The Devil's Fire Page 18

  “Oh no, this Mom is not the one that I grew up with. I don’t even know this one very well.”

  She tapped the book’s cover. “Well you should, any Mom who is down with the liberation is cool.”

  “Yeah, I know, I agree. It’s just weird. She was so—I mean, when I grew up here she was the one who told me to slow down. She got upset when I did crazy things, she wasn’t the free spirit like my dad was. He always supported everything that I did. It’s like she took on some of his personality or something. It’s just taking some time to get used to it.”

  “If this book is how she is now then I love her—hard.”

  “Oh no, she’s cool, but I kind of feel like the parent and not the kid.”

  Avery smiled. “You are a grown ass woman, Abi. You left that child behind a long time ago.”

  I walked up to the couch and sat down next to her. “You’re right.”

  She smiled at me. “Let me see that tattoo.”

  I stood up and turned around, pulling my shirt off so that she could see my back. I didn’t have a bra on, but Avery is like my sister. I don’t even think twice about things like this with her. She sat up and stared at it.

  “That is so badass, damn it! I should have gotten a tattoo, what was I thinking?”

  I turned my head and smiled at her. “It wasn’t that bad, in fact, it felt good—in a weird way.”

  I heard a voice behind me. “What felt good?”

  I turned my head back and immediately cupped my breasts as Sam stood there and stared at me. Excellent, two guys had seen me topless in the house now. At least I had a flawless record.

  “Sam,” I leaned down and grabbed my shirt, quickly turning to face Avery while he stepped up to my back.

  “That is beautiful,” he said quietly. I slipped my shirt back on and had to re-do the messy bun on the top of my head. I turned back around, and he rubbed his hand through his now shaggy hair. He needed a haircut. He was never this bohemian.

  I suddenly noticed the thick glasses on his face. I pointed at them. “They look good on you, I meant to mention that when I ran into you at Culver’s, but I forgot.”

  “Thanks.”

  I fiddled with my hands, and Avery sighed behind us.

  “For shit’s sake, go already. You two need to talk about something—go.” She waved her hand, and Sam looked at her and noticed the ice on her crotch.

  “Should I even ask?”

  She laughed. “Rough date.”

  “Wow.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She got pierced, down there.”

  “Oh yeah?” Sam said as he grinned.

  Avery winked at him and started to lift the bag of ice. “Yeah baby, wanna see?”

  I grabbed Sam’s arm. “No, you don’t. I got tricked into that first thing this morning.”

  “But I—” he started to say as I pushed him out of the room and waved at Avery.

  “Don’t forget the sweets!”

  I yelled back at her. “I won’t!”

  We walked down the sidewalk next to one another. But it felt foreign and not in a good way. The awkward silence was about to kill me. This wasn’t us. It never had been from the moment that I had met him. We always talked, regardless of the situation. We just seemed to have come to a crossroads of sorts, and I was fearful of what it meant.

  I didn’t know if we could survive this one. I sure hoped that we could. I wanted Sam in my life, as the friend that I loved and cherished. I appreciated that he cared about me, even if it meant that he cared more and in a different way than I did.

  Love is weird like that. You don’t get to pick and choose who or how hard you love. The only thing you can hope for is to find your people in this life and hold on tight.

  Sam was my people, and I wanted it to stay that way.

  “I’m a dick,” he said quietly. I looked at him. “Sam, don’t—”

  “Will you be quiet for one minute, Abi?”

  I closed my mouth and let him say what he needed to say.

  “You never lied to me, not once. You told me that you loved him and that what we have is a great friendship and instead of respecting that, I—I fantasized about us, not in a bad way, of course, it was more about the future.”

  I took a small breath. “Like house stuff?”

  “Oh no, not marriage, just being with you. I projected this whole life onto you and it was unfair of me to do that. It didn’t hit me until you did, literally, as corny as that sounds.”

  I stopped and looked at him as he turned to face me. He still had some bruising left over from his fight with Jack. They had both tried to destroy each other in the hospital that night.

  I reached up to touch the butterfly bandage on his eyebrow. He grinned at me and touched it before I could.

  He spoke, but not out of anger. “I guess we’ll both have a scar from him now, huh?”

  I sighed, looking down at my hands and toying with the scar on my fingertip, then letting my eyes float over to my wrist.

  I looked back up and pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Listen, I appreciate you, I do. I totally get it. You heard about this,” I raised my wrist. “Then you show up at the hospital, and he’s there. I don’t blame you for thinking what you did, but I swear that I’m not suicidal, and Jack is not abusing me. You have no idea what we do together. I love him. I do. Everything that we do is because I want to, and it’s not him beating me down, or brainwashing me. To be honest, it’s offensive to me that you would even think that, because you know me, Sam. You do. I have never lied to you, not once.”

  He took a long breath and looked up at the sky and then back at me. “Abi, I know, and to be honest, I was the crazy one here. I mean shit, Liv came home with me, and I did the same thing to her as I did before. I think that I’m just scared to have a real relationship and honestly, it was easier to fantasize about being with you because deep down in my heart I knew that it wouldn’t happen. It was just an excuse to avoid the fact that I don’t love Liv the way that she loves me. I never have.”

  “Well, you need to fix that.”

  He looked down at his feet. “I know, but we won’t be together. I don’t even know if we can be friends.”

  I touched his arm. “But you won’t even know until you tell her everything that you just told me. I mean Sam, come on. Relationships are built on great friendships first, what I have with Jack is not how it usually happens, but it is what it is.”

  He nodded to me as I leaned in and hugged him.

  “You have really nice boobs.”

  I laughed as I rolled my eyes. “Oh my God, shut up.”

  I backed away and started to walk as he walked along side me. “We could even it out, I could show you mine and then we’re even.”

  I laughed even harder. “Thanks, I’ve had enough man-junk in my face lately.”

  He stopped, and I reached back and took his hand. “I have so much to tell you,” I said as I drug him along with me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  JUST YOU

  __________________________

  We sat on the edge of Old Mill Bridge and stared out over the water. I took a bite of my ice cream cone, and so did Sam. I laughed and swallowed, nodding as he stared at me. He had a little ice cream on his lip. He licked it off.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” he asked. The look on his face was a mixture of shock and disgust.

  “No, he stripped down and jumped, and then your dad found us here. Me, half-naked, and him all erect and bonding with nature.”

  He lowered his cone. Perhaps I ruined his appetite. “He didn’t say a thing to me, but there was one night that he came home looking like he ate something bad. Maybe that was it.”

  “Oh, trust me, it was.”

  Sam laughed and licked his ice cream cone along the side of it. I watched him and missed this part of my life so much. This natural feeling, no uneasiness, no awkward moments—just me and Sam, laughing and talking like we used to.

&nbs
p; He looked out at the countryside, watching the water roll down the river. The sounds of water hitting rock was such a familiar noise from my childhood. I couldn’t count how many times I had come here. “Well, I’m sorry that I missed it,” he said.

  I lowered my ice cream cone. “Trust me. You’re not. Especially when he bent over, right over there,” I pointed off to the side. “And your dad shined a light on his butt crack, all bent over with stuff and things hanging out.”

  Sam eyed his ice cream cone and lowered it. “I don’t know if I can eat this now.”

  I reached over and pushed his hand back up, and he ate some more of it.

  “How long are you staying here?” I asked him, and he sighed and lowered the cone again.

  “Well, that’s a great question. I could go back, but I would be job hunting.”

  His admission stunned me. “What? What happened to your job?”

  He stood up and leaned against the thick iron bar. “Oh, I didn’t get fired, if that’s what you’re thinking. Jack’s family had nothing to do with it.”

  “Better not.” I pushed myself up and finished off my cone. I chewed and swallowed while Sam watched me. “I just—I don’t know. It felt like I was spinning my wheels.”

  I leaned against the iron bar across from him. “I totally get that. I do.”

  He looked me over. “I still can’t believe that you turned down the job at Ford. I mean, that was your dream job. I remember you talking about it before we were even out of high school.”

  I nodded, looking out over the river. It looked a lot calmer in the daylight. “No, I remember, but it just didn’t feel right. Hard lesson learned.”

  He leaned down. “Was it Jack?”

  I laughed. “Well yeah, at the time it was. He pretty much got me the job. It felt so wrong, like I didn’t earn it myself. I didn’t want it that way. It would’ve never felt right to me.”

  Sam leaned and held onto the iron bar, he spun around it and ended up on the backside of it. He had always been a bigger daredevil than I was. He hung onto his need for adrenaline rushes much longer than I did, too.

  “I felt that way at my job at the Mirror Gazette, like they did me some kind of favor. It never really felt like I earned it.”

  “Why? You got the job there, that wasn’t anyone else, Sam.”

  “Well, I did, but it turned into some weird vendetta against Jack, of course. It started way before you even came along. I should have left long before then, the only positive thing that came out of it was meeting up with you again. I’m grateful for that.”

  I studied his expression. “Yeah, what’s up with that? I mean, I know you said that he wasn’t happy about you digging into his personal life after Rose, but did something else happen between you two? And yes, I’m grateful that I ran into you there, if you had left, then maybe we would have never met again.”

  Sam nodded to me. “Yeah—no, I’m so glad that you came in, but who knows? We would have probably seen each other here, sometime, right?”

  I laughed. “Great deflection, but seriously, Sam, what happened between you two?”

  Sam bit his lip and buried his hands in his front pockets. I knew what that meant. He was either uncomfortable, or the truth was about to be revealed. It was the later of the two.

  “Jack stole my fiancé.”

  “What? You were engaged?”

  The muscles in his jaw tightened, then relaxed. He wanted to talk to me, but I could tell that he was still irritated about it.

  “Yeah, I was. Her name was Chloe. She was wild, to say the least. She liked to cliff dive, hike the mountains. She went all out. I met her at work. She came in to buy advertising for the company that she worked for, and we hit it off. We were together for two years and then we went to a dinner hosted by the Landon’s and that’s where they met. I mean, Chloe and Jack. That guy…man, Abi, I get that you love him, I do. I know he’s handsome and has money and can basically give you anything, but he had no morals at all. He knew that we were together and still,” he paused as if the memory was painful to him. He cleared his throat and continued talking to me. “Well, things happened, and I hunted him down one night in a club, and beat him senseless. I ended up in jail, and so did he. His lawyer bailed me out, and I returned to my job with a restraining order against me so that I wasn’t allowed to attend his functions or go to any press conferences. That’s why I missed the whole thing at his house with the two of you after he saved you from the bus.”

  I shook my head. “First of all, I’m sorry that happened to you. Secondly—it would have been helpful if you would have told me that, I don’t know, last year? That way I could understand this weird thing between the two of you. And third, I don’t love Jack because he has money. In fact, it would be much easier if he didn’t have much at all. That way it wouldn’t seem so foreign to me. I’m still feeling out of place in his world, but I am in his world now, just as much as I was before.” I paused. “And Sam, I want you in my world too, but this battle between the two of you has to end.”

  “No, you’re right, it does and I’m sorry. I am, Abi. Here I was, acting as if I was all noble and fighting for your honor when beneath it all, I was still mad about Chloe, and she—I loved her. I did.”

  I nodded. “I can tell, have you thought about trying to—”

  He cut me off. “Oh no. No, it would never work. The last I heard she was on a boat in the Bahama’s with her girlfriend, which is totally fine, and probably totally hot,” he paused and looked off for a second. I hit his arm as I laughed. He looked back at me. “But yeah, that’s done. Like over, over and done.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but Jack isn’t like that anymore.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure, Abi? I mean, just be careful, that’s all that I’m saying. Pay attention. I just don’t want to see you get hurt again, not by him.”

  “I can’t promise anything, it’s life, Sam. I can’t predict the future.”

  He tilted his head. “What?” I asked.

  “You—you just seem all grown up now. It’s nice, you seem more confident, grounded.”

  I grinned. “Thanks, I do feel better. I feel more like me now. Like I’m starting to understand what I want and where I want to go.”

  “And where is that?”

  I rubbed my hands on my legs. “I thought that maybe I could start a business of my own, a paper. Something small, take out a business loan and just try to make it into something.”

  His eyebrow rose. “Oh yeah? I didn’t know that you were interested in journalism.”

  “Oh I like writing, but it’s not for me to write. I would handle the marketing and promotion, of course.”

  “Well, running a paper isn’t easy, you need the right people.”

  I winked at him. “I know.”

  He pointed at himself. “What? Me?”

  I nodded as he stepped up to me and then the hug came. We rocked back and forth very slowly as I listened to his heart beat.

  “It’s just a thought, but I would love to have you with me, Sam. You’ve done it already, and I trust you.”

  He looked down. “And you love me.”

  I laughed, closing my eyes. “I do, I do love you.”

  I sat on the porch swing and tapped the phone on my leg. It had been a couple of weeks since Jack and I had been together and still nothing. I just couldn’t wait any longer.

  I held it up and typed in what I needed to say.

  I MISS YOU.

  I bit my lip and lowered it into my lap until it beeped, and my heart fluttered in my chest. I lifted it up so that I could see the screen. I grinned.

  THERE’S MY GIRL

  I took a slow breath and typed again.

  WHEN DO I GET TO SEE YOU?

  The pause sucked. I stared at the screen and hoped that he would answer me. Then my phone rang, and I almost dropped it. I scrambled as I saw his name on the screen.

  “Oh man, okay.” I stood up and walked the porch, letting it ring three times
before I pressed the button and placed it to my ear.

  “Hello.”

  “Abigail.”

  I bit the tip of my finger and sat down on the steps.

  “So,” I whispered.

  He quickly replied, “So.”

  He wasn’t making this any easier.

  “I was just thinking about you, Jack.”

  I could hear his breath release into the phone. “I think about you all of the time.”

  “Well, you could call or text when that happens. That’s what these phones are for.”

  He laughed. “I could, and I would have, but it’s been somewhat crazy here.”

  “Why? What happened after I left? I was worried about you.”

  “My father, he’s dead, Abigail.”

  I stood up and stared out at the street. I saw my mom walking toward the house. I thought about her and how she would feel to know about Peter.

  “Oh my God, Jack. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, he was a monster.”

  I paused and thought about it. He was, but still, he was the only father that Jack had. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I’m—I’m at a loss for words. How’s your mom?”

  He laughed into the phone. “I appreciate that, baby, I do, but I know that you despise her and you should.”

  “Well, I do feel sorry, Jack. Someone dying is always sad. Even him.”

  “Okay. She is devastated, held up in the house and we have it surrounded with FBI agents right now.”

  I shook my head. “What?”

  He laughed under his breath. “Abigail, she’s probably celebrating with a glass of the most expensive wine. She hated him, almost as much as everyone else did. She has been with the lawyers as they sort his mess of a will out. He must have made one hundred revisions to it over the years.”

  “Well, you’re his heir.”

  “Oh, I don’t care, honestly. I told my mother that I only want one thing, well two. I asked for two things.”

  I tapped my lip and turned as my mom walked behind me on the porch, she smiled, and I smiled right back at her.

  “Really? What?”