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Sam stops for a second, and he looks like he’s getting emotional. “My father is a son of a bitch, Fiona. He’s not a good man. He’s a liar and a cheater, but my mother loves him. This would have destroyed her. I was in shock, and I didn’t believe her, but she told me she’d give me proof, and after that she expected her money. Then you called my name, and I knew what it would look like. I knew that I was with a different girl, that it seemed like I’d cheated. But I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? If I told you right then what happened and Lacy heard, she could destroy my entire family. I couldn’t say anything in my defense or risk that. It killed me.
“But I had to protect her, Fiona. My mother is a good person, and she doesn’t deserve what people and the media would say about her if this came out. So I made the decision to stay quiet. Lacy showed me her birth certificate, signed by my father. And I started giving her money from my trust fund. Twenty thousand every month. Ever since. That’s the truth.”
His words hang in the air between us, and I don’t know how to feel. I’ve seen the proof of the payments, so it makes sense. “That’s what happened?”
“Yes.” You can feel it bone deep when someone is telling the truth, and I know that Sam is.
Everything makes sense, and yet I feel anger rise up in my chest again. I knock back what’s left of my drink and stand to pace. “You could have told me,” I said. “You could have told me later, privately. I would have never given away your secret.”
“I couldn’t risk that.”
It’s like a slap in the face. “You don’t trust me? You didn’t trust me?”
Sam stands. “Of course I trust you. Fiona, I was young. I was scared. Lacy knew exactly what she was doing when she chose me. I never should have had to make that kind of decision at that age. But my family was already struggling internally. Things that I could never share, and after you disappeared it was the only thing I had left. I didn’t want it to disappear too.”
Angry tears appear in my eyes. “All these years I’ve thought the worst of you. You let me think the worst of you. Every day I’ve wondered why it was that I wasn’t enough and she was. Why you would go and be with her when I thought we were happy.”
“I know.”
He takes a step toward me, and my anger lashes out. I try to slap him, but he catches my hand. The other hand too, so that I’m trapped. “Let me go.”
“Are you going to hit me?”
“Maybe,” I say.
“Then I’ll keep your hands right here for now.”
I try to free my hands. “You can’t say that you don’t deserve it.”
“I do,” he says. “But you promised to listen to everything.”
I bite my lips to keep from blurting out something else.
“This morning, what you said, I realized that I needed to tell you as much as you needed to be told. That I was wrong to keep this from my mother. I probably could have saved her pain by telling her what kind of man her husband is. I haven’t decided if I’m going to yet, but this needed to be gone from between us because I lo—” He stops, takes a breath. “I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you, even when it hurt. And that moment seeing you at the party, I felt whole again, even though I was being ripped apart all over again.” He’s so close to me I can barely breathe. “I can’t lose you again, Fi.”
Fi. What he always used to call me. The angry tears I’ve been holding back spill over, and he closes the distance between us, kissing me. It’s perfect, cleansing and healing and I can’t stop crying and hiccupping. He pulls back, finally releasing my hands so he can cradle my face. “I know that I’ve made mistake after mistake. Can you ever forgive me?”
I take a breath, because it’s all I’ve ever wanted him to say. “I’m still royally pissed at you,” I manage to get out.
He grins. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”
He kisses me again, and I melt into him. This is what it feels like to be home. That feeling in your bones that even though you’re broken and bruised, you’re safe. “Feel free to work off your anger at me in the bedroom,” he whispers.
I laugh through my tears. “You bet your ass I will.”
12
Waking up in Sam’s bed feels amazing every time. It’s been a week since our reconciliation, and I haven’t spent a night in my own bed. One could argue that we have a lot of catching up to do. Ten years of catching up. There’s no doubt in my mind that if things hadn’t gotten so twisted, we would have stayed together. We’re lucky, Sam and me. We found each other so early, and I know most people don’t believe in soul mates, but I do. And Sam is mine.
