Purcell pulled off his glasses, considering him as he leaned back again. “Wes, you’re a better photographer than you are a writer. She’s a better writer than she is a photographer. You see where I’m going with this?”
Wes put the article down. “You want us to pair up.”
“Between the two of you, you’ve got that Statesman article in the bag.”
Then the realization hit him. “You planned this all along didn’t you?” Wes asked.
Purcell shrugged. “Well, I knew what you two were coming to the table with. Figured I’d let you get far enough along before you realized you’re better matched up than competing against each other.”
“Is there even a real contest?” Wes asked, dubious.
“There sure is,” Purcell nodded. “But it’s for two slots, remember? Figure that works out just right—a staff writer and a staff photographer. You win this, and you both get a big résumé builder and the experience you need to land something substantial when you graduate.”
And I could do it without Robert Wyatt’s help. Sam would never have to know about the deal I made…
A slow smile rose. “You’re a wily old coot, aren’t ya?”
Purcell’s grin was pure mischief. “Well…yeah. And it just so happens that Miranda’s got to go back up to the prison tomorrow. Maybe you can hitch a ride.”
*
September—Tuesday Afternoon
Somewhere on TX-30 E, heading to Polunsky, Texas
W E S L E Y
Wes rolled down the window of Miranda’s ancient VW Rabbit, smiling a little as he flipped through the little CD holder he’d found wedged between the seat and the console.
She glanced at him sideways, the wind whipping her hair around a little. “What?”
“You’re definitely a girl’s girl, M,” he teased. “This is like the Lilith Fair encapsulated. Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Luscious Jackson, Indigo Girls—”
She swatted his leg playfully. “That’s some good shit, you country hick.”
“Just sayin’—” Wes smirked. “If you’re going to be a hardened journalist interviewing death row inmates for a living, you might want to toughen it up a little.” He shrugged. “You know, get yourself into their mindset.”
Miranda shot him an amused look. “You’re the one who got reassigned to my beat, Elliott. Seems like I’ve been doing alright so far, if you had to can your article and come latch on to mine—”
“Help you with yours,” Wes corrected affably. “Besides, Purcell was right. You and I together make one hell of a duo. No way will we lose those internships now.”
Miranda glanced at him again, her brow knitted a little behind the shade of her sunglasses. “Is that what we are? Wasn’t sure after you ran out of Viz Lab like a scalded cat last time I touched you.”
Wes busied himself with slipping a CD into the player. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
Miranda and Wes had been friends and classmates first, before they’d ever hooked up. And since then, they’d been casual competitors who enjoyed a little fun, no-strings-attached sex on the fly. He’d known she was going to bring it up—he just hoped it wasn’t going to be a big thing.
“I was shocked as shit if we’re going to be honest about it,” Miranda admitted, wry. “I’ve never known you to turn down nookie.”
“Yeah, well…” Wes stretched his long legs out in front of him before looking over at her. “I should tell you that I’ve started seeing someone,” he admitted.
If Miranda was surprised, she hid it well. “Anyone I know?” she asked lightly.
He paused a beat. “Samantha.”
Her slender hands tightened a little on the wheel. “Wes, I know you’re a bit of a dog, but isn’t she with your roommate?”
“Was,” Wes amended with a slight wince. “And it was a mutual thing that they broke it off.”
She looked at him in askance. “So you just swooped right in?”
“There was something between us from day one,” he replied with a shrug. “Just took us a minute to get there.” Because Sam doesn’t all-the-way trust me. And maybe in the beginning, I didn’t give her much reason to.
They drove in silence for a few minutes, listening to Sheryl Crow strum and croon.
“So I know this is nosy as hell,” Miranda began, “and I’m just a girl you hooked up with a few times—”
Wes glanced over at her. “You’re my partner-in-crime, Miranda. I don’t think of you like one of my regular hookups.”
She shrugged a little, a faint blush under her sunglasses. “Fact is, Wes, I am one of your hookups. Or I used to be.”
Wes rubbed the back of his neck, feeling karma pushing up against him in a big way. “That going to be a problem, Miranda?”
“Doesn’t have to be,” she said with a quick smile. “I guess I’m just curious is all.”
“About?” he prompted.
“I know Sam. We’ve been friends for a year now. She’s cool as hell, so take what I ask with that in mind, okay?”
Wes nodded.
“One of the biggest players on campus gets taken down by a pretty tomboy who spends all her free time practicing a hundred different ways to kill a man.” Miranda smirked a little. “This doesn’t strike you as ironic?”
Wes’s chuckle welled up in his chest. “Guess I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
“You pick the one chick on campus to get with who could, and probably will, seriously injure you if you cross her, Wes.”
He closed his eyes, leaning against the headrest. “Maybe I just enjoy living dangerously.”
“Clearly,” Miranda scoffed. “Or you’re just a closet glutton for punishment.”
Wes thought about it as they sped down the hot, empty highway. Truth was, everything about Sam kept him on his toes. Spending time with her was like walking a knife’s edge. Dangerous and utterly addictive. He never quite knew what to expect. But he loved it—hell, he craved it—and looked forward to more of her each time he thought about being with her.
“You’re thinking about her right now, aren’t you?” Miranda asked.
“Maybe.”
“Just watch yourself, Wes. Sam’s a great girl, but she’s definitely not the kind you trifle with.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” Miranda paused. “Because I’ve known you since freshman year, and the only thing you’ve ever been serious about is having fun.”
Wes glanced at her. “A guy can’t try something new?”
“Of course you can,” Miranda replied. “Just be careful with this, all right? She’s not the love ’em and leave ’em type. And I will be personally pissed if you hurt her.”
An echo of Chris’s words. Good thing Wes had no intention of leaving her. Lord knew that if anyone got tired of anybody, it’d probably be Sam getting sick of him.
“You done grilling me now?” Wes teased. “I’m not sure exactly what Sam and I’ve got, but I know it’s something good. And I know you and I had a little thing going once, but I hope it’s not going to affect us working together now.” He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Between your writing and my photographs, I think we can nail these internship slots. I really do.”
“Of course,” Miranda replied, with a quick shrug and a smile. “I’m going to win this internship with or without you, Wes, and then I’m going on to the majors after we graduate,” she declared. “So I figure you’re just going to be the guy who will tell people at bars, ‘I knew that Miranda girl way back when,’” she predicted, slanting him a jaunty smile.
“Yeah, well, not without my photos you’re not. You can’t take pictures worth a crap,” he teased back.
And so they went, sixty-five miles an hour on the baked asphalt of the state highway toward one of Texas’s worst penitentiaries, with nothing but their individual futures on their minds.
Chapter 26
October—Tuesday Night
Sam’s Apartment, Texas A&M
S A M A N
T H A
“You cry all you need to once, but then you get up, fix your hair and your face, hold your head high and you move right on, missy,” Aunt Hannah told her.
“But I’m eight,” Sam argued, tears on her face and snot in her nose.
“Same principle,” her aunt replied, rubbing her wet cheeks as she helped her back up onto the pony she’d fallen from. “Life’s hard and unyielding at times, Sammy girl, and you’ll want to give up. But you don’t give in. You don’t wallow. You have a good cry, you get it all out, and then get up and you go again.”
Sam recalled that moment whenever she was feeling low, and tonight of all nights, she was bottom-of-the-barrel there. Every time life had dealt her a bad hand—losing her mama, then her dad to drink, then her granddaddy to old age—Sam tried to remember Aunt Hannah’s words like dogma.
Have a good cry, get it all out, then get up and go. It was her ritual, her mantra—the key to onward movement.
And so she waited and held the grief and anger and humiliation of getting publicly knocked out of the Ranger Challenge for as long as she could, burying it under the logistics and momentum of schoolwork, classes, and study groups until it all came to a head a couple nights later, while she was standing naked under the hot spray of her shower. She couldn’t deny her frustration and sadness and grief any longer. She couldn’t hold back the walloping misery. Not anymore.
In the privacy of her bathroom, Sam took great gulps of air as she sobbed out her resentment and shame and angst, holding her sides and her still-bruised stomach. The soreness and ache from her bout with Alejandro was a dull reminder of how close she’d come to getting what she wanted. Sam cried until the water got cold. Then she turned off the water, wrapped herself in a bath sheet, and told herself to pull it together.
“You only get to do this once,” she reminded herself, wiping the condensation off the bathroom mirror. She took a good long look at her puffy eyes, and told herself to calm the hell down.
But the truth was, Samantha longed for comfort—she just didn’t know what kind. She was too old for her Aunt Hannah’s arms, and she’d feel a hell of a lot worse if she told her dad what had happened—not that he’d be consoling. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sought refuge with her father. Probably before her mother died. And then there was Wes and that damn article. As badly as she’d wanted to tell him what had happened, she hadn’t yet, because she knew he’d write about it, and her humiliation would be complete…and public. So now it was just a heavy secret, a burden to bear silently.
Listless, Sam changed into the softest t-shirt she had, slipped into her favorite cut-offs, and poured herself a shot of the good bourbon she’d swiped from her dad’s liquor cabinet before returning to college after the summer. Sam knocked it back and poured herself another before turning off all the lights except for a dim lamp. She turned on her stereo, looking for something to suit her melancholia. Cowboy Junkies. Perfect. As the ethereal, bluesy strains of “Blue Moon” filled her little living room, Sam heard a soft knock on her front door.
Puzzled, she padded over, glancing out her peephole, wondering who’d be knocking so late on a Tuesday night, and right when she was knee-deep in a good wallow.
Wes looked back at her, his smile soft and a little weary as he leaned against her door, one hand pressed up against the jamb. Sam swung open the door, gazing up at him, feeling suddenly warm all over and a hell of a lot less lonely. But the anxiety was still there. He’d want to know what happened. And she’d have to tell him.
From the darkness of the doorway, Wes took her in from tip to toe. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
Sam said nothing, just stepped aside a little, hoping he couldn’t see her puffy eyes in the dimness of the room.
Wes glanced at the glass in her hand. “Can I trouble you for one of those?”
“I thought you were working at Dixie’s tonight,” she murmured, though she really wanted to grab him up and hold on tight.
Wes leaned in and kissed her. The moment felt sweet and edgeless, like falling off the page of misery and into another story completely. Man, I am so glad you’re here…
“I traded shifts so I could go out to Polunsky with Miranda,” he whispered against her mouth before kissing her once more. Then he took a quick breath, dropped his camera bag on the kitchen table, and picked up the bottle. “This is some good stuff.”
“Did you come over to see me or my bourbon?” she asked, watching him pour a couple fingers.
“I just spent four hours traveling to take photos of death row inmates at one of the scariest places I’ve ever seen in my life,” Wes told her before knocking the liquor back. “And all I could think about on the drive back was you in a barely-there t-shirt holding a glass of bourbon like the good Lord made you just especially for me,” Wes replied, setting the glass down and pulling her into his arms. “And look what we have here…”
Sam finished what was left of her bourbon and leaned over to place it on the table before looping her arms around his shoulders. “I thought you and Miranda were competitors? Why would you go to Polunsky?”
“I’m gonna kiss you senseless first, and then we’ll talk all about it.”
“I like the sound of tha—”
Wes kissed her senseless all right. His hands wandered over every curve of her body, dipping into each shallow, making her clutch his shoulders a little harder as he concentrated on her mouth, his tastes intimate, his mouth and hands and body radiating hot, hot heat. Samantha wasn’t sure if she was feeling buzzed from the liquor or his mouth. Wes kissed her until the sensations left her spiraling and light-headed, aching and needy in a way she’d only ever felt with him. When he pulled back a little, Sam lifted a hand to her flushed cheeks.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Wow’s right,” he agreed, nuzzling the soft and tender place behind her ear.
“I’m, uh… I’m…” She couldn’t seem to form coherent thoughts, or maybe she didn’t want to.
“—turned on, delighted, completely tempted?” Wes offered helpfully, punctuating each word with a kiss.
“Try dumbstruck, overwrought, and borderline exhausted,” she replied, wry.
Wes laughed against her neck. “Way to crush a guy’s ego, Sammy.”
“Doesn’t feel like your ego’s crushed, Wes,” she replied, pressing a little against the evidence, eliciting a throaty groan.
Wes stepped back after a brief moment, rubbing his hands down his face. “I swear I didn’t come over to seduce you.”
“So it was the bourbon you came for,” Sam teased.
“Indeed.” Wes busied himself with pouring them both a couple more fingers. He handed her the glass and led her to her sofa, sitting down beside her. Wes dropped an arm along the back of the couch, and Sam tucked into his side, quietly thrilling in the warmth and scent of him surrounding her.
“Tell me about what I missed,” she found herself saying, hoping to avoid having to talk about what was going on with her, the sting of embarrassment and frustration she felt still a little too acute.
*
October—Tuesday, Late Night
Sam’s Apartment, Texas A&M
W E S L E Y
Wes threaded his fingers through her hair, damp from a shower, and readied himself for the lie. The last one he’d ever tell her, he told himself.
“I gave some thought to what you asked,” he began, taking a slow, savoring sip of the bourbon. High-quality stuff, he thought distractedly. But of course—Sam was a high-quality girl.
“Remind me what I asked,” she murmured, settling into his side. Lord, she felt good snuggled up against him, like she’d been tailor-made to fit there.
Wes pressed his cheek to her forehead. “You asked me not to write the article.”
Sam took a sip of her bourbon. “I did.” He noticed her hand shake a little.
“Then Sasser pulled my access.”
Sam said nothing, so Wes forged on. “So I figured…” L
ie. Just lie…“So I figured maybe it was a sign.”
Sam looked up at him, her expression equal parts grateful and surprised.
“You’re really not writing the article anymore?” she asked, disbelief in her tone.
“Try not to sound so shocked,” Wes responded, tightening his arm around her. “If I got to choose between doing something that makes you happy and something that pisses you off, which do you think I’m gonna pick at the end of the day?”
“I think you’re an opportunist who knows how to work with where the current’s winding,” Sam answered softly, hitting far too close to the truth. But Sam slid a hand down his leg, distracting him with a squeeze on the sensitive place just above his knee. “Thank you, Wes. I don’t really care why you decided to drop it—” She took a little breath. “I’m just really glad you did.”
Wes thought he heard her voice wobble. His intuition had him leaning forward, looking into her eyes in the darkness of the room. “Sounds like I should be asking how your day was.”
Sam glanced away, a look of guilt flashing across her face. Wes noticed the trace puffiness around her eyes for the first time, now that they were sitting nearer to the lamp. He’d been so caught up in what to do about his article submission, he hadn’t worried about the fact that they hadn’t said more than twenty hasty words to each other in the four days since their date at Mabel’s over pie.
“What’s going on, darlin’?” he asked, touching her face.
“Nothing,” she denied hastily, pulling away.
“Not so fast—” Wes pulled her into his arms, her back to his front. “I can’t imagine any girl in the world who’s less likely to cry over spilt milk than you, so it’s not nothing—not even close.” He squeezed her gently. “Tell me what’s going on, Sammy.”
Sam held herself still, real still—like she was afraid if she moved or breathed, she’d come undone. So Wes gave her time to unthaw, cradling her against his chest as he felt her gently unwind and melt a little, reassured momentarily that it was okay to let go.
Growing up with a single mother, Wes learned at a young age that sometimes a woman just needed to be held. Sometimes she just needed that small, primal comfort before she could get back out there, or in Sam’s case—a moment’s respite before she went back to kicking ass and taking names. Wes realized he’d come up on what must be a rare moment for her, and for that fortuitous luck in timing, Wes felt lucky. Because he was the guy she was letting her barriers down with, and truth was, he felt like he was letting his barriers down with her too.
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