Grounded By You

by Sinclair, Ivy

  As they stepped into the tent, Millie thought about how the small group of people that she spent that last summer with had changed, and how they changed her too. For better or worse, they were the reason that she found the courage to take the unbeaten path when she went back to school. Now, she felt as if she had disappointed her former self. What was supposed to be an exciting journey into the unknown turned into a quagmire of despair that was going to change her life forever.

  “Chin up,” Josh whispered in her ear. “You’re surrounded by friends. Give your brain a rest for the night.”

  “Thanks,” she said, gratefully squeezing his arm. “I’m glad you came with me.”

  “What are big brothers for?” Josh replied. “I’ll go get you a drink.”

  “Just a tonic water is fine,” Millie said quickly.

  Josh nodded with a knowing look in his eyes.

  Millie took a deep breath and then channeled her mother. For the next few hours, she worked the room. Many of the local business owners and other friends of Patrice’s from Bleckerville were in attendance. Millie caught herself several times watching Kate and Reed when they thought no one was looking.

  Reed’s arm wrapped around Kate for the entire evening as if he was afraid to let her go. Kate couldn’t stop smiling, and while Millie was happy for her friend, it also reminded her of her own loneliness. It was a position that she never expected to be in, and those thoughts galvanized her to keep moving and talking so she didn’t have to dwell on it. Josh was a natural social butterfly, and she noticed with a bit of chagrin that it didn’t take long for several of the younger women in the crowd to be drawn to him. Her brother was used to it though, and she could tell that he was having enjoying himself.

  The day was starting to wear on her, and she felt tired. She excused herself to step outside for a few moments. She just needed a bit of fresh air to reinvigorate herself.

  She pulled her shawl around her shoulders and gazed out at the lake. She wanted to make a wish and turn back the clock to the day she moved back to the city. She thought she’d turn down Josh’s dinner invitation and just stayed home. Of course, Sam had come seeking her out, and he still would have found her.

  When she felt the presence behind her, and a familiar scent of cologne wafted to her nostrils, she closed her eyes and wondered if somehow she had willed him into being just by thinking about him.

  “Hello, Millie.” His voice sounded strained.

  She was silent. Maybe if she didn’t speak, his ghost would disappear, and she could find some way to keep moving on without him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Sam turned in the performance of his life that night on set. He heard the murmurs of the crew after each take. Lee seemed to be more intent on making each one better, and Sam obliged. By the end, Delaney whispered to him that if she didn’t know him, she would have been in love with him by the end of the scene. He thought she was serious until she winked at him. That was one complication he didn’t need to add to the pile.

  He left as soon as Lee called it a wrap. Having been in the lake for the better part of three hours, he had to go back to the hotel to shower and change, which meant that it was late before he finally was on his way back to the Willoughby. He had no idea what to expect when he arrived.

  Sam didn’t have a script prepared for him, and he wondered if he would be able to say the right thing. He wanted so badly for her to understand, but he didn’t know how to explain how he screwed everything up without sounding like a complete ass.

  He was almost to the tent when he saw the shimmer of silver in the darkness down by the lake. He knew the shawl well, having wrapped Millie inside of it many times during their quiet afternoons in her apartment. He approached her quietly still unsure of what he was going to say.

  In the end, he went with the simplest introduction.

  “Hello, Millie.”

  She didn’t answer, and she didn’t turn toward him. He wondered if she was going to ignore him, which he knew he deserved. He studied her for a few moments. Her hair flowed down her shoulders in wild curls, and he caught a peek of a navy blue dress beneath her shawl.

  He stepped around her to face her. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  She finally looked at him. There was no light in her eyes. “I was pretty sure we said enough the last time we talked.”

  Sam tried to put his hands on her shoulders, but she deftly moved away from his grasp. “I need to tell you some things. It’s hard for me to explain.”

  Millie laughed. The sound was harsh and brittle. “Your actions speak louder than words. I understand, Sam. You don’t owe me anything”

  “You don’t understand,” he said.

  “We had a good time. You’ve gone your way, and I’ve gone mine. There’s nothing else to talk about,” Millie said.

  Sam felt her slipping through his fingers. “It was more than a good time to me.”

  Millie turned, refusing to meet his eyes. “This is embarrassing, Sam. You and I both knew how this was going to end. Let’s leave it at that before you embarrass yourself anymore. Besides, I saw this afternoon that you’ve more than moved on, so I’m not sure what you’re hoping to gain here.”

  Sam walked after her and grabbed her arm. “That wasn’t real. It meant nothing to me. I need you to understand. Please, Millie, I’m not finished.”

  “The hell you are.” Sam didn’t even see Josh emerge from the darkness, but then his fist came out of nowhere and connected with Sam’s jaw. Before he went down, he saw Millie’s shocked face.

  “Josh!” she yelled, stepping in front of her brother. “Stop it.”

  Sam’s first inclination was to get up and swing back, but that wouldn’t help the situation. He slowly got to his feet, feeling the pain in his jaw. “I’m just trying to talk to Millie,” he said, holding up his hands with his palms facing Josh in surrender.

  “You’ve done enough, jackass,” Josh said. Anger flashed hot in his eyes. “Consider that a warning. You come near my sister again, and I’ll have a restraining order on your ass so fast your head will spin.”

  Finally, Sam saw emotion on Millie’s face. Confusion and sadness and anger seemed rolled all into one and she bit her lower lip as if trying to decide what to do. He focused all of his attention on her. When she walked away, he knew that she’d be out of his reach, perhaps forever. But he had one more thing to tell her.

  “Millie, I can explain everything. But if you won’t listen to that, then at least listen to this. I need you to know this one thing above all other. I love you,” he said. “I mean it. I love you. Please, don’t go.” He didn’t care that he was declaring his feelings in front of her brother and others who emerged after hearing the scuffle outside. He just focused on her reaction.

  She gasped at his words.

  Josh pulled her arm. “Nice try. You expect her to believe that you care about her when we all saw you lip locked with your co-star this afternoon? Do you think my sister is that stupid? I mean it. Stay away from her. C’mon, Millie.”

  By that time, a small crowd had gathered outside the tent, and Sam saw Kate’s face in the crowd. Millie didn’t put up a fight as her brother pulled her back toward the entrance to the tent.

  Kate shook her head at him sadly. Sam had no choice but to leave. He didn’t want to interrupt Kate and Reed’s evening anymore than he already had. He walked back to his car and got inside. He had told her that he loved her, and she left him anyway. Maybe she had never had feelings for him after all. Maybe what she said to him was true.

  It was over.

  After Sam’s confession, Millie’s emotions were in turmoil. Josh refused to leave her side, which was more annoying than comforting. Kate tried to talk to her, but Millie wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. She excused herself and went up to her room. Nobody seemed surprised.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and forced herself to be calm. She didn’t understand the game that Sam was playing. All of his signals after that day that he lef
t her apartment right before his departure for North Carolina had been a mess. Their tryst in her parents’ apartment had felt real, but seemed a complete contradiction with the fight that happened right afterwards. It was as if he started it to ensure they would break up.

  Millie began to wonder if there was something that she was missing. He couldn’t love her and be in a relationship with Delaney. She spent an entire summer with Sam, and it was just counterintuitive with everything she knew about him for one simple reason.

  He told her once that he had never told a woman that he loved her. She remembered the conversation clearly. They had just finished a particularly brutal catering event, and in the middle of it, one of the guests had gotten down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend. Millie thought it was totally cheesy, but Sam insisted that it was romantic.

  “To feel that way about someone, that you can’t help but ask them to be yours forever. No matter what the circumstances, it will always be the most romantic moment in the relationship.”

  “Okay, Casanova. So how’d it go down the first time that you told a girl that you loved her?”

  Sam looked uncomfortable then. He squirmed in his seat. “I haven’t ever told a girl that.”

  Millie was incredulous. “What are you, a monk?”

  Sam chuckled. “Hardly. The thing is that love, real, forever love, isn’t something that you find every day. Certainly not with every girl I date. I’ve been fond of several women I’ve gone out with in the past, but I don’t know. I can’t explain it. None of them were the one for me. I’m not going to say those words to a woman until I’m absolutely sure that I mean them. And that woman, she’ll know it’s real because she’ll know the truth that I’ve never said them to anyone else.”

  “I’m sure that woman will know she’s very lucky,” Millie said with an eye roll.

  She hadn’t believed Sam at the time, but that was before she got to know him better. She met his parents and saw how he interacted with his younger sister and his friends. He was a warm, caring person, but he ruthlessly guarded his heart. He knew what he wanted, and he was unwilling to settle for anything less.

  That was the man that she had fallen in love with.

  She looked at her reflection in the mirror, and let herself say the words out loud.

  “I love him.”

  Millie knew what she had to do. She made her way down to the kitchen, careful to avoid any of the party guests. On the pegboard next to the door were all of the keys for the Willoughby vehicles. She grabbed the keys for Kate’s car and snuck out into the night. She had to find Sam.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  He sat on the bed in his nondescript hotel room in his pajama bottoms and stared at the television. He didn’t recall turning it on or what he was even watching. A half-empty bottle of whiskey sat on the bedside table, and he took another swallow letting the liquid burn down the back of his throat. It was the only thing he let himself feel.

  Sam tried to focus on the script notes for the next day, but the ache in his jaw kept reminding him of what had just happened. He had a feeling that the make-up crew was going to have their work cut out for them the next day. He could already see the shadow of a bruise popping up under his skin, and wondered how he was going to explain it to Lee. With his luck, a video of Josh knocking him on his ass would show up on YouTube.

  Sam kept a towel with ice braced against his jaw and tried to empty his mind once again. What he wanted to do was drink himself into a drunken stupor, drift off into unconsciousness and not wake up for days, but shooting started early the next morning. The only thing he had left now was his work, and he couldn’t let what happened interfere with that. Victoria’s advice about no distractions now made perfect sense. Sam was definitely distracted.

  The light knock on his door pulled him out of his dark thoughts. He looked at the clock and saw that it was after midnight. He wasn’t expecting anyone. Slipping off the bed, he made his way to the door and looked through the peephole. His breath caught in his throat when he recognized the person on the other side. He opened the door quickly, wondering if she was just a phantom about to vanish before his eyes.

  Millie stood there, pale and resolute. He noted that she hadn’t changed since the party, and he thought that she had never looked lovelier. There was an incandescence to her skin that he had never seen before.

  “What are you…”

  Millie stepped through the door and stopped his words with a kiss. He didn’t think. He pulled her hard against him and slammed the door shut behind her. He felt the urgency burning in her kiss, and he understood. It had been too long, and they both had been denied too much.

  Her hands danced over his bare chest, and he felt tingles of heat burst out from everywhere that her fingertips touched. Her lips parted, and his tongue darted into her mouth. He groaned as he tasted her. He had forgotten how much he craved that part of her. If he had learned anything in shooting the scenes with Delaney, it was truly differentiating between what was real and what was fiction. When he had the woman he loved in his arms, pressed against him, the intensity of the emotions threatened to overwhelm him.

  Millie pushed him to the bed and then into a sitting position before moving herself between his legs. Her eyes studied his with an unspoken question. He didn’t say anything else. He would do whatever she asked as long as she stayed with him. He was hers, and however he could have her he would take it. He let her fingertips gently explore his jaw, and he saw her slight grimace. It was worth the pain though when she leaned over and placed several feathered kisses across his jawline as if she wanted to wipe the pain away.

  Her lips moved to his mouth, and although he wanted her badly, he followed her lead. She kissed him softly, again running her fingers down his neck and chest. The light, teasing touches drove him mad, but he let her explore him. He twitched to touch her, but as he brought his hands up, she batted them away, seemingly intent on being in control.

  She pushed him back slightly and he braced himself on the bed watching her. She reached behind her, and he heard the zipper of her dress begin its descent. The top of her dress slid down her shoulders, and as more of her cleavage was exposed, Sam saw that she wore nothing underneath. His pulse quickened. He couldn’t resist bending forward and catching one of her hardened nipples in his mouth.

  This time, Millie didn’t stop him. Eagerly, he cupped her other breast in his hand. They felt fuller than he remembered, and as he traced nub’s outline nipping gently on the tip, he heard Millie’s gasp. It was a sound that he had desperately missed.

  His arms slid around her and he completed the zipper’s journey to the end before pushing the silky fabric down over her hips. It was forgotten before it even hit the floor. He grazed the skin of her bellybutton and enjoyed the feel of her bottom in his hands. He grasped her waist and brought her down into his lap. Her hair brushed the tops of his shoulders, and he shivered in delight at the feel of Millie’s body against him. He found her lips again, and he kissed her more urgently now.

  Folding her against him, he flipped her over so that she was underneath him. He loved having her long body pressed against him, and his hands caressed her from her lovely face all the way down to her knees. Her skin was so soft that it made him want to touch her everywhere at once.

  As he moved down her body, he glided his fingers down her stomach and just barely touched that most sensitive part of her. She squirmed beneath him as he teased her. Kneeling on the floor between her legs, he let his tongue slide up her inner thigh, and he pushed slightly to widen her stance. When he found the core of her silken folds, he heard her moan softly. It was music to his ears. He knew exactly how she liked that tight bud of nerves to be nibbled and teased, and his practiced tongue went to work until he felt her hips begin to buck even as he held her bottom in place. He wasn’t about to let her get away.

  His own desire was starting to become too much to hold back, and Sam wanted nothing more than to be inside of her. He slid off his pajama bo
ttoms and crawled back up her body, nipping and tasting her feverish skin the whole way. Her eyes were closed when he claimed her mouth again. His fingers slipped inside of her to make sure that she was as ready as he was.

  Millie arched against him, and he knew that it was time. He moved between her legs, and as he drove inside of her, her eyes opened. He cupped her chin, determined to keep her present with him. She bit her lower lip and he kissed her, teasing her teeth away from her plump skin.

  Her nails dug into the flesh of his shoulders, but he didn’t care if she marked him. He was hers, and he wanted her to be his. His thrusts grew in intensity, and Millie cried out just before he felt the wave of his orgasm seize him in its grasp. Still he held her close to him, afraid more than ever now to let her go.

  “I meant it. I love you,” he murmured in her ear.

  “Shhhh,” was her only reply. Then she kissed him gently. “No talking,” she whispered. “Just make love to me, Sam.”

  He was more than happy to oblige.

  The first rays of dawn outlined the curtains of the room. Millie was still awake. Sam slept beside her, having fallen asleep shortly after their last round of lovemaking. She slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom. Splashing some cold water on her face, she wondered if she could go through with it.

  Although she insisted on silence, Sam reaffirmed his love for her time and time again. It was as if he were terrified that she wouldn’t believe him. She did believe him, but as she looked at herself in the mirror and clasped her hands over her stomach, she thought about how much more complicated things were now.

  Knowing that Sam loved her should have made things easier. In the cold morning light, she questioned everything. He was a budding young actor on the verge of having a breakout role in a movie that was going to make him famous. Being an actor meant travel and living in the spotlight. Was that the life that she wanted for herself? Was that the kind of life she wanted for her baby?