“It was stupid, against all my training but I couldn’t leave him behind. He was my boy. He was Gordo. He wanted me to teach his sons football. I wanted him to stand up with me when I found a woman who was worth it. I got in, I got to him and I did it by killing twelve men. Twelve. That’s a lot of blood on my hands but I didn’t care. They were filth and he was still breathing. He took three to the back. He had my back, no one had his and he took three. For me.”
The weight he carried, my God, so fucking heavy. How did he bear it?
“Baby –”
“I got him home.”
“Sam –”
Suddenly he moved and he did it so fast, his big frame coming at me, my only thought was retreat and I did. Going back I kept doing it until I hit wall and I hit it hard.
Then Sam’s body hit me, pressing me in, his hands came to my jaw and his fingers dug in, his face in my face, so close, the world melted away and it was only him and me.
“Love you, man. Tell my wife I love her,” he whispered.
That haunted him.
It haunted him.
Gordo was haunting him.
The tears formed and slid down my cheeks again as my hands lifted and fisted in his shirt.
“Baby –” I started.
“Love you, man. Tell my wife I love her.”
“Sam –”
“Felicia, broken. Luci, broken. I didn’t want to break you.”
Oh God!
I went up on my toes as my hands slid up to his neck, fingers curling around and digging deep.
“Honey, let me –”
“He had that in his death. Ben, no doubt, no fuckin’ doubt thought about Felicia in his final moments. I can take that. Fuck, I buy it, I want that, my last thoughts on this earth to be of you. But they didn’t know. They had no fuckin’ clue what they left behind. I knew. I lived that shit twice. And I was not going to do that to you.”
“Please, Sam. I –”
“I love you, Kia.”
My breath left me and I stared. I wasn’t breathing but my eyes were still forming tears and they were falling.
Sam’s thumbs slipped through them but his eyes didn’t leave mine when he semi-repeated, “I love you, baby.”
“Sam,” I breathed then said no more. I had no words to say. I couldn’t even think.
I could only feel.
And what I felt felt fucking great.
“You cannot leave me,” he whispered, his hands tightening on my face and he repeated, “You cannot leave me.”
“Okay,” I whispered back, my hands tightening too.
He either didn’t hear me or decided to ignore me because he continued.
“You walked into that dining room, baby, and you know, the minute I saw you, I wanted to fuck you. Two days later, I saw you outside havin’ a drink and even before you looked at me with tears in your eyes, just when I saw you sittin’ there, I was annoyed, thought you were playin’ games, and I didn’t care. Just you sittin’ there I knew it was you.”
He knew it was me.
Me.
I closed my eyes.
“Look at me,” Sam ordered quietly and I opened them. “Weeks after that, Kia, I saw you standing in my kitchen writing a grocery list, doing nothing, just writing a grocery list. But you’d just made me laugh and, just like you, you made me do it hard. That shit with Gordo, with Luci, losin’ Ben, Felicia tryin’ to off herself, that shit’s too much, it wears you down. I hadn’t laughed like that in months, not since Gordo died and in that moment, you in the kitchen, I realized I did it all the time with you. There were times before, a lot of them, I’d look at you and feel your pull, so strong. I wanted to fight it, deny it but I couldn’t, you wouldn’t let me and I didn’t get it. But seein’ you standing in my kitchen, effortlessly beautiful, writing a fuckin’ grocery list after you made me laugh like that, I knew what it was. I got it. I knew it was more. I knew that wasn’t an offer. That was a promise. Even with all the shit goin’ down with you, shit that would wear any other woman down, it didn’t with you and you gave me that from the beginning. And it hit me then that was what my life would be like if I lived the whole of it with you. And I knew I couldn’t live without you.”
Oh. My. God.
He couldn’t live without me.
His face got close. “You cannot leave me. You can’t. I can’t live without you.”
He couldn’t live without me.
He was in hell, just like me.
And just like he did for me, I showed him heaven.
“Sam,” I whispered, melting into him, “I said okay.”
“Never,” he returned immediately.
“Sorry?”
“Promise you will never leave me.”
“Sam, honey, I love you.”
“But you left me.”
“Right, because you left me. But now you’re back and you just gave me all of you. I needed it; you came all the way to England and gave it to me so now that I have you, all of you, I promise you, honey, I will never leave you.”
He stared at me and I let him.
Then he said, “You went on a date.”
Oh man.
“It wasn’t a date,” I told him.
“Looked like a date,” he told me.
“Well, it wasn’t. We had coffee. I was only there fifteen minutes. That’s not a date.”
“So who was he?”
“Some guy I met at a museum. He was nice, friendly, asked me for coffee so he could tell me what parts of London I should see. He’s from here.”
“It was a date.”
I felt my eyes narrow and snapped, “Sam! He was just being friendly!”
“To you, because you’re clueless about bein’ beautiful. To him, he wanted in there.”
He was, of course, right.
But…