Beyond What is Given(89)

“It’s not that easy.”

She wound her hands through my hair. “It can be if we let it.”

I knew where this was leading and couldn’t stomach it going any further. She was much too close, and not in a good way. In a way that sent me back five, hell, six years, to when I loved her without concept of what that really meant. Where I’d dated my best friend because it seemed the most logical step. With one touch, she took me back to a time where I’d confused infatuation and love with being in love.

And now, I knew better. Now I had Sam.

Grace was an anachronism in my life, and as much as I’d missed her, as easy as it was to remember how I felt, she wasn’t what I needed, because I wasn’t the same guy who’d loved her in high school.

I cupped her cheek in my hand and prepared to shatter her. Again.

“It’s been five years, and I know this is hard to explain, but my feelings for you…” I took a breath and prepared for the worst. “Grace, I’m in love—” With Sam.

“I knew it.” She kissed me before I could get it out. A faint clicking sound resonated in my brain.

I froze. Her lips on mine were familiar and foreign at the same time, the wrong texture, the wrong pressure, the wrong taste. Because she was the wrong woman.

I jerked back to break the kiss.

“Grace, we can’t.”

“Oh, please, don’t stop on our account,” Josh said from behind me, his voice dead and even. That clicking had been the door opening.

I turned slowly, my hand falling away from Grace’s cheek.

Sam stood next to Josh, her eyes wide, her lower lip trembling. He stepped in front of her and used his arm to guide her around his back as he murdered me with his eyes. He was protecting her? From me. Because Grace was in my lap, with her hands in my hair, wearing my sweatshirt, and Sam had walked in to see my hand holding Grace’s face as she kissed me.

Fuck. My. Life.

This was the shit that happened in movies, not real life.

“Sam, this isn’t—”

“Shut the f*ck up. Now.” Josh enunciated each word more than clearly. Then he turned so I couldn’t see Sam, and took her upstairs, guiding her under his arm.

I all but dumped Grace onto the couch and ran. “Sam!”

Josh stood in her doorway. “No. Turn your ass around and go back downstairs.”

He may have had a couple inches on me, but I had at least thirty pounds of muscle on him. “Move. I need to talk to her.”

“I love you like a brother, but I’m two seconds away from beating the shit out of you,” Josh fired back.

I stepped toward him. “No offense, but we both know how that fight would end, and I’ll finish you if it means I get to Sam. Grace kissed me. I didn’t kiss her back. You walked in at pretty much the worst possible second.”

“I don’t give a f*ck if she tripped into your clothes and landed on your mouth, Masters. Sam was my friend long before you were.” He crossed his arms.

“Let him in, Josh,” Sam said quietly from inside her room.

“Can I hit him first?”

My eyes narrowed, but he looked unapologetic.

“No,” she responded. “Just let him in. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” he said to her, looking straight at me.

“I’m the guy who turned himself in with you for that f*cking polar bear, Walker. You really think I’d hurt her like this on purpose?”

“I don’t care about the why, only that you did.” He stepped to the side, and I headed into her room.

She’d pulled down a suitcase and two large duffels onto the bed and was stuffing them with her clothes.

“Where are you going?”

“Away from you,” she answered, pulling another stack of clothes from the closet and shoving them into the suitcase, hangers and all.

“That was not what it looked like, and yes, I know how cliché that sounds.”

“You’re right, it is cliché. Then again so was walking in on you and your girlfriend. God, I’m so f*cking stupid. I knew. I knew! And I still let it happen.”

“Stop, Samantha. Talk to me.”

She spun, the streaming tears only making the green of her eyes brighter. Misery was etched on every line of her face. “What is the point?”

“You can’t leave. Not like this.”

“Then how? Maybe the next time when I walk in to see your girlfriend wearing your sweater? Then your boxers? Your mouth?”

“She kissed me. I stopped it!”

She clapped. “Bravo. Extra points for stopping it after you obviously let her onto your lap and into your arms.”

Shit. She’s right. “You’re right. God, Sam. You’re right. I should have stopped her when she laid across my lap while I read to her. I should have told her about us right then.”

“I shouldn’t have asked you to wait,” she said, then pressed her lips together as more tears fell.

“We both made mistakes, and we handled this all wrong. Let me get her back to North Carolina, and we’ll figure this out between us.”

She shook her head. “There’s no us. We’re done.”

My breath rushed like I’d been punched. It hurt. Fuck, did it hurt. I blinked, half expecting to see Sam holding my ripped-out heart in her hand.