by Selena Kitt
“Why?” she inquired, glancing back at him. He was smiling, but his eyes were serious.
“Because I don’t want to let you go.”
She frowned, turning in his arms, her fingers tracing the sweet curve of his lips. “But you said…we have to.”
“I know what I said.” He sighed. “And I know what I feel.”
She pressed her forehead to his, knowing exactly what he meant. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He hid his face against her neck and whispered, “I just don’t know.”
* * * *
“Hey girl, you got a visitor!” Kennedy poked his head into her open door, his wide eyes thick with make-up. He was going for the school girl look today, a blue and white plaid skirt, complete with white blouse, navy vest and tie. Although he had neglected to shave his legs or put on tights, and the pink flip-flops he had on didn’t exactly match. “And he is cuuuu-ute!”
“Are you sure he’s here for me?” Rose paused her game of Angry Birds—poor Matt never got to use his iPad anymore—and started following Kennedy down the hall. None of them except the chubby, adolescent looking Alex, had received any visitors in the past month—and his parents had only stayed for a few hours. There were heads popping out of the residence doors all the way down the hall at the excitement.
“He said he had to see you,” Kennedy informed her, pushing through the double doors.
“Oh my god.” Rose stopped, staring at the man standing in front of the welcome station. “Sam.”
“Hi.” He came toward her as Kennedy slipped back through the double doors behind her and she couldn’t do anything else but let him embrace her, feeling the familiar shift of his body, smelling the heady scent of his cologne. Polo, an old standby. “God, it’s so good to see you. How are you doing?”
“Sam…” It was like she couldn’t say anything else—couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I…Sam, what are you doing here?”
He smiled at her, so warm and sweet. “I came to see you, of course.”
“How did you know I was here?” She shook her head, incredulous—but then she knew.
They both said “Poppy” at the same time and laughed.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” she said, glancing at the receptionist. “Go for a walk.”
It was a short distance down to the beach. Sam’s hand found hers as they walked toward the water. The shoreline was deserted here this time of day. This stretch of sand belonged to the facility and, since it was nearly lunch time, everyone was inside.
“God it’s gorgeous here.” He took a deep breath, glancing down at her. “Are you loving it?”
“It is beautiful,” she agreed, adding softly, “It would have made a great honeymoon spot.”
He stopped, taking her other hand and looking down at her. “It still could.”
“…What?” His words wouldn’t register. The surprise of him being there in the first place was enough of a shock, but this? She’d thought, maybe, he’d come to apologize—but to propose? that just wasn’t possible.
“Why do you think I’m here?” He smiled at her stunned expression, putting his arms around her waist. She registered the fact that he was going to kiss her just before it happened, turning her head aside just in time, so his lips landed on her cheek.
“I can’t even begin to guess,” she told him, slowly extracting herself from his embrace. They stood there, face to face, in the sand.
“Are you kidding me?” Sam’s brow wrinkled, his eyes darkening. She knew the look well enough. He was getting angry. He was getting angry?
“Actually I’m not,” she replied, trying to keep her voice calm, even. “Sam, maybe you remember things differently than I do, but you practically left me at the altar.” She saw him wince and thought, maybe, she might be getting through to him. “I was so devastated I tried to commit suicide.”
She’d never done anything like it before, but she reached down, unbuttoning the sleeve of her blouse, so she could pull back the material and show him her scar. He stared at it, aghast.
“And for what?” she asked, feeling the weight of her lies somehow being lifted off her chest as she spoke. “Because I faked a few orgasms?”
“A few? Try all of them!” he protested, nostrils flaring.
“So what?” she fumed. “It wasn’t about your sexual prowess or the size of your dick. It was about me. It wasn’t about you. Not everything is all about you!”
Then he said the words she’d been longing to hear for months, although now, somehow, they didn’t mean what she thought they would. “I’m so sorry, Rose. I overreacted. What was I supposed to do?”
“Over…reacted.” She stared at him, dumbfounded.
“I wasn’t thinking. I just…
“What were you supposed to do?” Her hands were shaking and she hugged herself to still them. “You were supposed to love me. You could have loved me enough to stay instead of leaving.”
He just looked at her, but she saw the pain in his eyes, knew she’d somehow gotten through to him. It was little consolation.
“Look, Sam, I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.”
He frowned, shaking his head. “You really don’t want me here?”
“No,” she said softly. “I really don’t.”
“I do love you, Rose.” He took a step toward her, but she backed away.
“And I love you, Sam,” she told him. “I’ll always love you. But sometimes love just isn’t enough.”
He turned to look out at the water, hands shoved into his jeans pockets, looking morose. “Well… this is awkward.” He looked over at her and half-smiled, trying to make the best of it. “Can I least take you to dinner?”
“Actually, we’re having a special farewell dinner tonight,” she told him. “Tomorrow is our last day.”
“Okay then…” He shrugged, turning and starting to walk back. She followed. “I guess I’ll just go see if I can get a standby flight.”
“Listen, thanks for coming all this way, Sam,” she said as they neared the doors. “Thanks for thinking of me.”
He stopped, looking down at her. “I pictured this happening differently.”
“Yeah, well, life is never picture perfect, is it?” She offered him a small smile.
“Have a good life, Rose.”
She let him hug her, but again turned her head when he attempted a kiss. “You too, Sam.”
He drove away in a little rental car, giving her a brief wave, and she marveled at her own lightness. She was sure, with a good running start, she could actually fly. Never in a million years would she have believed that could have happened. Confronting Sam? Rejecting him?
He’d been the only thing she ever wanted—but he just wasn’t enough anymore.
Kennedy poked his head out the door. “Well!?”
“Well what?” She snorted, letting him drag her back inside. “Hey, I’ve got some wax—do you want to borrow some for your legs?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Is that a hint?”
“Just a suggestion, sweetie,” she told him, but he wasn’t having the distraction.
“Was that your boyfriend?”
Why not be honest? “Ex-fiancé, actually.” And then she saw Matt, standing by the welcome desk, watching her. The look on his face made her heart stop. He knew Sam had been here, that much was obvious. Had he seen them together?
She approached cautiously. “Hey.”
“Hi,” he said, handing something over to the receptionist, not looking at her.
“Awkward,” Kennedy whispered under his breath, turning to Rose. “Okay, well, stop by my room. We’ll talk. Besides, I want to borrow that wax.”
“Okay.” She smiled as he disappeared down the residence hallway.
Matt crossed his arms, looking at her. “So…that was Sam?”
“You just missed him,” she said. “He’s flying back to the states.”
“Good.”
She hid a smile.
“Are you jealous?”
“No.” His jaw tightened. “Yes.” Glancing at the receptionist—she was on the phone but they both knew she was listening to every word—he took Rose’s elbow and steered her away from the desk. “Can we take a walk?”
“Sure.” She felt a sense of déjà-vu as Matt led her down toward the beach. Same beautiful setting, but with an entirely different man. Everything she had felt walking down to the shoreline with Sam was reversed with Matt.
“So you’re going home tomorrow,” he remarked.
“I know.”
“And I shouldn’t say this,” he admitted, turning to take her into his arms, something she’d been hoping, waiting for. “But I don’t want you to go.”
“Me either,” she breathed against his neck, feeling the long, lean heat of his body against hers. She slipped her arms around his waist, resting her cheek on his shoulder, and smiled. “But I’m afraid my father isn’t going to pay for another month.”
He kissed the top of her head. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes…I know.”
“I know what I said, when we started,” he said, taking a deep breath. “And ethically, I’m bound by that contract.”
“Right.”
“But Rose…” He pulled her in tight, his gaze sharp and desperate as their eyes met. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop wanting you. Every time I imagine you getting on a plane and leaving, everything in me goes cold at the thought.”
“Oh Matt…” She kissed him. She didn’t care if they weren’t in a session, that anyone who glanced out of one of the windows in the facility could see them. She kissed him with all the force and emotion she had, feeling him acquiesce, his body giving her all the answer she could ever want.
They broke apart, gasping, and she smiled. “Why do you think I sent Sam away?”
“Because all of the work we’ve done has given you enough self-worth to realize he’s nowhere near good enough for you?”
She laughed. “Besides that…”
“Tell me why.”
“Because I love you,” she confessed, knowing it was the truth. “I don’t want Sam. I want you.”
He kissed her again, this time softly, sweetly, his lips accepting her admission and giving it back without a single word. She had once thought that she couldn’t live without Sam, but she now knew that wasn’t true. Now she had a man in her life who, although she knew she could live without him—she didn’t want to. It was a vast difference.
“Matt, please tell me we can be together,” she whispered, kissing his cheek, the hard line of his jaw. “I don’t know how it’s going to be possible. I don’t want to jeopardize what you have here, your work, your whole career…”
“Maybe my mother’s right.” He was only half-joking, she could tell. “Maybe I should apply for jobs in New York.”
“I just told Sam that sometimes love just isn’t enough.” She felt tears welling. “Maybe that’s the truth for us too.”
“Rose, listen to me.” He held her by her upper arms, urgent, almost pleading. “My contract says that we have to end our therapeutic relationship for at least six months before we can… you know…”
She grinned. “Date?”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “Date.”
“So…maybe we should make a date for six months from now?” she suggested.
“Can you wait for me?”
“Forever,” she assured him, sealing the promise with a kiss.
RAPUNZEL
“Are those extensions?”
Nina Malden noticed everything and Rachel’s new hair was no exception. None of her other clients had said a word—they talked about vacations in Cabo and how difficult it was to get dinner reservations at Tru while Rachel mixed color and folded foil for highlights and the sharp snip of her scissors accompanied the endless chatter—but no one had mentioned her hair.
“It’s—” Rachel glanced in the mirror over Nina’s perfectly coiffed head. She’d never understood the phenomenon—who went into a salon for a cut with their hair already styled? But every client at Rapunzel’s showed up made-up, even dolled-up, for their appointment. As a stylist, she had to un-do before she could re-do, and sometimes up-do, the hair in question.
Rachel fingered the hair on her head, thick and long, as close as she could get to natural, a trifecta of color, brownish-red with bright golden highlights that no one could ever define. It fell past her shoulders to the middle of her back in luxurious, beautiful waves. She couldn’t admit the truth, not even to herself, let alone to Nina Malden. Telling her it was a wig would open a door she preferred to keep firmly closed.
She was thankfully saved from responding by a crisis up front. The raised voice of one of the stylists—she was sure it was Joshie—caught her attention immediately. She made sure Nina was seated and comfortable before she excused herself to go handle the drama, which involved two appointments—one cut, one perm—scheduled at once for the same stylist. Her new receptionist, just twenty-six and a graduate of NYU, had proven to be a disaster so far. Rachel was usually such a great judge of character, but she’d been distracted when she hired Carly. Unfortunately, Carly didn’t work Saturdays, so Rachel couldn’t scold her. Instead they were taking turns between appointments manning the phone.
“I can’t do them both at once!” Joshie’s big brown eyes, rimmed with silver eyeliner, actually filled with tears. He was wringing his delicate, ring-adorned hands as if he’d dipped them in something very unagreeable and couldn’t get it off. “It’s impossible!”
Rachel glanced at the lobby where the first client, a model in need of a spiral perm, checked her perfect profile in a compact. The other patron was just a young girl, maybe fifteen, bright and freshly pretty. Rachel envied her. The man beside her had to be her father—better be, she thought, taking in his age and demeanor, or else he was in danger of serious prosecution under pedophile laws, the way he was holding her hand and whispering into her ear.
“Oh I think you’ve done two at once before, Joshie,” Rachel murmured, shocking her stylist into a choked laugh and letting him know his salon gossip hadn’t escaped her ears. “You take the perm. I’ll take the cut.”
“But you’ve got the dragon-lady,” Joshie mock-whispered, glancing over her shoulder toward Nina Malden who was flipping through a Cosmopolitan, her lips set in a grim line. She wasn’t going to be happy.
“Well, this might be news to you, but I can do two at once too.” Rachel winked and Joshie’s cackle followed her into the lobby.
“Just a cut today, sweetie?” Rachel saw the girl’s nervous glance, first at her, then at the man beside her. He squeezed her hand encouragingly but the girl just blushed and didn’t speak. Rachel laughed lightly. “Not your first, I hope?”
The girl’s hair was very long, to her waist, a thick black curtain. Her father—Rachel was sure of it now, they had the same dark, wide eyes, and his hair was just as thick and black, although much shorter and curlier—cleared his throat and gave Rachel an apologetic smile.
“I think she’s in shock.” He shrugged one shoulder in Rachel’s direction. “But it was all her idea!”
“Something drastic?” Rachel guessed, glancing over as Joshie brought a cappuccino out for the model and took her back into the salon. She turned to check the appointment book and saw the girl’s name—Emma Malden—and then saw the note written beside it, just as the girl’s father offered the information.
“She wants to get her hair cut for Locks of Love,” he told her, looking a little sheepish at his next admission. “Her mother doesn’t want her to, so I brought her.”
The two facts hit her simultaneously. This was Nina Malden’s daughter—the name and dark tresses were far too much to be coincidence—and she wanted to get her hair cut off for charity. As a hairdresser, Rachel was familiar with Locks of Love and had collected a great deal of hair for the organization over the years so they could make it into wigs for disadvantaged kids whose medical diagnosis
left them humiliatingly without any, either temporarily or permanently. She’d done it with a vague sort of sensitivity in the past, but never with any real empathy. Not until now.
“How much do you want taken off?” Rachel inquired, glancing toward the back and catching a glimpse of Nina Malden in the mirrors. She was swinging one very expensive Jimmy Choo pump at the end of her silk stocking foot, a black stylist cape draped around her neck, obscuring her Vera Wang suit. She was thankfully still perusing a magazine, still distracted. Good.
“All of it.” The girl finally spoke up and Rachel heard the steel in her voice. Must get that from her mother, she surmised, seeing the dark flash of Emma Malden’s eyes, the hard set of her jaw.
“Well, I don’t think we have to shave you bald.” Rachel smiled and went over to where they were sitting, touching the girl’s hair. It was beautiful, healthy, and she’d been growing it out a long time. “You have a good eighteen inches here at least, even if we just give you a cute little pageboy cut.” Rachel used her hands to indicate the line at the girl’s jaw.
Emma frowned, looking over at her dad. “Are you sure that’s enough?”
“Ten inches is the minimum,” Rachel explained, this time looking at Emma’s father. She wondered what kind of hot water he was going to be in when his wife found out he’d taken their daughter to cut off most of her hair. Well, that was his business, right? Besides, it was for a good cause. “You’ve got plenty to spare.”
“That’s almost double, Em,” Emma’s father offered, nudging her. “That’s a lot of hair.”
“Okay, let’s do it.” Emma stood, swinging the dark curtain of hair over her shoulder, possibly for the last time.
“Come on back.” Rachel put them at a station up front but around the corner, out of the way. Somewhere they were unlikely to run into Nina, unless they had the unfortunate synchronicity to pass on the way out. Of course, having them all there together was a bit of coincidence to begin with. Joshie was two stations down with the supermodel and he waved at her and winked.
“So your mom doesn’t want you to get a haircut, huh?” Rachel opened the bottom drawer and took out a packet. Inside was a certificate from the Locks of Love organization and a long red ribbon they used to tie the hair.