Mess with Me

by Nicole Helm

  “Tori, what do you think you’re going to do with no money and no home and no job?” he called after her.

  She ignored him and whistled at the dog, but Sarge, bless him, sat resolutely at Sam’s feet.

  Tori looked at the dog in shocked outrage. Whatever was going on, this was a big, huge thing, because she was not usually this crazed, and he couldn’t believe she’d changed that much.

  “Fine. I’ll leave you too. Like I need a dog ruining my life.” She started walking away, muttering to herself.

  Yeah, all was not right in Tori Appleby’s world. She’d gotten Sarge as a puppy when they were in college. She’d fed that dog before she’d fed herself some days.

  “Tori, you can stay with me. I have a cabin that’s pretty isolated, and as long as you don’t go skulking around Mile High headquarters, Brandon and Will probably won’t know.”

  She stopped, though she kept her back to him and her shoulders squared. Even though she had that fighter stance, Sam had a feeling she didn’t turn around because there was not much fight left on her face.

  When she finally turned, her eyes were overbright, but her expression was fierce. “You really won’t tell them?”

  He thought about that. Not telling Brandon and Will, especially Will, was a big deal, and he didn’t particularly like it. But Tori had been his friend too. Sometimes closer than Brandon and Will, because the twins had always had each other, a bond that couldn’t be cut. He and Tori had been the outsiders orbiting around the Evans brothers’ sun.

  He couldn’t let her go, and he was surprised to find he wasn’t nearly as afraid of a reminder of his old life as he’d been even a week ago.

  It was Hayley’s influence. Without a doubt.

  “I’ll give you two weeks to screw up the courage to see them. At the end of two weeks, be ready to leave or accept a job.”

  “Job?”

  “The job was always yours, Tori. You were supposed to be a part of this from the very beginning, and Will might have given me a tiny glimpse into what happened between you two, but I don’t know the whole story. I don’t need to know the whole story. But I know those guys, and I know you, and I know we can move past all that shit from before and build this place the way we were going to build it. Together.”

  “And if I don’t agree, and in fact think you’re insane, what then?”

  “Then you have two weeks of a roof over your head and hot meals before you have to move on.”

  “Can you promise on your life that you won’t tell them for two whole weeks?”

  “On my life.”

  “Wait. You don’t value your life enough.”

  Sam thought about that as he bent over and gave Sarge another pat. The dog wagged his tail and panted happily up at him.

  He hadn’t valued his life—not before Abby died, certainly not after, but he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he was actually starting to.

  * * *

  Hayley was going to kill James. Which was a problem, considering that killing a police officer was probably frowned upon. But his condescending bullshit was getting old.

  Hayley realized that just one day of not having much time outside was taking its toll. She wanted to hike. She wanted to camp. She did not want to be here having to somehow prove herself to James.

  She’d taken him around town, and he’d been wholly unimpressed. She’d taken him to dinner in Benson, and he’d spent the entire time talking about a dispatcher position at the department he worked at near Aurora.

  He did not let her talk.

  “This town is dead, Hayley,” James intoned, rummaging through her refrigerator. “How can this be the place you’ve chosen?”

  “Because I like it.”

  He pulled out an apple and bit into it. “There’s no hope for advancement here. There is precisely one bakery, a chainsaw repair shop, which makes no sense, and a doctor’s office. They don’t even have their own PD.”

  “Because the worth of a town is totally based on their ability to have a police department?”

  “I’m just saying that it has something to do with how much potential the town has. You can’t build a life here. Not in a dying town.”

  “I can build a life anywhere I damn well please,” she grumbled, so irritated with him she was ready to storm to her room and slam the door like she’d done as a teenager.

  He frowned at her. “This is not the Hayley I know and love.”

  “Maybe you don’t know or love me, James. This feels like neither, and you certainly don’t have to. We’re not actually related.”

  It was such a nasty thing to say, and she regretted it the minute it came out of her mouth. She was so frustrated and confused, and he was standing there being a total jerk. A really judgmental one, which shouldn’t be all that surprising. James tended toward judgmental, black and white, right and wrong, but she didn’t like it centered on her.

  “That was a low blow,” he said in that cool, dispassionate cop voice.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” She jammed her hands into her hair. “You’re driving me insane. I shouldn’t have to prove my life to you. You don’t have to prove your life to anybody.”

  “That’s because I am living the life my parents wanted me to lead.”

  “And are you happy doing that?”

  “Ecstatic! All I ever wanted to be was a cop, and all I ever needed to have was a family who I love and would do anything to protect. That family includes you, whether we’re actually related or not.”

  “I love you, James. I do. You have been an amazing brother to me.” He could be this overbearing, obnoxious jerk, but it did come from a good place. “But—”

  “Oh, but you have new ones now. Blood ones.”

  The snide way he delivered that line hurt. Because, as much as he was being a jerk, she was being a child sniping back at him. He was here because he wanted to protect her, but also maybe because he was a little insecure about his place in her life.

  “That’s not it at all,” she said gently. “I need someone to listen to me and believe me and have faith in me. I know what I want. But even if you don’t get it, even if you would never want to live here and never want to hike for a living and never want to know that other side of yourself, doesn’t mean it’s wrong for me.”

  “There is no other side of you, Hayley. There is only you. And the family that bent over backwards to take care of you while this family was nowhere near you. We all know what your biological father did to your mother. It baffles me those are the people you want to leave us for.”

  “I’m not leaving you, I’m finding me.”

  “There are outdoor excursion places at home you could work at.”

  Hayley had to swallow down the lump in her throat. She’d thought all she had to do was tell them. Stand up to them. Say, This is me and this is what I want, and they would get it.

  James didn’t get it, and if he refused to get it, she didn’t have a prayer with Mom or Mack. She breathed through the threat of tears. She was strong, she was going to keep standing up until he saw it.

  “My biological father is dead, and I will never know him or face him. That’s fine, more than fine, really. But Brandon and Will are good men who gave me time and space to help me figure out what I wanted. Just because I like it here and feel a belonging here doesn’t mean I’m leaving Mom and Mack or you. It’s not replacement. I don’t know why you can’t—”

  “Whether you want it to be or not, you’re making a choice. It’s a choice of what life you really want to live. You want to live with these guys, work for these guys, and you don’t think Mom’s going to see that as a choice you deliberately made against her wishes?”

  He was right. She didn’t think he should be right, but Mom was only ever going to see this as a betrayal, and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Hayley had to choose between the mother who had done so much, and the life that finally made sense. “Go home, James.” She couldn’t stand him here anymore, making all of her strength and h
ope seem like a farce.

  “I’m going to tell Mom. And Dad.”

  She stared at the man she’d tried to emulate, whose sister she’d tried so hard to be, and now he was turning on her. In ways she had never expected.

  Worst of all, he was right. She might not want it to be a choice, but her family would make it one. It had to be one thing or the other. She couldn’t have both. James wasn’t going to let her. He was going to tell on her.

  “I didn’t realize we were still children.”

  “One of us is.”

  “Yes, the one threatening to tell Mommy on me.”

  “I happen to think you’re making a giant mistake, and because I’m an adult and your brother, I have a responsibility to tell you so. This is all some sort of warped quarter-life crisis, and you’ll come out of it realizing how wrong you are. If I have to bring in Mom and Mack to make that happen, I will. Because I care about you, and the less time this goes on, the less you’ll end up hurt.”

  “I’m going to go,” she managed to say.

  He stared at her, baffled because obviously this was her apartment and her leaving was stupid, but she couldn’t be in here with him anymore. Even the short amount of time it would take him to gather his stuff and leave.

  “I don’t care if you’re here when I get back, but I can’t be around you right now.” With that, she left her apartment and strode to her car, and started to drive.

  At first, she didn’t know where she was going, but she should have known all along that this was the plan in the back of her head. Her car shuddered and made a terrible grinding noise before she parked at the little gravel lot at the path that would lead her to Sam’s cabin.

  The sun had already set, so dusk had crept through the trees and the rocks. It was a little bit eerie, but the only person she knew how to talk to right now was the man on the other end of that pathway.

  He might not like it, he might even send her away, but she had to try to find someone who would listen to her side of things and acknowledge they were valid, just as valid as James’s.

  She walked up the pathway, jumping a few times at the scurrying sounds around her. Probably just squirrels and birds and other things . . . Snakes. She shuddered at the thought. She had no interest in coming face-to-face with a snake.

  When she reached the edge of the clearing without animal confrontation, she breathed a sigh of relief. Sam’s cabin glowed in the dark. She had never been here at dark before, at least not nighttime dark. It was crazy how cozy it looked with light glowing in the windows.

  She trudged up to the front door and knocked politely, maybe a little bit timidly, on the rough-hewn wood.

  Sam opened the door, and it was the strangest most disorienting thing to see a smile on his face. Oh, it quickly disappeared. Pretty much the minute his eyes landed on hers, but for a moment he had been smiling. Sam had been smiling.

  What was he smiling at?

  She heard a woman’s voice.

  “Oh good, it’s just you,” the woman from earlier—Tori—said, hopping out from the bathroom door.

  Hayley could only blankly stare. Sam had invited this woman into his remote, isolated cabin, and Sam was smiling with her. This other woman. In his cabin. In.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .” She backed away a little bit. There was that disorienting feeling that had been gone for the past few weeks: not belonging anywhere.

  “Is everything okay?” Sam’s concern was absolutely no comfort because clearly he would much rather be spending time with this woman. And that was fine. That was fine. Tori was an old friend and Hayley was . . . well, nothing to anybody.

  She had to fight the tears. She could not let him know this was that important to her, because that would be too much. “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.” She whirled away, ready to escape, but Sam’s large, rough hand clamped on her arm, halting her progress.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t possibly meet his gaze and have to explain that she had thought she and Sam had something special. That she was the only one he ever reacted to. And she’d been wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. About Sam. About her life here.

  What wasn’t she wrong about right now?

  “Hayley.”

  “Please let me go.” He gently turned her around to face him, and she realized they were on his little stoop and he had closed the door behind him. So the Tori woman was inside and it was just Sam and Hayley on the outside.

  Of course. Because Sam didn’t want Tori to know that there had been any kissing between them.

  But Sam’s eyes, blue and unfathomable even in just the gleam from his windows, looked at her with a kind of concern she couldn’t remember anyone ever feeling for her. Well, her family, but only when she was finally happy. They were worried when she was happy. Fine when she was miserable.

  “What happened?” Sam said, and there was a gentleness to his tone that very nearly undid her. She didn’t want to come undone in front of him. She was the strong one in this weird pseudo-relationship they had going on.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come up here. I had a fight with my brother, and I was just so angry, and I didn’t have anywhere to go. I . . . I interrupted you, and I’m so sorry. Please pretend I didn’t come, and you can go back to . . .” She was afraid her voice was going to break, so she took a deep breath. “I don’t want to interrupt your time with your friend.”

  Friend. She’d never hated the word more in her life.

  “Come with me.” Sam’s command was succinct and he didn’t wait for her to respond. He pulled her down the stairs and around the cabin to the back. Once they were at the back of the house, he sat her down on the rickety chair that took up most of the space on his back porch.

  “Tell me about the fight you had with your brother.”

  Since she didn’t want to cry in front of Sam, she focused on him instead. “Since when do you want to hear about my problems?”

  “You were the one who came here. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I just needed . . .” She hated that her voice was wavering, but there was no getting out of this. She had come here, so she was going to have to deal with the chance that Sam might see her cry—or at least hear her, since it was dark back here.

  It wasn’t so much the crying as what it represented that she didn’t want Sam to see. Her ridiculous insecurity.

  “James . . . Let’s just say he doesn’t approve of Gracely, or me being here, or any of my choices. He’s kind of jealous of me having these other brothers, and there’s a lot going on, and I was stupid enough to not expect it. I thought they would be happy for me and understand that this has felt more like belonging than that life ever did.”

  Sam didn’t say anything, and she could only make out the barest outline of his features. He opened his mouth a little, and then closed it, more than once.

  “I don’t know why I came here. It’s just that I guess I’ve been able to talk to you about things. And it’s, you know, kind of nice. To have someone to be able to talk to.”

  Still he said nothing and she honestly couldn’t take that. Snippy words or him backing away from real emotion, she could deal with, but him not saying anything? Nope.

  “But I feel stupid and I’m going to go home.” She popped up out of the chair, but Sam stood, blocking her exit. Unless she hopped off the side of the porch. She considered it with a glance.

  Looking back at Sam, he was still blocking her way, impressive arms folded across his broad, impressive chest. Why did he have to be so damn impressive?

  “Sit back down. And if you want my advice, I will give it.”

  “I love how you offering to give me advice sounds like I’ve put a gun to your head.”

  “I can’t say it’s my favorite use of time. Giving advice to people who don’t really need it,” he returned blandly.

  “How can you possibly say that I don’t need it?”

  “
You’re the most with-it person I know. Except maybe Lilly, though I still think you win because Lilly’s a lot of surface with-it-ness and hidden all-over-the-place.”

  Oh, apparently Sam didn’t have a clue about her hidden all-over-the-place. She didn’t know if she felt good about that or not.

  “Who has been standing up to me every step of the way here?” Sam continued. “You’re always the one in my face telling me what I need to do or feel or think. Or giving me permission for my feelings, or whatever it is you think I have. You don’t need my advice, Hayley. You just need to listen to yourself.”

  “How do you listen to yourself when the people you love are arguing with you? My family hates that I’ve chosen this life in Gracely. I love it. I want them to support me, and I want them to get it, but they don’t.”

  “That’s definitely a challenging situation. But I’m sorry, did you sweep into my life and magically change my mind about everything?”

  “Is that your way of telling me that it’s never going to change and I just need to accept that I’m going to be miserable in some way?”

  “No.” He waited a beat, and then two. “I’m saying that sometimes changing someone’s mind takes time. And that you are incredibly good at using that time to your advantage.”

  She met his gaze, stunned by the openness of his answer. He was giving her some credit for this supposed change of his.

  “Are you sure it’s not your old friend who’s making you change?” Because Sam had been smiling with that woman. He’d certainly never talked so easily or openly with Hayley as he had earlier today with Tori.

  Sam leaned down, and then down some more, and her breath caught because he was close. His face and mouth were really, really close to hers. Most especially that hard, uncompromising mouth not quite hidden by beard.

  He reached out and his fingertips brushed her cheek. Such a careful, gentle, caring gesture, that every piece of her fluttered in response.

  “It has nothing to do with Tori. It has everything to do with you.”

  She swallowed. And because it was Sam, and there was something about Sam that brought something out in her that she really, really liked, she could say the rest. “Are you going to cross your line and kiss me again?”