes. In the early light of the morning, with her skin in my hand, I felt my heart roll a little in my chest. My sleepy little bird, I thought.
“What time is it?” she asked, and pressed her lips into my palm. I rubbed my thumb across her chin, then held her still so I could give her a kiss.
“Just after six,” I said against her mouth.
“That doesn’t make me a sleepy head.” She laughed and kissed me back.
I loved this. Having her beside me as she woke up, getting to be the one she gave affection to. I was a lucky one, I knew.
“I meant that you left me to fend for myself. I’ve been up for an hour.” I scooted closer to her, tucked her hair behind her other ear and tugged on her earlobe.
“As if you couldn’t handle it.” She giggled again and hummed a sweet little noise as she pushed her face into my neck. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like a rock,” I told her, and was instantly grateful she was buried in my neck and couldn’t see my instinctual wince at the fib. “Garrett has coffee on the grill. I figured after breakfast, we’ll head out?”
“Okay.” Her voice was muffled against my neck. “Whatever you want to do.”
I pulled back and lifted her chin with one finger. “Lots, what do you want to do?”
She sighed and rubbed her hand across her sleeping bag. “I want to curl up here, sleep a few more hours.” She popped a kiss on my mouth. “But, not alone.”
Bloody hell. It was a tempting offer, so tempting that it rivaled the temptation I’d had to take the two damn pills I’d just swallowed. I gripped her chin tighter and deepened the kiss, until she was flat on her back on the sleeping bag. I leaned over her until my chest was flat on hers. All her little curves, the dips and valleys of her body, made my body come alive right away.
Her hair splayed about her head on the pillowcase and she gave me that signature sleepy smile, the same one that had me debating kissing her mouth and creating a new path downward from there. I couldn’t even placate myself by saying we had all the time in the world, because all we really had were the next two days. It wasn’t enough. I knew that as well as I knew I needed air to breathe.
Remembering her leg, I rolled over until we were on the ground, with her on top of me. Her hair created a curtain around us, and she pushed up so that her full weight wasn’t on me.
But she was so small, so slight, that I wanted to feel every inch of her against me. I lifted my hands above me until I’d trapped her wrists and pulled them back so she wasn’t supporting herself at all, just pressed against me.
She giggled and kissed me—one, two, three times.
I framed her face in my hands and her eyes shined down on me. “You’re beautiful,” I whispered to her in our dimly lit tent. To illustrate what I said, I dragged my thumb over her perfect little cupid’s bow, up over the curve of her cheekbone to the edge of her beautiful, sleepy eyes. “Botticelli eyes,” I reminded her and slid my hands into her hair, gripping her head and bringing her lips to mine again.
I realized I could easily be just like this with her. Wrapped up in her skin, in her scent, exploring every bit I could see and the places I couldn’t, too.
“You’re beautiful,” she told me, pushing my hair away from face. “You know that, already, but really, Sam. You’re,” her voice lowered, “exquisite.” She rubbed the back of her fingers along my face. “And your heart is good.” Her hand moved to the center of my chest and after a moment, she drummed her fingers to my heart beat. “You make everyone feel at home. You can talk to anyone. You help my family.” She pressed the softest kiss against my mouth and I knew my heart stuttered. “You help me. I…”
That ‘I’ hung between us for several seconds, blood roaring in my ears, her eyes searching mine.
This was what addicted me. The way we could go from easy playfulness to something serious, something that shifted the very earth we laid upon. It was the full package.
“When we get home, I don’t want to go back to how things were,” I told her, bracing myself for her reaction. It wasn’t any large declaration, but it was what moved through me as strong as anything I’d ever felt.
She tilted her head to the side and blinked. “You mean…”
“I mean I want this.” Why did this feel so big? “It means I don’t want to lose this. I want to wake up beside you. I want to fall asleep curled against you. I don’t know what that looks like, back in London, but most of all I don’t want to pretend that you and I don’t have something. I’m not great at pretending.” My heart felt too big for my chest, like every time I swallowed my nerves, I had to shove it to the side, to make room for it.
“I’m not great at pretending, either,” she whispered. She ran her fingers across my lips and her eyes shone. “I want this too.”
“Thank Christ,” I said, and crushed my mouth to hers.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sam and I couldn’t stop touching each other. Even as we took down our tent, he found ways to grab me by the waist and haul me up to kiss me. And as we said our goodbyes to everyone else, I didn’t—couldn’t—let go of his hand. It was that honeymoon phase I’d always heard of. Sam and I wouldn’t let go of this upon our return home.
I didn’t know yet what that meant for us, especially since no one at home knew anything that was happening.
When we were halfway back to Salt Lake, Sam received a phone call and answered it. “Hey, mate.” There was a pause and he cleared his throat. “She’s crazy. You know that. Just … don’t worry about it. I’ll deal with her when I get home.” He looked sideways at me and answered a series of yes/no questions before handing me the phone. “Ames,” he said, and I took the phone.
“Hey, Lots.” Ames sounded good, if a little tired.
“Ames.” I cupped m
y hand around the phone. It was the first time I’d heard his voice in a few days, and realizing that I was two days away from seeing him made the immediate homesickness more bearable.
“How are you?”
“Good. We’re on our way to Salt Lake right now. Balloon ride tomorrow.”
“Oh yeah? Sam’s actually, willingly, going several hundred feet up in the air?”
I glanced at Sam, who was drumming along to a beat across the steering wheel. “We’re going together.” Saying it like that made me wonder if Ames could hear in my voice what that ‘together’ meant. I glanced at Sam again, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Okay. Well, take photos. We’re looking forward to having you home again.”
“That desperate for a dishwasher?” I joked.
“I’d be lying if I said no.” He laughed. “What have you done?”
I ran through the things we’d done; going to Arches and the campground and then said, “We’ve only been at this a couple days, so not much has happened.” Not much, except for everything. I reached across the center console and took Sam’s hand in mine. “I think we’re going to go to lunch and then have a quiet night before tomorrow.”
“Okay. Look, I know he’s right there and maybe he can hear what I’m about to say, but I just want to really make sure you’re okay. That you’re not … I don’t know. Unhappy, uncomfortable, whatever.”
“I’m great, Ames.” Great didn’t even begin to describe how I felt. Never had I imagined that great would be an inadequate word. I tightened my fingers on Sam’s. “Really great.”
He looked across at me for a brief blip of a second, but it was long enough for that smile to hit me right in the heart.
“Good. That’s good. I just worry about you.”
“I know. I’m lucky you do.” What was it about feeling romantic love that made all the other loves you felt much brighter, more poignant? It was as if I was feeling everything anew, realizing my late sister’s husband’s affection for me was such a blessing. “I love you, Ames.” Even though I was sure I’d said it at some point, I couldn’t remember the actual moment I had. And now felt as good a time as any.
“I love you too, Lots. We’re all looking forward to having you home. And that long-haired wanker, too.”
“I’ll tell Sam you send your love,” I said on a laugh.
“Okay. Have fun. Be safe.”
“I will.” I hung up and set the phone down in my lap.
“I’m glad he has you,” Sam said, squeezing my hand in his.
“We’re indebted to him.”
“He’s indebted to you, too. You guys kept his spirit lifted.” He ran a thumb across my knuckles.
“He’s lucky to have you too. He needed you.” I swallowed, feeling a surge of emotion right then. “When Mal died, you were our buoy. You kept us afloat.” Thinking of that night, and how things had come full circle since then, made me feel so much peace that I sent up a silent thank you to the heavens. If Mal was there, I had to believe she had a hand in all of this.
Sam’s phone buzzed on my lap and the sensation caused me to glance at the screen.
Della: I’ll come by when you get home. And you’ll be begging.
My heart plummeted right off of a cliff. The high I’d been feeling was immediately lost. I didn’t need to know what she meant in her text; just seeing her name itself was enough to make all the iron gates around my heart come shuttering down, protecting me from getting hurt. But the problem was, there was no way I could avoid it. In loving Sam, it was like I was setting myself up for heartache.
I didn’t let go of his hand, even though I wanted to. I didn’t want him to question me, question why I was pulling away. I knew he and I would need to talk about Della at some point, but I didn’t want her name in my head, much less in my mouth.
“You okay?” he asked, as we pulled into a drive up fast food place.
“Why? And, yes. I’m fine.”
“Because you’re pulling on your hair. Got an itch or something?”
I hadn’t realized my hand was twisting in my hair. I looked down at my leggings, where a dozen blonde hairs lay stark against the black. “Yeah,” I lied to him. I tried not to feel too guilty about it, not when Della was still texting him, hours after he’d told me he wanted to be with me.
We ate our burgers and fries mostly in silence. I just didn’t have it in my heart to be jovial with him, not when my heart felt so heavy. I hated that I hated Della. I wanted to be the kind of girl who could look past her text, not the girl who looked too deeply into it.
“You done?” I asked Sam. He had crumpled his burger wrapper and stuffed it in the bag with my trash. He nodded and picked up his phone, so I took the wrappers and bags and exited the car.
The boot, while a pain in the bottom, was something I was getting used to. I could even move more gracefully with it.
A song played over the speakers outside of the drive-up restaurant. It was a song I knew the words to, a song I’d danced to countless times in the privacy of my studio. My body moved along to the beat as I spun around and dunked our trash into the can.
It amazed me how music had such a direct line to my heart. No matter the heaviness I’d carried with me outside of the car, music erased it for that moment, making me weightless when I moved to the beat. I didn’t do any wild moves, because the boot was still quite prohibitive, but just letting my limbs feel the music and move fluidly with it was so very freeing, in a way I desperately needed.
I made my way back to the Jeep and buckled in. Sam pulled out of the restaurant and we made our way to the hotel for the night. I tried, uselessly, to keep my hands out of my hair, but by the time we pulled up to the hotel, I had ten fresh hairs in my lap.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lotte was in the shower seconds after we checked in.
She’d seemed distant in the car, especially after the phone call with Ames. I wondered what he’d said to her, that had her closing in on herself, on me.
I tried to get it out of her, but she insisted she was fine, and gave me that smile that said she was anything but.
Ames had asked me about Della on the phone. Had said that Della had come into the pub and opened her big, fat mouth. I knew Ames better than he gave me credit for, and knew that he struggled not to believe what he was hearing. He’d probably suspected something for a while now, and had nearly caught me with pills more than half a dozen times. But he never pushed me. I never confided in him either, which likely bothered him. I hadn’t denied what he’d asked me, even if it was in a roundabout way. But I hadn’t confirmed his suspicions either.
Because I was thinking of it, I called my GP using the wireless internet and made an appointment for two days from now, when I would be back in the UK. Saying I needed to quit wasn’t enough—I actually had to do it. I was dreading talking to him, but dreading more talking to Ames.
But more than those things at that moment, I knew I needed to get to the bottom of what Lotte was withholding from me.
I knocked on the bathroom door, heard her quiet, “Come in,” which was muffled by the shower.
The bathroom was fully steamy, and the shower curtain was drawn, hiding her completely from view. I took in the neat, folded clothes on the toilet seat, the line of her skincare products on the sink.
I leaned on the counter, crossed my arms over my chest, and stared at the shower curtain. “You okay in there?”
I expected her to at least move the curtain, poke her head out of it. But it stayed still. “I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re a liar,” I said back, loud enough for her to hear. “Something’s bothering you.”
She didn’t answer to that and I shook my head. If it was a row she wanted, it was a row she’d get. As soon as she was out of the shower.
On the shelf near the toilet was a prescription bottle. I could practically smell it from where I stood. My heartrate increased just seeing it.
I walked over to it, thankful Lotte co
uldn’t see me from the other side of the opaque shower curtain. Holding it in my hands was holding the greatest temptation I’d had all day. And that made me feel like absolute fucking rubbish.
As I tried to set the bottle back on the shelf, my fingers closed tighter on the bottle. There were enough pills in there to bring me back to my regular dosage. I licked my lips, and my skin went clammy.
I opened it. Stared at the white ovals, the familiar numbers stamped on them.
And then I did something unforgivable, something so terrible that I could have collapsed under my own self-hatred. I poured three pills into my hand.
My hand was shaking again, but this time it wasn’t due to withdrawals—it was due to temptation. The pills rolled in my hand from the shaking and I glanced at the shower. It hadn’t moved. She hadn’t seen me.
But her ignorance didn’t equal her forgiveness. Nor mine.
There was a flash in my mind, a moment where I ached to toss the pills back and pretend like it hadn’t happened.
And that was the moment I realized I had a serious problem. Debating whether or not I should steal from Lotte? With disgust, I put the pills back into the bottle. The disgust only deepened because it hadn’t been easy to do.
I turned around, facing the mirror, seeking a distraction from what sat on the shelf. It was so fogged up from the shower, that I couldn’t see my reflection. But something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I turned to look.
It was her lashes. I remembered seeing one of them hanging off of her eye. She’d seemed so upset by it, by my noticing. I’d never really asked her about it, not thinking anything funny about a woman who wore fake eyelashes.
The Sounds of Secrets Page 20