Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(42)

I shake my head and turn away, but I’m all too aware of his sudden attention. It feels like a searchlight against my face, both warm and terrifyingly revealing. I’m grateful that the clouds have made it artificially dark tonight. I am conscious of the cold glass of the beer bottle I’m holding, the chilly beads of condensation slipping down the back of my hand.

I want to kiss this man. I want him to kiss me back.

It comes as a shock to me, a genuine and awful shock; I haven’t had this impulse in a long, long time. I’d thought it was gone, burned away in the inferno of Melvin’s crimes, of the betrayal of trust that reached all the way inside me. Yet here I am, trembling, wanting Sam Cade to press his lips to mine. And I think I know he can feel it, too. It’s like an invisible wire pulling tight between us.

It must have scared him as much as it did me, because he suddenly drinks the rest of his beer in quick, thirsty gulps. “I should be going before that storm hits,” he says, and his voice sounds off, different, deeper and darker. I don’t say anything, because I can’t. I can’t imagine what I can say, really. I just nod, and he stands up and walks past me to the steps.

He’s two down when I finally get my voice under control and say, “Sam.”

He pauses. I can hear the muttering grumble of thunder again, and another flash of lightning rips the sky, clear as a knife slash.

I roll the bottle between my hands and say, “Coming back tomorrow?”

He almost turns. “Still want me back?”

“Of course,” I say. “Yes.”

He nods, and then he’s gone, walking quickly away. As he does, the security lights we’ve installed come on, alert to any motion. I watch him as he walks to the gate, to the road, and he’s halfway home before the lights click out again.

The rain starts five minutes later. A hesitant patter at first, and then a steady soft knocking on the roof, and then a thick curtain that shimmers off the edges of the porch. I hope Sam made it home before it hit. I hope the downpour doesn’t wash the garden away.

I sit in the quiet, listening to the constant roar of the rain, and I finish my beer.

I’m in trouble, I think.

Because I’ve never felt this vulnerable before. Not since I was Gina Royal.



It takes a while. Slowly, almost imperceptibly over the last of the hot, muggy summer, Sam and I relax our guards, put aside our armor. We allow brushes of hands without flinching, smiles without premeditation. It feels real. It feels solid.

I finally begin to feel fully human.

I don’t fool myself that Sam can fix what’s broken in me. I don’t think he deludes himself about it, either. We’re both scarred—I have been able to tell that from the beginning. Maybe only the truly damaged can accept each other in the way we do.

I think about Mel less and less.

I’m glad when the temperature starts to cool on the slippery side of September. School reconvenes, and Connor and Lanny both seem happy. Whoever Connor’s bullies were (and he’s never confessed to me), his growing pack of friends more than makes up for it. They arrive every Thursday evening for their D&D game, which goes on well into the late hours. I’m delighted by their enthusiasm, their passion, their joy in imagination. Lanny pretends she thinks it’s gross, but she doesn’t; she starts checking fantasy books out of the library, and she lends them to him when she’s done. She stops calling him Squirtle since his friends said they thought it was cool.

At the end of September, Sam and I sit in the late, late evening in the living room, watching an old movie. The kids are long off to bed, and I have a glass of wine in my hand, leaning against his warmth. It’s is a sweet delight, this quiet peace. I’m not thinking, in that moment, about Mel, or about anything at all. The wine helps ease the constant, vigilant anxiety in me, and it blurs the fear, too.

“Hey,” his voice says quietly by my ear. The tickle of his breath is a tease. “You still awake?”

“Very much,” I say, then take another drink. He takes the glass from my hand to drain it. “Hey!”

“Sorry,” Sam says. “I need a little courage right now. Because I’m going to ask you something.”

I freeze. I can’t breathe. I can’t swallow. I can’t run. I just sit, waiting for the mask to come off.

He says, “Do you mind if I kiss you, Gwen?”

My mind is blank. A snowfield on a glacier, cold and smooth and empty. I’m stunned by the silence inside, the sudden and violent recession of fear.

And then I feel warm. It happens in an instant, as if the warmth was there, waiting, all the time.

I say, “I’ll mind if you don’t.”

It’s a tentative thing at first, until we both get our confidence and our bearings. His lips are soft and strong at once, and I can’t help but remember Mel’s kisses, always somehow plastic. There’s none of that studied movement. Sam kisses like someone who means it. He tastes of the rich, dark cherry flavors of the Bordeaux. Everything about that kiss makes me realize how little I know about life, how much I lost in marrying Melvin Royal. How much time I’ve wasted on him.

Sam is the one to break it, and he pulls back, breathing hard, saying nothing at all. I lean against him. He puts his arms around me, and instead of feeling confined, I feel included. Protected.

“Sam—”