by Maisey Yates
“You want me to go ahead and make a profit off my sins? Out of the way I hurt other people? You want me to make some kind of artistic homage to a father who never wanted me to do art in the first place? You want me to do a tribute to a woman whose death I contributed to.”
“Yes. Because it’s not about how anyone else feels. It’s about how you feel.”
He didn’t know why this reached in and cut him so deeply. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. Mostly he didn’t know why he was having this conversation with her at all. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t change him.
“No,” she said, “that isn’t what I think you should do. It’s not about profiting off sins—real or perceived. It’s about you dealing with all of these things. It’s about you acknowledging that you have feelings.”
He snorted. “I’m entitled to more grief than Elizabeth’s parents? To any?”
“You lost somebody that you cared about. That matters. Of course it matters. You lost... I don’t know. She was pregnant. It was your baby. Of course that matters. Of course you think about it.”
“No,” he said, the words as flat as everything inside him. “I don’t. I don’t think about that. Ever. I don’t talk about it. I don’t do anything with it.”
“Except make sure you never make a piece of art that means anything to you. Except not sleep with anyone. Except punish yourself. Which you had such a clear vision of when you felt like I was doing it to myself but you seem to be completely blind to when it comes to you.”
“All right. Let’s examine your mistake, then, Maddy. Since you’re so determined to draw a comparison between the two of us. Who’s dead? Come on. Who died as a result of your youthful mistakes? No one. Until you make a mistake like that, something that’s that irreversible, don’t pretend you have any idea what I’ve been through. Don’t pretend you have any idea of what I should feel.”
He despised himself for even saying that. For saying he had been through something. He didn’t deserve to walk around claiming that baggage. It was why he didn’t like talking about it. It was why he didn’t like thinking about it. Because Elizabeth’s family members were the ones who had been left with a giant hole in their lives. Not him. Because they were the ones who had to deal with her loss around the dinner table, with thinking about her on her birthday and all of the holidays they didn’t have her.
He didn’t even know when her birthday was.
“Well, I care about you,” Maddy said, her voice small. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “Five more days, Maddy. That’s it. That’s all it can ever be.”
He should end it now. He knew that. Beyond anything else, he knew that he should end it now. But if Maddy West had taught him anything, it was that he wasn’t nearly as controlled as he wanted to be. At least, not where she was concerned. He could stand around and shout about it, self-flagellate all he wanted, but when push came to shove, he was going to make the selfish decision.
“Either you come to bed with me and we spend the rest of the night not talking, or you go home and we can forget the rest of this.”
Maddy nodded mutely. He expected her to turn and walk out the door. Maybe not even pausing to collect her clothes, in spite of the cold weather. Instead, she surprised him. Instead, she took his hand, even knowing the kind of devastation it had caused, and she turned and led him up the stairs.
Eleven
Maddy hadn’t slept at all. It wasn’t typical for her and Sam to share a bed the entire night. But they had last night. After all that shouting and screaming and lovemaking, it hadn’t seemed right to leave. And he hadn’t asked her to.
She knew more about him now than she had before. In fact, she had a suspicion that she knew everything about him. Even if it wasn’t all put together into a complete picture. It was there. And now, with the pale morning light filtering through the window, she was staring at him as though she could make it all form a cohesive image.
As if she could will herself to somehow understand what all of those little pieces meant. As if she could make herself see the big picture.
Sam couldn’t even see it, of that she was certain. So she had no idea how she could expect herself to see it. Except that she wanted to. Except that she needed to. She didn’t want to leave him alone with all of that. It was too much. It was too much for any one man. He felt responsible for the death of that woman. Or at least, he was letting himself think he did.
Protecting himself. Protecting himself with pain.
It made a strange kind of sense to her, only because she was a professional at protecting herself. At insulating herself from whatever else might come her way. Yes, it was a solitary existence. Yes, it was lonely. But there was control within that. She had a feeling that Sam operated in much the same way.
She shifted, brushing his hair out of his face. He had meant to frighten her off. He had given her an out. And she knew that somehow he had imagined she would take it. She knew that he believed he was some kind of monster. At least, part of him believed it.
Because she could also tell that he had been genuinely surprised that she hadn’t turned tail and run.
But she hadn’t. And she wouldn’t. Mostly because she was just too stubborn. She had spent the past ten years being stubborn. Burying who she was underneath a whole bunch of bad attitude and sharp words. Not letting anyone get close, even though she had a bunch of people around her who cared. She had chosen to focus on the people who didn’t. The people who didn’t care enough. While simultaneously deciding that the people who did care enough, who cared more than enough, somehow weren’t as important.
Well, she was done with that. There were people in her life who loved her. Who loved her no matter what. And she had a feeling that Sam had the ability to be one of those people. She didn’t want to abandon him to this. Not when he had—whether he would admit it or not—been instrumental in digging her out of her self-imposed emotional prison.
“Good morning,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his cheek.
As soon as she did that, a strange sense of foreboding stole over her. As though she knew that the next few moments were going to go badly. But maybe that was just her natural pessimism. The little beast she had built up to be the strongest and best-developed piece of her. Another defense.
Sam’s eyes opened, and the shock that she glimpsed there absolutely did not bode well for the next few moments. She knew that. “I stayed the night,” she said, in response to the unasked question she could see lurking on his face.
“I guess I fell asleep,” he said, his voice husky.
“Clearly.” She took a deep breath. Oh well. If it was all going to hell, it might as well go in style. “I want you to come to the family Christmas party with me.”
It took only a few moments for her to decide that she was going to say those words. And that she was going to follow them up with everything that was brimming inside her. Feelings that she didn’t feel like keeping hidden. Not anymore. Maybe it was selfish. But she didn’t really care. She knew his stuff. He knew hers. The only excuse she had for not telling him how she felt was self-protection.
She knew where self-protection got her. Absolutely nowhere. Treading water in a stagnant pool of her own failings, never advancing any further on in her life. In her existence. It left her lonely. It left her without any real, true friends. She didn’t want that. Not anymore. And if she had to allow herself to be wounded in the name of authenticity, in the name of trying again, then she would.
An easy decision to make before the injury occurred. But it was made nonetheless.
“Why?” Sam asked, rolling away from her, getting up out of bed.
She took that opportunity to drink in every detail of his perfect body. His powerful chest, his muscular thighs. Memorizing every little piece of him. More Sam for her collection. She had a feeling
that eventually she would walk away from him with nothing but that collection. A little pail full of the shadows of what she used to have.
“Because I would like to have a date.” She was stalling now.
“You want to make your dad mad? Is that what we’re doing? A little bit of revenge for everything he put you through?”
“I would never use you that way, Sam. I hope you know me better than that.”
“We don’t know each other, Maddy. We don’t. We’ve had a few conversations, and we’ve had some sex. But that doesn’t mean knowing somebody. Not really.”
“That just isn’t true. Nobody else knows how I feel about what happened to me. Nobody. Nobody else knows about the conversation I had with my dad. And I would imagine that nobody knows about Elizabeth. Not the way that I do.”
“We used each other as a confessional. That isn’t the same.”
“The funny thing is it did start that way. At least for me. Because what did it matter what you knew. We weren’t going to have a relationship after. So I didn’t have to worry about you judging me. I didn’t have to worry about anything.”
“And?”
“That was just what I told myself. It was what made it feel okay to do what I wanted to do. We lie to ourselves. We get really deep in it when we feel like we need protection. That was what I was doing. But the simple truth is I felt a connection with you from the beginning. It was why I was so terrible to you. Because it scared me.”
“You should have kept on letting it scare you, baby girl.”
Those words acted like a shot of rage that went straight to her stomach, then fired onto her head. “Why? Because it’s the thing that allows you to maintain your cranky-loner mystique? That isn’t you. I thought maybe you didn’t feel anything. But now I think you feel everything. And it scares you. I’m the same way.”
“I see where this is going, Maddy. Don’t do it. Don’t. I can tell you right now it isn’t going to go the way you think it will.”
“Oh, go ahead, Sam. Tell me what I think. Please. I’m dying to hear it.”
“You think that because you’ve had some kind of transformation, some kind of deep realization, that I’m headed for the same. But it’s bullshit. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Wishful thinking on a level I never wanted you to start thinking on. You knew the rules. You knew them from the beginning.”
“Don’t,” she said, her throat tightening, her chest constricting. “Don’t do this to us. Don’t pretend it can stay the same thing it started out as. Because it isn’t. And you know it.”
“You’re composing a really compelling story, Madison.” The reversion back to her full name felt significant. “And we both know that’s something you do. Make more out of sex than it was supposed to be.”
She gritted her teeth, battling through. Because he wanted her to stop. He wanted this to intimidate, to hurt. He wanted it to stop her. But she wasn’t going to let him win. Not at this. Not at his own self-destruction. “Jackass 101. Using somebody’s deep pain against them. I thought you were above that, Sam.”
“It turns out I’m not. You might want to pay attention to that.”
“I’m paying attention. I want you to come with me to the Christmas party, Sam. Because I want it to be the beginning. I don’t want it to be the end.”
“Don’t do this.”
He bent down, beginning to collect his clothes, his focus on anything in the room but her. She took a deep breath, knowing that what happened next was going to shatter all of this.
“I need more. I need more than twelve days of Christmas. I want it every day. I want to wake up with you every morning and go to bed with you every night. I want to fight with you. I want to make love with you. I want to tell you my secrets. To show you every dark, hidden thing in me. The serious things and the silly things. Because I love you. It’s that complicated and that simple. I love you and that means I’m willing to do this, no matter how it ends.”
Sam tugged his pants on, did them up, then pulled his shirt over his head. “I told you not to do this, Maddy. But you’re doing it anyway. And you know what that makes it? A suicide mission. You stand there, thinking you’re being brave because you’re telling the truth. But you know how it’s going to end. You know that after you make this confession, you’re not actually going to have to deal with the relationship with me, because I already told you it isn’t happening. I wonder if you would have been so brave if you knew I might turn around and offer you forever.”
His words hit her with the force of bullets. But for some reason, they didn’t hurt. Not really. She could remember distinctly when David had broken things off with her. Saying that she had never been anything serious. That she had been only a little bit of tail on the side and he was of course going to have to stay with his wife. Because she was the center of his life. Of his career. Because she mattered, and Maddy didn’t. That had hurt. It had hurt because it had been true.
Because David hadn’t loved her. And it had been easy for him to break up with her because he had never intended on having more with her, and not a single part of him wanted more.
This was different. It was different because Sam was trying to hurt her out of desperation. Because Sam was lying. Or at the very least, was sidestepping. Because he didn’t want to have the conversation.
Because he would have to lie to protect himself. Because he couldn’t look her in the eye and tell her that he didn’t love her, that she didn’t matter.
But she wasn’t certain he would let himself feel it. That was the gamble. She knew he felt it. She knew it. That deep down, Sam cared. She wasn’t sure if he knew it. If he had allowed himself access to those feelings. Feelings that Sam seemed to think were a luxury, or a danger. Grief. Desire. Love.
“Go ahead and offer it. You won’t. You won’t, because you know I would actually say yes. You can try to make this about how damaged I am, but all of this is because of you.”
“You have to be damaged to want somebody like me. You know what’s in my past.”
“Grief. Grief that you won’t let yourself feel. Sadness you don’t feel like you’re allowed to have. That’s what’s in your past. Along with lost hope. Let’s not pretend you blame yourself. You felt so comfortable calling me out, telling me that I was playing games. Well, guess what. That’s what you’re doing. You think if you don’t want anything, if you don’t need anything, you won’t be hurt again. But you’re just living in hurt and that isn’t better.”
“You have all this clarity about your own emotional situation, and you think that gives you a right to talk about mine?”
She threw the blankets off her and got out of bed. “Why not?” she asked, throwing her arms wide. She didn’t care that she was naked. In fact, in many ways it seemed appropriate. That Sam had put clothes on, that he had felt the need to cover himself, and that she didn’t even care anymore. She had no pride left. But this wasn’t about pride.
“You think you have the right to talk about mine,” she continued. “You think you’re going to twist everything that I’m saying and eventually you’ll find some little doubt inside me that will make me believe you’re telling the truth. I’ve had enough of that. I’ve had enough of men telling me what I feel. Of them telling me what I should do. I’m not going to let you do it. You’re better than that. At least, I thought you were.”
“Maybe I’m not.”
“Right now? I think you don’t want to be. But I would love you through this too, Sam. You need to know that. You need to know that whatever you say right now, in this room, it’s not going to change the way that I feel about you. You don’t have that kind of power.”
“That’s pathetic. There’s nothing I can say to make you not love me? Why don’t you love yourself a little bit more than that, Madison,” he said, his tone hard.
And regardless of what she had just said, that did hit somethi
ng in her. Something vulnerable and scared. Something that was afraid she really hadn’t learned how to be anything more than a pathetic creature, desperate for a man to show her affection.
“I love myself just enough to put myself out there and demand this,” she said finally, her voice vibrating with conviction. “I love myself too much to slink off silently. I love myself too much not to fight for what I know we could have. If I didn’t do this, if I didn’t say this, it would only be for my pride. It would be so I could score points and feel like maybe I won. But in the end, if I walk away without having fought for you with everything I have in me, we will have both lost. I think you’re worth that. I know you are. Why don’t you think so?”
“Why do you?” he asked, his voice thin, brittle. “I don’t think I’ve shown you any particular kindness or tenderness.”
“Don’t. Don’t erase everything that’s happened between us. Everything I told you. Everything you gave me.”
“Keeping my mouth shut while I held a beautiful woman and let her talk? That’s easy.”
“I love you, Sam. That’s all. I’m not going to stand here and have an argument. I’m not going to let you get in endless barbs while you try to make those words something less than true. I love you. I would really like it if you could tell me you loved me too.”
“I don’t.” His words were flat in the room. And she knew they were all she would get from him. Right now, it was all he could say. And he believed it. He believed it down to his bones. That he didn’t love her. That everything that had taken place between them over the past week meant nothing. Because he had to. Because behind that certainty, that flat, horrifying expression in his eyes, was fear.
Strong, beautiful Sam, who could bend iron to his will, couldn’t overpower the fear that lived inside him. And she would never be able to do it for him.
“Okay,” she said softly, beginning to gather her clothes. She didn’t know how to do this. She didn’t know what to do now. How to make a triumphant exit. So she decided she wouldn’t. She decided to let the tears fall down her cheeks; she decided not to make a joke. She decided not to say anything flippant or amusing.