Nick’s eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t want you to think I’m not happy to see you, but I’m not sure why you’re here.” He paused and then made mock quotation marks with his fingers. “Is this a friendly visit?”
Sam simply shook her head. Her expression was blank and no matter how much Nick tried, he couldn’t read her. To be fair, he sucked at reading women, particularly the one in question. “Everything is falling apart around me. Jake is gone. My parents have gone from moderately weird to bat shit crazy. Luke who…” She took a deep breath and threw her purse over the back of his couch. “Who always has the answers to everything, is in a world of his own and Cara well, I don’t even know what to say about her. I’m afraid she’s having a mental breakdown.”
Nick looked down as he ran his fingers through his short hair. Everything she said was on point, there were a lot of changes going on, and they all seemed as if they couldn’t be helped. He lifted his head and noticed she had moved closer to him.
“I feel like I’m in the center of this tornado that’s spiraling out of control, waiting to suck me in and uproot me from normalcy.” She smiled slightly as she watched his eyebrows draw together as he processed her analogy. “And then there is you.” He lifted one of his eyebrows, questioning where she could be going with this without saying the words. “Somewhere along the way, you’ve become the only constant in my life.” Her eyes filled with tears, her body was an emotional roller coaster and she blamed the fact that her first love had come back into her life when she had no idea she would need him the most.
“That’s a good thing right?” Nick asked, uncertain of what she was trying to say. He took her hand in his and his thumb caressed her palm.
She smiled and a tear escaped, sliding down her cheek. “It’s a great thing. You came back into my life when I needed you the most. I just have one question for you.”
He reached forward and with his free hand, he wiped away at her tear and nodded, encouraging to ask her question, yet not trusting his voice. Hearing her say she needed him did something to him deep inside.
“Why did you really leave here?”
Something told Nick, that he had a lot riding on the answer to her simple question. He bit the inside of his cheek and wondered if Jake would think he would be betraying his confidence if he spoke the truth and then he remembered no one wanted Nick and Sam together more than Jake. He sighed and pulled Sam towards him. He wrapped one arm around her waist as he walked them towards the couch. Together they sat down and she turned slightly to face him, waiting for him to tell her what she had waited seven years to finally learn.
“I got a phone call one night from Jake. He didn’t sound like himself and he asked me to meet him off of Route 17. He told me that he had come across some parts that Luke and I would need to start up the business.” Nick tried to remember that night so long ago. The details were fuzzy and so he decided he would give her the short and sweet version. “When I got there, I didn’t see your brother at first. I saw a trailer on the side of the road, the trucker that had been driving it was badly beaten, so badly beaten I wasn’t sure he was alive.”
Sam showed no reaction, she just listened to him tell his side of the story, and she listened intently.
“Jake stood in the back of the trailer, throwing around automobile parts. He looked so out of control, holding a tire iron in his hand.” Nick swallowed the lump in his throat, remembering vividly that part. The manic image of Jake as he waved around that iron speaking frantically, that had stuck with him, even when everything else faded.
“Anyway, the trucker, I finally realized was Cara’s father. I figured Jake had thought the time had come to pay the son of a bitch back, for all the times he used Cara as his punching bag.” He looked down at their joined hands and noticed how small her hand looked, in his and how much he liked it. “The cops came and I made Jake run.” He looked up at Sam, and gazed into those eyes, he wanted so badly to lose himself in. Those eyes had the power to bring him to his knees and make him want the things that he never pictured a man like himself, would want. She captivated him in more ways than one. He licked his lips and continued. “I was arrested and charged with assault.”
“You took the rap for my brother.” She stated softly.
“And I would do it again. No questions asked.” He said sincerely.