Guess one more thing about him hasn’t changed.
His persistence.
Comes with the territory of always getting your own way.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Eventually, all opposition will fall away, leaving you an open path to whatever your little heart desires.
At least that’s how it works for Sam. For regular schmucks like me who don’t come from a life of privilege and entitlement? We learn early on how stupid and useless it is to want things beyond our grasp, so we don’t even bother trying.
I slide my glance to Sam’s strong profile.
Even when those things are close enough to touch, they’re still out of our reach.
“Hadley?” His arm brushes mine.
I shift away. Hitch my backpack higher. “I’m going home.”
“I can give you a ride. I just need to see Mr. G for a minute but you can wait in the car.”
“I have my bike.” I refuse to ask why he needs to see the owner of Glenwood Landscaping. Mr. G. is my boss. Not Sam’s.
Sam quit working for him last summer.
Sam quit a lot of things last summer.
“We can put it in the back,” he says, pulling his key from his pocket. He presses a button and his SUV’s lights flash.
“I’d rather ride my bike home.”
He skirts around me, walks backward so he can see my face. “It’s five miles.”
“I know. I ride it every day. Twice.”
Now he’s frowning. “No one picks you up in the morning? Takes you home after work?”
Like he used to.
“No.”
After Sam left, a couple of our coworkers offered to drive me to and from work each day, but after my constant refusals, they finally stopped.
He tries that grin of his again because…yeah…adorable. “Come on, Hadley. Let me drive you home. We can stop at the Tastee Freeze for a milkshake. My treat.”
The boy knows the way to my heart, that’s for sure, and honestly, if he throws in an order of fries, I might just take him up on it.
What can I say? I’m weak.
But it’s not really the food that’s tempting me to say yes. After spending the entire day out in the sun, the humidity pressing down on me like a giant thumb, the idea of sitting in Sam’s air-conditioned car—instead of pedaling my way home—sounds like heaven. But worse, and far more dangerous, I’m tempted by Sam. By his voice and smile. By his broad shoulders and dark eyes and pretty, pretty face.
This is how he got to me seven years ago. He wore me down—with his looks and dogged persistence, his seemingly endless kindness and charm.
And after he patiently chipped away at all my defenses, gained my trust and made himself indispensable to me, to my happiness, as if I couldn’t possibly live one freaking day without him in it, he left.
He. Left.
Now, I may not have a 4.0 GPA like good old Sammy-boy here, but I can be taught.
Especially when the lesson is so clear.
And painful.
“No,” I say and it comes out sharp. Too sharp. Gives away too much. I clear my throat. Modulate my tone before adding, “Thank you, but like I said, I’d rather ride my bike home.”
There. That’s better. All calm and casual and carefree and not the least bit bothered by his return to town, his presence or his very existence.
He stops me with a hand to my elbow.
I go completely still, my breath locked in my chest, and stare down at his hand. The sight of his fingers, so dark against my pale skin, his palm so wide on my arm, causes something inside of me to pinch painfully.
I tug away.
But even though I’m free, the skin he touched still tingles.
He shoves both hands through his hair, keeps them there, fingers linked behind his head, elbows wide as he looks down on me. The pose makes it impossible to ignore his rounded biceps, how they stretch the material of his sleeves.
I hate myself for noticing. I hate him, too. Just on principle.
“I was going to call you,” he says.
“Why?”
“To tell you I was coming home.” He lowers his arms and leans toward me, his voice dropping. “To tell you I wanted to see you.”
His words, the exact words I’d spent so long wanting to hear—I’m coming home. I want to see you—skim along my nerve endings. Cause my scalp to prickle.
No. No, he does not get to do this. Not now. Not after all this time.
“But you didn’t.” My tone is flat. I just hope he doesn’t notice it’s also unsteady. “You didn’t call me.”
His gaze drops briefly then meets mine again. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me.”
I stare at him. He’s nervous, I realize. Cool, confident Sam Constable is nervous.
Huh. Must be Karma.
Better late than never, I guess.
“Eleven months ago I would have answered your call,” I tell him.
Back then I would have given anything to hear from him. God, I was such an idiot. Praying and wishing and hoping for things to be different. Waste of time. Life happens. It just is. It’s like being on a roller coaster. There’s nothing you can do to steer it in any given direction. Nothing you can change. You can’t avoid the dips and turns, the nausea-inducing loops or the slow, painful climbs.
All you can do is hold on and go along for the ride.
“But you didn’t call or text,” I continue with a shrug. “And now we have nothing to talk about.”
I finally reach my bike but it’s no relief, not with Sam behind me, big and broad and silent as I crouch and unlock the chain, unwrap it from the post. Standing, I slip one strap off, then swing my backpack around so I can put the chain in a side pocket. Usually I change into sneakers before heading home but that’s not happening today.
I just want to go.
I slide my arm back through the strap and shrug the backpack on, catching the end of my ponytail between it and my shoulders. I reach back…
And brush my fingertips over Sam’s knuckles.
I don’t move, barely breathe as Sam gently pulls my hair free and sweeps my ponytail over my left shoulder. Head bent, hand inches from my pounding heart, he wraps a few strands around his finger and I’m mesmerized by the sight, the strands seeming brighter, redder against his tanned skin.
“Give me five minutes,” he murmurs. His breath washes across the side of my neck and I shiver. “Please.”
But I can’t. I can’t give him anything. Not my time. Not my attention.
Not my forgiveness.
If I do, he’ll take them all and ask for more.
And I’ll be left with nothing.
Shaking my head, I step away from his touch and grab my bike’s handlebars. Put up the kickstand. Then, wordlessly, I walk away from him.
Just like he walked away from me eleven months ago.
2
Sam is not the first person to disappear from my life without a word, a care or a backward glance.
That dubious distinction goes to my dad, some guy named Billy Wheaton, who met my mom while she worked in the office of a local construction firm one summer.
Mom never had much to say about him so the only things I know for sure are his name (assuming Billy Wheaton is his real name and not an alias used to throw off the cops and/or a woman or two scorned, looking to collect child support), that he was originally from New Hampshire (which sounds even more suspicious than his name. I mean, New Hampshire? Do people even really live there?) and he had red hair and green eyes.