by Velvet Reed
“It was supposed to be a surprise, John. A good surprise,” Olivia rebukes as she starts pacing between the open door and the bath tub.
“I hurt her, Mom, and I didn’t expect a welcoming reaction,” I interject, and wince at the sting of the alcohol seeping into the raw wound.
“I know she’s been hurting, Sam. I guess after the argument she had with Gracie earlier, I should have anticipated a negative reaction. I didn’t think she’d come out swinging, though.”
Ash had an argument with Gracie? “What happened with Gracie?” I ask, curious because those two rarely fight.
Still moving about restlessly, Olivia says off handedly, “Oh, Gracie made some comments about Ashley and Tanner, and Ashley got upset. It’s all sorted now.” Then as if a light bulb just switched on, Olivia realizes what she just said and whips around to face me, her mouth dropping open.
My whole body tenses as her words strike home. Ashley and Tanner? “Ashley’s with Tanner?” I ask incredulously. “Tanner, the guy who works at the garage with Bryan?”
Having finished with my face, John looks between Olivia and me. “They’ve just started seeing each other, apparently,” he informs me.
Then Olivia rushes to say, “I don’t think it’s serious, Honey.”
I guess this is what Cole meant in the text he sent me. Did he tell me because he thinks it’s getting serious, though? I sit there mulling over the idea of Ashley being with Tanner, then I remember the two of them dancing at the club. I basically sent her into the guy’s arms, but I’ll be damned if she’s going to stay there. I need to talk to her.
“You okay?” John asks cautiously.
I look up at him and nod. “Guess we should head out there and face the music, but I will warn you both that if my being here is going to ruin Thanksgiving for everyone else, then I’ll leave. That’s not what I want to do.”
Olivia gives me a quick hug. “They’ll be fine, Sam. As soon as they get over the initial surprise, this will be just like every other Thanksgiving.”
Giving her an agreeable smile, I follow them both down the hall towards the waiting crowd, knowing full well that this definitely won’t be like other Thanksgivings. I’m not sure many of them are thankful I’m here at all.
When I step into the living room, April is the first one to come to me. She kisses my cheek before wrapping her arms around me and hugging me tight. “It’s about time you brought that ugly face of yours home.” She chuckles, but I can hear the emotion in her voice. Feeling a lump form in my throat and realizing just how much I missed her, I squeeze her tight.
“I missed you too, brat,” I joke affectionately as she pulls away.
Mary and Andy from Ashley’s shop are also in the room and they offer me a ‘Hello’ which I return but don’t expand on. Since they work with Ash and their greeting wasn’t as friendly as it used to be, I can only assume I’m in their bad books now as well.
Meeting the eyes of the only other person in the room, I damn near shit myself. Bryan stares at me with a hardness in his gaze. Knowing he has considered Ashley as a daughter since she was a little girl, I’m aware that this interaction probably won’t be a pleasant one. Knowing it’s up to me to make the first move, I step towards him and reach out my hand to shake his. “Bryan,” I simply say in greeting and then stand there, growing more nervous by the second as I wait for some form of response.
He looks down at my hand and then back to my face without saying a word. Finally, he reaches his hand out and grasps mine, causing me to wince as he grips it so damn tight he might just cut my circulation off.
“Sam,” he says curtly, before pulling me in close until we’re chest to chest and his mouth is near my ear. “Today’s a holiday and a time for family,” he says, his voice low and gruff. “I have the utmost respect for John and Olivia, so I’ll say what I need to say right now and be done with it.”
My heart pounds rapidly in my chest at his tone and the strength of his crushing grip on my hand. I think I may even break out in a slight sweat as he continues. “That girl means just as much to me as my own children. You broke her and took her away from her family and that’s just about unforgiveable in my book. Now I have no doubt you’ve come back for your family but I promise you this. If I see one more tear spill from her eyes because of you, well… friendship and respect be damned because I will make you hurt. I’ll make you hurt so bad, you’ll wish you never came back. You hear me?”
If I thought that his grip couldn’t get any tighter, I was mistaken.
“Yes sir,” I answer, but knowing that I need to get back in his good graces if I have any chance with Ashley I stand up tall, look him directly in the eyes and tell him confidently. “I know I’ve hurt her, that’s all on me. But you should know that I didn’t come back just for my family, Bryan. I came back for Ashley. I came back to earn her forgiveness. To show her I love her with everything I am and that I can’t live without her. I don’t care how long it takes or what I have to do, I will convince her that we belong together.”
The room around us is silent and I know that everyone has just heard what I said, though I pay no attention to them because Bryan and my gazes are still locked on each other. His hard and probing, mine hopefully determined and sincere. Finally, his grip on my hand loosens as he lets go, allowing me to flex my fingers and for the blood to rush back through them.
“Alright, then.” He nods sagely, and I know we understand each other completely. If there’s one thing I admire most about Bryan Rivers, it’s that he loves and protects the people most important to him fiercely. Now, I intend on doing the exact same thing.
Different conversations start up following my interlude with Bryan and after a few minutes I realize that Cole and the others still haven’t joined us. Then, as if on cue, Charlie, Cole and Gracie enter the room. Charlie walks past me snidely, saying, “How’s the nose, pretty boy?”
I smirk at him and shrug my shoulders. “It’s not broken, but it hurts like a bitch. Do I have to thank you for teaching her how to throw a punch?”
He shakes his head and laughs. “That was all her, buddy. But I couldn’t be prouder.”
Charlie and I have always gotten on well apart from when he found Ash and I making out in the kitchen that time and he warned me about hurting her. I know he’s another person that I’m going to have to get back on good terms with. Damn, I really pissed off a lot of people when I left.
Cole has me in one of our man hugs next, slapping me on the back with a little more force than required but I get it. “Glad to see you’re back,” he says.
“It’s good to be back,” I admit. “Listen, I’m sorry…”
He cuts me off. “There’s plenty of time for that later. It’s a holiday after all. Beer?”
I nod in agreement and just like that, I know that even though we’ll talk about everything that happened later, our relationship as brothers and best friends will move forward as if nothing ever happened. I really am one lucky bastard.
Looking past Cole as he walks off to get those beers, I find Gracie and realize that out of everyone here, including Ashley, this is the person that I should be most worried about and who will probably have my balls in a sling for hurting her best friend.
“You’re home,” she states matter of fact, her eyes intent.
“I am.”
“Are you staying?” she asks.
“I am,” I reply again and she nods.
“Are you going to fix the mess you made?” Her eyebrows rise in question and expectation.
I know how loaded that question is. She’s not only talking about Ashley, but talking about everyone else, too.
“I am,” I say again, because how else am I going to reply?
Nodding again, she watches me. After a minute or two she comes and hugs me as my other family members have, because she is definitely part of my family.
“Don’t leave them again, Sam. You don’t realize what it did to them,” she whispers in my ear, then pauses. �
�All of them.” Her words have a huge impact on me, and my stomach dips in remorse.
We’re interrupted by Cole returning with the beers and when he hands the bottle to me, he clinks his to mine and says, “Happy Thanksgiving.” I echo his sentiment and we both take long pulls, which gives me a second to gather myself.
Gracie comes back over to us but this time she’s holding my adorable little godson. I look at him in awe, stunned by how big he’s gotten over the last three months.
“Hey, Coop,” I say, taking hold of his little hand in mine. He looks curious and like he’s going to freak out at the same time. “You got so big, buddy.”
“He likes his food, that’s for sure,” Gracie giggles, bouncing him on her side. “You want to go to Uncle Sam, Cooper?” she asks him, so I turn and put my beer on the nearby lamp table. As I put my hands out to take him, he scrounges his nose and looks at Cole before jabbering, “Da-da.” He reaches his arms out for his daddy. I stand there, shocked that he’s actually starting to speak and knows that Cole’s his daddy.
“Come here, Little Man,” Cole says, chuckling, and takes his son, resting him on his hip, while still holding his beer bottle.
Cooper immediately tries to make a grab for the bottle in his daddy’s hand, but Cole reacts quickly and has it out of his reach before he makes contact. I smile and wistfully think how much I’ve missed.
“He’s changed so much,” I comment to no one in particular, but the response I get doesn’t come from Cole or Gracie.
“That’s generally what happens when someone disappears for three months.”
My head whips up and I feel a punch to the gut when I see the venom in Ashley’s beautiful blue eyes.
“People change,” she says, staring straight at me. Her attempt at showing an emotionless bravado fails to fool me, because I can see the gleam of moisture in her eyes and the defensive posture she’s taking by crossing her arms over her body. “People have no choice but to move on.”
Move on. Like she’s moved on with Tanner?
I take a step towards her but stop when I see him walk up behind her and place his hand on her hip. The reality of her moving on and the familiarity they share is earth shattering. We stand there, both of them staring at me and me staring right back at them. I feel like I’m in an old western ‘pistols at dawn’ shoot out. I decide not to revert back to my old asshole ways which is how I used to behave with her before we got together and simply say, “It’s so good to see you, Beautiful.”
The look that passes over her face shows so many emotions; confusion, anger, hurt, love? But she quickly recovers, linking her fingers with his at her hip and reaching up to kiss his cheek before saying, “You remember Tanner, don’t you, Sam?”
I stare at her. At the woman I love. She took her shot, and it was a direct hit to my heart. If this was an old western with a pistols at dawn shoot out… I’d be the one lying in the dust, my heart bleeding for what I’d lost.
Sam: Good morning, Beautiful. Have a great day xo
Every freaking day, several times a day for almost two weeks. Text message after text message. Email after email. The man is driving me insane. I haven’t replied once. I refuse to reply. He didn’t reply to my messages when he left, so why the hell should I respond to his… even if they are sweet and have me longing to talk to him.
Thanksgiving didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it would have after Sam’s surprise arrival and my awesome right hook. I refused to go to the ER for x-rays and Cole was fairly sure that nothing was broken, so I took some pain relief and we all got on with the day. A visit the next morning, however, proved that my hand was only bruised and strained, thank goodness.
I was a little shocked at the way Sam dealt with things after he saw Tanner and I together. I thought for sure that he’d flip out, but he didn’t. He simply said hi to Tanner and pretty much ignored him for the rest of the day. Me? Well, he didn’t ignore me. He tried to make conversation constantly by asking me questions and so forth, but I held my ground and only gave him short responses. There was no way I was letting him back in that easily.
None of that mattered, however, because even though I wasn’t allowing him to engage me in conversation, I couldn’t stop sneaking glances at him at every opportunity. He was different. Sure, I could see the changes to his appearance. You couldn’t miss the fact that he’d lost weight and that his hair was longer, but there was something about his demeanor, the way he spoke and held himself that was completely at odds with the Sam I knew. His usual cockiness was absent and that’s what threw me off the most.
He managed to corner me in the hall when I came out of the bathroom after we ate and I felt that familiar feeling. That pull he’s always had on me. When I looked up into those gorgeous green eyes of his, I desperately wanted to fall into his arms. To have him hold me and tell me that he loved me. To tell him that I still loved him, even though he’d broken my heart so badly. I was pathetic. That realization came swiftly and so I walked past him. I couldn’t, however, ignore the words that had me stopping in my tracks.
“I know I hurt you, Ash. I’ll never forgive myself for that. But I’m not giving up. I’m not going to stop until I’ve earned your forgiveness. I will make you love me again, Ashley Brookes. That’s a promise.”
His voice was so full of emotion, so sincere and contrite. It was futile to try to stop the tears that escaped because I knew in my heart he meant every single word. I also knew how much I still loved him. Loved him to the very depths of my soul, and that could prove to be my biggest downfall.
Sam has certainly been keeping his word about not giving up and it hasn’t just been the text messages and emails.
Between twelve and one o’clock every day, even when he’s doing a shift at the hospital, he comes in to my little florist shop and delivers me lunch. The first time he did it, the food was exactly the same as he brought that one time so many months ago, when he surprised me with a picnic in the park. I recalled the memory of that day instantly and I barely made it back to my office before I burst in to tears.
Usually, he gives me the bag of food and asks me how my day’s going. To which I respond with a thank you or fine, before I promptly retreat to the safety of my office, so I can’t linger over those eyes or that smile. I discovered today that it was after I leave for my office when he places an order for flowers to be delivered to my house in the afternoon. This is something that my sneaky employees never told me about.
When I arrived home after his first visit to the shop, I found a very simple bouquet of mixed flowers sitting on my porch, with a note saying ‘From Sam’. It was exactly the same thing he wrote the very first time he sent flowers to me from a competing florist. I was pissed about that fact back then and I was pissed again. There was no florist name on the card and the arrangement was beautiful, but still… You don’t send a florist flowers from someone else.
Every day, I was greeted with the same sight and every day it warmed my heart a little more. His notes always said something different. From simple words, like ‘I’m sorry’, to longer messages telling me how much he missed me or what he admired most about me.
It wasn’t until I was confronted with a spectacular arrangement of a dozen red roses yesterday and realized that I had made the bouquet myself and that Sam had been buying all the flowers from my shop. I asked the girls this morning and they confessed to conspiring with Sam and delivering the flowers in secret without a delivery slip. Sneaky bitches.
But as amazing as Sam’s efforts have been, I still don’t feel like I’m ready to be alone with him and have a conversation. Plus, there’s Tanner.
Tanner certainly hasn’t missed the fact that my home has become a floral jungle. We’ve still been seeing each other nearly every day but it’s clear he knows my head isn’t focused. How can it be with Sam pushing his way back into my every thought?
We haven’t even discussed the fact Sam’s back. It’s like we’re both avoiding the topic and hoping it will magically d
isappear so we won’t have to deal with it. I like Tanner. I really like him, and we’ve only been a couple, or what you call a couple for a little over a month. Although we have gotten close, we haven’t even taken the step of sleeping together and since Sam showed up on Thanksgiving, our intimate moments have cooled further.
Am I being fair to Tanner? I don’t know. However, I do know that I’m so damn confused by my feelings for Tanner and especially with Sam’s constant attempts at gaining my attention by any means.
I lay my forehead on my desk and hit it against the smooth wooden surface a few times.
“Don’t think you’ll be getting out of work by giving yourself a headache,” Mary says.
I stop my head banging and look up at her. I must look completely forlorn and pathetic.
“Oh, come on. It isn’t that bad,” she chides, shaking her head.
I lay my folded arms on the desk and rest my chin on them. “Yes, it is,” I sulk. “I was so pissed when I thought he was buying the flowers from another florist and now that I know he was getting them from here all along, I don’t know what to feel.”
Mary looks at me carefully, then takes a seat on the other side of my desk and mimics my pose. This elicits a small smile from me. “If I were in your shoes, I would think it was very romantic the way Sam brings you lunch every day and sends you flowers. I mean, I know he broke your heart, Sweetie, but he is really trying to make amends.”
“He sends about ten text messages or emails every day, too,” I admit, causing Mary’s brows to rise.
She doesn’t speak for a minute but she looks concerned. “It sounds like the man knows he’s done wrong, Ashley. It sounds like he’s doing everything he can to get you to talk to him.” I open my mouth to interrupt her, but she holds up her hand to stop me. “I’m not condoning what he did and I’m not saying you should forgive, forget and jump back in a relationship with him. But don’t you think you two should talk? I’m sure he has a lot to say to you or he wouldn’t be trying so hard. I also truly believe that you need to tell him exactly how his leaving made you feel.”