Heaven and Hell (Heaven and Hell #1)(100)

When Sam’s plate was put in front of him, he looked at it a nanosecond then his eyes instantly cut to me.

I tried to stop my laughter therefore I snorted.

“What?” Mom asked upon hearing the snort.

“Nothing,” I answered.

Mom glanced between the two of us then unusually let it go.

Sam tucked in but I imagined he did it while mentally adding about a hundred more pushups to his workout the next day.

Dinner was good. Dinner was fun. Dinner was like dinner always was when we all got together – a happy occasion that we cherished because we all weren’t together very often.

Dinner was also more insight for Sam into me, my family, how we interacted, the deep love we felt for each other. My family talked, shared stories, laughed over history and, without anyone mentioning it but with everyone feeling it, we enjoyed a time when we could all be us without Cooter sitting at the table like a big, pink elephant in the room.

Sam was involved though quietly. He chuckled, he laughed out loud, he gave me warm looks and my family warm smiles.

But although Gitte was Gitte, involved, sharing her own tales not only of her times with us but of her life with Kyle in Tennessee and her own family and friends, Sam did not.

At all.

He wasn’t removed. He just wasn’t sharing. I didn’t understand how he pulled it off but he definitely did.

I didn’t think anyone noticed but I did and it was beginning to nag at me.

We left Gitte and Kyle with Mom and Dad since they had a nice guest room and I did not and Sam and I went home. Sam told me he needed to check in with his crew of badasses and he went to the kitchen. I camped out on the couch with my photo albums. My goal, sorting the pictures I wanted to keep and dumping the pictures of Cooter.

I did not want to do this but everything in my house had to be sifted through. I’d already given away all of Cooter’s clothes. I’d also already boxed up his belongings and Dad took them to his parents’ house so they could have whatever they wanted.

But now it was onto the hard stuff and I decided to get through the worst of it first then move onto what wouldn’t suck as much.

The tension I felt in my shoulders just looking at Cooter in pictures grew tighter when I sensed Sam walking in. On the floor beside the couch was a pile of Cooter memories as well as my entire wedding album. I didn’t want Sam to see any of them. I also didn’t want to hide.

He’d mentioned more than once that he liked that I was “transparent” so, as difficult as it was, I kept flipping through the album in my lap.

Sam crouched beside the pile on the floor, picked up a photo and studied it.

I pretended to ignore him, pulled another photo out of the album and tossed it to the floor.

Sam dropped the photo he was studying without a word then twisted my wedding album towards him.

I deep breathed.

He flipped it open. I flipped a page.

“Baby, f**k,” he whispered and my eyes slid to him to see his head bent to look at the album. “Beautiful,” he finished then his gaze came to mine.

I looked down to see a full page photo of myself standing alone in my awesome wedding dress carrying my huge-ass bouquet and then my eyes went back to him.

I liked what he said just as much as I hated him knowing I was stupid enough to give it to Cooter which was to say a lot.

“Thanks,” I whispered back.

He looked down at the album and flipped a page. I looked down at mine and did the same.

“What are you doin’ with this stuff?” he asked.

“Giving it to Cooter’s parents,” I answered.

“Come again?”

I knew those words weren’t directed at the floor and I found I was right when my head turned to him again and I saw his eyes on me.

“I’m giving all of it to Cooter’s parents.”

“Why?”

Uh… why?

“Why not?”

He stared at me. Then he shifted so his ass was on the couch at my bent legs.

“You tight with them?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s a nice thing to do, you givin’ them memories of that piece of shit, but you don’t have to do it,” Sam told me.

“I know,” I told him.

“So, you’re not tight with them, why you doin’ it?”

I looked at him. Then I looked at the floor. Then I looked back at Sam.

Then I said, “I don’t know.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Sam returned immediately and I blinked.

“What?”

“They know what kind of man they raised?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated but that was a semi-lie. Cooter’s Mom was beaten down and broken, just like me. Cooter’s Dad was a dick, just like him. They knew or at least his Mom did.

After Cooter died, Cooter’s Dad was beside himself with grief in the way a man like him could be beside himself with grief. He blustered and boiled over and got drunk and told anyone who would listen that if Milo Cloverfield got anywhere near him, he’d pull Milo’s intestines out with his bare hands. Cooter’s Mom retreated, got even more quiet than normal and anytime I saw her, which luckily was only briefly the day after Cooter died and then again at the funeral, she looked at me in a way that made my heart clench and my flesh crawl. Pain and grief mixed with jealousy.