by Elise Faber
“No,” she finally said. “It led me to Tim, and the life I have with him is more than I could have ever imagined.” A pause. “But I do regret that I hurt Sam. It’s like this huge cauldron of shame that never fully goes away. I did something horribly wrong, and it’s probably a fitting punishment that I’m not sure I’ll be able to get over it.”
Equal parts of relief and empathy filled Haley.
Because . . . while this conversation had made her see that she obviously owed Sam a giant apology, she also knew she’d been using that trademark Donovan avoidance with him even before she’d hurt him.
Yes, she’d kissed him. Yes, she thought to hop on the ride for however long he would accept her. But at no point had she considered that Sam might well and truly like her, that he might see her as a desirable woman he wanted to date. She’d just assumed—
No. She’d distanced herself because that kept her heart safe.
She deserved better. They both deserved better.
He should be in a relationship with someone who thought he deserved all the happiness the world, who was willing to be open and to put themselves out there. Who was firmly in with both of her feet.
Broken ankle aside, she hadn’t been in.
But revelations aside, Maggie was still waiting for a response, and Haley knew they’d shared about as much emotion as they could stand. So, she lightened her tone and said, “Shit, Sis, you need help.”
A snort followed by a side hug. “Now, that’s probably the most truthful thing you’ve said all day.”
“Great.” Haley picked up the TV remote. “I’m brilliant and truthful and funny—”
“I didn’t say that,” Maggie teased.
“Ignoring you,” Haley sang. “I’m brilliant because I’m ordering us a pizza and you’re going to call Tim and say you need some sister time so we can binge our night away on nature documentaries.”
Maggie smiled. “Make it the new season of Queer Eye and I’m in.”
Haley pretended to consider that and Mags smacked her. “Abuse,” she said. “Jeez! Okay, fine, grab the ice cream from the freezer so we can have dessert first, and you’re on.”
“Go,” Haley mouthed, waving her sister off the following evening, after having staked out Sam’s house with binoculars.
Yes, binoculars.
But it turned out she could see Sam’s driveway from her living room window by watching from just the right angle and using . . . binoculars.
Stalker one-oh-one, sign her up.
But Haley’s use of the magnifying device aside, she’d been able to see Sam drive up and settle in for the evening. She’d called Maggie and begged her for a ride several driveways down, since she didn’t trust herself to make it that far on crutches and her scooter would only be bogged down in the gravel.
After another of Haley’s shooing gestures, Maggie finally lifted her hand in resignation and reversed out of the driveway.
Like her own, this one was gravel.
So, the car and even her crutches made a lot of noise.
And the fact that the door remained shut did not speak well of her plan.
She might be crutching the distance between Sam’s house and her own anyway.
Up the couple of steps to Sam’s porch, a moment of balancing before she was able to ring the doorbell.
No response.
Haley bit her lip. Rang again.
Still nothing.
“Shit,” she muttered, trying to convince herself he just hadn’t heard, that maybe his bell was broken. So, she carefully shifted her weight and knocked on the door.
No answer.
Okay, so clearly this had been a stupid idea.
She turned, started to make her way down the steps. Sam wouldn’t talk to her, wouldn’t forgive her. And why should he? She’d made assumptions without letting him explain his side. She’d thrown away the new, fragile thing they’d just started building.
This was her own doing.
“Dammit.” She took one hand off a crutch to wipe her face–sweat, not tears . . . which was a lie, but she only had so much dignity left, okay?
The door swung open and she whirled around then immediately lost her balance.
“Ah!”
Sam caught her.
Before she came close to colliding with the steps or the gravel or even the rough planks of the porch, he caught her.
Dammit, why had he caught her?
She deserved—
He cradled her against his chest, eyes studying her closely, but just when his expression seemed to soften, Sam’s face turned to granite.
His hands were gentle though.
He deposited her carefully onto the steps, propped her crutches so they were next to her.
“Stay,” he growled.
And it was then she noticed that he was only wearing a towel and his hair was wet.
So he hadn’t been avoiding her.
He’d been in the shower.
Genius observation. But it wasn’t entirely her fault that her brain was malfunctioning, not when there was so much tan skin and so many hard muscles on display. His chest glistened and that towel was . . . so precarious. Her fingers itched to knock it askew, to encourage it to drop to the porch, but one look at his face stalled the notion.
“Stay,” he repeated and waited for her to nod. But when she opened her mouth to apologize, he turned and swept into the house, shutting the door firmly behind him.
She was getting really tired of doors being slammed in her face.
Haley had just stood up, ready to barge into the house and demand he hear her apology, when the door whipped open again. Sadly for her, he’d gotten dressed.
He took one look at Haley on her feet and sighed before sweeping by her and unlocking the doors of his SUV with a beep. A tug of the handle to open the passenger’s side before he was heading back in her direction.
“Sam—”
He lifted her up into his arms again, swiftly deposited her into the passenger’s seat. “Buckle in.”
“I’m—”
A sigh as he reached over to secure her seat belt.
“Sor—”
The door slammed.
Again.
For the love of—
He yanked open the driver’s door and dropped himself into the seat. “Sam—” He turned the key. “I’m really—” Blared the music. “Sorry—” Revved the engine as he reversed.
Haley sighed and switched off the radio.
He switched it back on.
Good gravy, how childish was he going to be?
She pressed the dial, turned it back off.
Less than her, apparently, because he left the music off.
“I’m sorry,” she said into the silence.
Sam’s only response was to maneuver into her driveway, turn off the engine, and then shove his way out of his side of the car. He came around and swung her up into his arms.
She cupped his cheek. “Maggie told me.”
He shuddered and deposited her on her porch steps before returning back for her purse and crutches.
“I shouldn’t have—”
He dug into her purse, extracted her keys to unlock her front door. “I can’t do this.”
“What?”
He scooped her up again, carrying her inside as she stared at him dumbly. That was it? He was just going to give up at the first sign of trouble? Except wasn’t that what she’d done.
But she was trying to undo it. Trying to give them a chance at something that might mean everything.
“We need to talk—”
Sam deposited her on the couch, wheeled her scooter over to her, and plunked her purse on the table, setting her keys next to it. Her crutches went by the door, which he started to close behind himself.
“Sam.”
His only response was a shake of his head.
This time when the door shut, it didn’t slam.
But it hurt all the same.
“No,” she said. She
wasn’t going to let him do this, let him throw their chance at something good and meaningful all away because she’d been an idiot. Haley grabbed her purse from the table, rummaging around inside until she found her cell. It only took her a few seconds to dial a number she knew by heart.
“I need help,” she said when the call was picked up.
Eighteen
Sam
* * *
Saturday morning brought with it more clouds, rain, and biting wind. Sam had planned on being in the clinic all day, and so he hadn’t bothered with more than a cursory check of the weather.
But best-laid plans and all that.
He’d gotten the call just after five in the morning from Hank, a local cattle rancher. Hank had been out on his normal A.M. rounds and had discovered a calf stuck in the mud and near-death. Pouring rain had made the conditions even worse.
By the time Sam had made it to the ranch, Hank had pulled the calf free, wrapped it in a blanket, and met him at the barn. They’d gone inside, trying to keep the calf warm as he’d worked on the young animal.
Ultimately, it hadn’t mattered because Sam had been forced to euthanize the calf.
Hank had cried, Sam had felt like shit, and Saturday had continued on in Friday’s fucked up track. He’d rushed back to his house for a shower in rain-soaked clothes for the second time in a week, wind and water seeping through the damaged driver’s side door, and had been ten minutes late for his first appointment.
Saturdays were busy and on that particular day they were absolutely slammed, so it was just perfect that Michelle had needed to leave midway through the morning.
Not her fault, he knew, that she’d spiked a fever. Anyone looking at her could tell she was feeling miserable, and he couldn’t exactly have one of his employees being patient zero of the town’s latest flu epidemic.
So, he’d put his head down and slogged through the long list of appointments.
He’d barely even had time to miss Haley.
Haley.
Aw shit.
He didn’t want to think about Haley or Maggie or the fact that he’d been burned twice in his life by the Donovan sisters. He needed to finish his final two appointments of the day and then go home and crack open a beer.
Or ten.
Jane knocked on the back door and popped her head into the hallway that spanned the space behind the patient rooms. “We’ve had a call from Melissa Cooper. Rocco’s gotten into something and cut his paw. She thinks he might need stitches. Should I refer her over to the emergency clinic?”
Sam sighed. “No, tell her to bring him in.”
He wasn’t going to send his friend on a three-hour drive for something he could handle in half that.
Jane nodded and closed the door. He picked up the chart for his next patient—a ten-year-old and very temperamental Maltipoo named Precious—and girded his loins. Two—no, three—more patients, and then he’d been done with this horrible day.
Thankfully, Precious took pity on him that day, and the exam, shots, and nail trim went relatively easily, and the bearded dragon he saw for his last official appointment of the day was a fun and interesting case.
Turned out the little guy wasn’t a fan of calcium worms and needed crickets added to his diet.
A quick trip to the coffee pot for a shot of caffeine before he gathered suture supplies and pushed through the door of exam room three. Immediately, he realized Jane had duped him and vowed to pay her back with multiple boxes of filing at his earliest opportunity, because seriously, the last thing he wanted to be dealing with at the end of his long and shitty day was this.
Haley.
With regret in her gaze and an apology on her lips.
He whirled and pushed back out the door, walking down the hall and shoving the supplies back into their proper spots as he went. He needed to get the fuck out of here, get his head on straight so that—
“Sam.” Haley followed him, the wheels of her scooter squeaking against the industrial tiles. “I need to apol—”
“No apology needed,” he said, dropping the last of the supplies into a drawer.
He kept walking, moving to his computer at the end of the counter and closing out what he absolutely had to. The rest of it could wait until Monday.
A touch on his arm. “Sam.”
He moved away. “It’s fine. I get it—”
“So, Maggie cheated,” she said, all conversational-like.
Fuck. She’d said her sister had told her. But he’d hoped . . .
What?
That she’d never discovered how pathetic he was?
Shit.
“And you know it’s not your fault, right?”
He shrugged, turning to meet Haley’s eyes. And there was pity in her gaze. Awesome, so Maggie had definitely confessed all. He’d basically pressed her to, but Haley looking at him like that, like he was some poor wounded creature . . . well, it really didn’t feel great.
Fine. Because frankly, it felt like shit and the perfect addendum to his day.
“Sam?”
He grunted, shrugged off his lab coat and hung it on the proper hook.
More squeaking wheels, but even if Haley hadn’t had the equivalent of a cat’s bell on its collar in her scooter, he still would have known when she moved closer. Her scent—roses—drifted forward, inundating his senses, and his nape prickled, instinctively knowing that she was only inches away.
This time he couldn’t force himself away from her touch, not when she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her breasts against his spine.
Fuck. He wanted her so badly.
“I’m just saying that I know it takes time to accept it as truth, but what Maggie did was on her. Not you. Not in any way. As for us”—she sucked in a breath—“I was scared. I seized an opportunity to run because I’m fucked up and I was feeling unworthy and unlovable, and I like you. A lot.” She squeezed him tighter. “I’m still recovering in the confidence department because I couldn’t imagine how you might possibly be able to like me.”
He dropped his chin to his chest.
Haley didn’t say anything further, just held him, and the anger he’d been stoking for close to a week disappeared.
“Dammit, sweetheart,” he finally muttered and carefully disentangled himself so he could turn around and see her. “I like you. A whole hell of a lot, but I can’t keep doing this.” Her face fell, and he cupped her cheek. “I can’t keep reassuring you that I like you, that I want to get to know you better. I want to take you out, see if the chemistry we have can develop into something more, but . . .”
“But what?”
“I need you to be all in, too,” he said. “I need you not to have one foot out the door, expecting me to leave, to all of a sudden turn on you like that asshole did.”
Her lips parted and she sucked in a breath. “I—”
“You deserve better for yourself, sweetheart. You’re fun and kind and incredibly smart, not to mention beautiful”—she shook her head and he shook his in response—“That, right there. You don’t see yourself clearly.”
“I’m not—”
He rested his hand just above her heart. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Not just the outside”—he tapped lightly—“but here, too. You’re generous and sweet and—”
Her lips twitched. “Now I feel like I’m fishing for compliments.”
Sam cupped her cheek. “No need for fishing. You deserve all those.”
“And more?”
He chuckled and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “See? Funny and sweet. You deserve everything you want, baby.”
“And what if what I want is you?”
“Then I’m yours.”
Nineteen
Haley
* * *
Sam drove Haley home in silence, but it wasn’t like the taut quiet from her days with Brian. This was comfortable, neither of them needing to fill the air with words, their hands laced and resting on his thigh.
&nbs
p; It was the biggest leap she’d ever taken, moving to California aside, and certainly the biggest gamble she’d taken with the opposite sex.
Haley had put herself out there, and Sam . . . well, he’d accepted her.
But he’d demanded that she be all in, too.
Could she possibly—?
Fuck yes, she could. For Sam, for a chance at something that meant more than any of her past relationships, she could not be scared for once. She could dive in and learn every little idiosyncrasy that made Sam . . . Sam. And she could damn well let him in enough to understand all the strange pieces that made her Haley Donovan.
It was funny, because even yesterday she would have said she’d given Brian everything, but the past week had taught her that was a lie.
She was really good at distance and it had existed even when she’d been at her most vulnerable with Brian.
She’d always held part of herself back. Always.
And he’d known.
Yes, he was an asshole, a terrible person who’d preyed on all her insecurities, who’d wounded her deeply by betraying her, but, truthfully, Haley had never been all in with the relationship.
Hence, her being less upset about losing him and more upset over the fact that she couldn’t keep a man but Maggie could—
God. She was seriously screwed up.
“What just went through your mind?” Sam asked.
And so, Test One of their dating relationship was upon them. Did she prevaricate, avoid the issue? Or did she—
Haley told the truth.
Sam listened patiently as she worked it out—basically verbally vomiting all the thoughts swirling around her brain. When she was done, he squeezed her hand and lifted it to his mouth, pressing a soft kiss to the back of it.
“Thank you,” he said. “I think that was the part that hurt me the most with Maggie. I shouldered all of this responsibility, thought it was my fault that she’d jumped into bed with someone else when ultimately, it wasn’t really about me at all.”
“Right.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “She was the one who was missing something. Same as Brian. And no matter how hard we tried, that something they were missing wasn’t going to be able to come from me. Or you.”