Make Me Stay (Men of Gold Mountain)

by Rebecca Brooks

  “Yeah, I don’t know,” Sam said absently, her eyes on the ceiling, trying to take those big, long breaths that were supposed to be calming but always made her feel like she wasn’t getting enough air.

  “Oh,” Claire said, standing over her. And then, “I’m so sorry, I’m being an idiot. I didn’t mean to…” She ducked her head and began working on Sam’s legs. Her hands were strong, the massage finely calibrated to knead the fibers where Sam was sorest.

  “It’s okay,” Sam assured her. Claire continued to work in silence, obviously embarrassed. The pressure from her fingers was pure bliss, and Sam relaxed into it. Everything in her was loosening, her shoulders and neck having given up the tension they’d been holding onto. Maybe that was why the next words slipped out before she could stop them. “It seemed like we might have had a thing, but it looks like not.”

  She wondered if she sensed a tightening in Claire’s hands or if she was making it up. “What happened?” Claire asked.

  Sam snorted. “It started when I bought him a pair of gloves.”

  She thought Claire would laugh, or at least require more explanation, but instead she stopped her work on Sam’s calf and stared at her. “You’ve known him for how long and were going to get him to give up that ratty pair?”

  “Apparently everyone but me knows they’re a thing.”

  “What did he say when you gave them to him?” Claire went back to work.

  “That he couldn’t take them.”

  Claire made a sound like mmm-hmm between her teeth. And since Sam was spread out on the table, her limbs loose as jelly, she said, “The first time. The second time I told him to take them he said I didn’t understand anything and thought I was better than him.”

  “I’m impressed you got as far as that. Austin is the hardest person to do anything for. It freaks him out, like he might actually wind up getting close to someone.”

  “He certainly didn’t make it sound like he was in danger of getting too close to me,” Sam grumbled.

  Claire smiled. “That’s how you know you got under his skin.”

  “What is this, middle school?” She tried to put some bite into her voice, but it didn’t work. Another tear streaked down her cheek. Everything she’d told herself about one night with Austin seemed so foolish now. How could she have kidded herself that she’d be able to get her fix and then be done, back to business as usual as though nothing had changed?

  Claire got up and passed her a tissue. Gently she said, “I wondered if everything was okay when you came in.”

  So she’d known Sam had been crying. It sent a stab through Sam’s chest to be so vulnerable in front of a stranger, but this wasn’t the office, there wasn’t some kind of strength test she had to pass. No one here was expecting her to be anyone other than some woman on vacation, tired, sore, here for a few days and then gone. The next time they saw her she’d be in a suit with a barrage of publicists managing her every move. That she’d once cried on a massage table wouldn’t mean a thing.

  “I feel so stupid,” Sam said, blowing her nose. “I thought it was just some accident and then—”

  “Wait,” Claire interrupted her. “He told you that? I thought this was just about the gloves.”

  “‘Told’ may be the wrong word. There was quite a bit of yelling involved. It was the most awful thing I’ve ever heard, but it wasn’t even the hammer. Believe it or not, I can handle the hammer. I just didn’t expect him to get so mad at me.” Suddenly she thought of something and winced. “Please tell me you knew that already. Please tell me I didn’t just say something else I shouldn’t have.”

  “Don’t worry,” Claire said. “I knew. But can you believe I worked on Austin for four years before he finally stopped talking vaguely about ‘the accident’ and finally came out with the truth? That’s four years he came in once a week, every Monday, for me to work on his knee. It was always a puzzle to me how he’d managed to get scar tissue where he has it. I’m not saying Austin’s right, just that it took him forever to open up to me. And that was on top of me complaining that I couldn’t help him get over an injury if I didn’t know what the injury was.”

  She bent Sam’s leg up, rotated it in her hip socket, and placed it down again, repeating with the other leg. The simple motion, loosening her hips, felt so good Sam asked her to do it again.

  “I’m not sure what happened counted as opening up,” she said.

  “Still, I’m impressed he said anything at all.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He hates me now. He thinks I’m, I don’t know, naive.”

  “It’s not hate.”

  “Trust me, it is.” Sam sighed. And then, because it was time to stop playing the game that had gotten her nowhere, she told Claire the rest of the story—the part where Austin wasn’t to blame, but her.

  “What I just said—the gloves, the accident—that all happened. And you’re right, if it had just been that, I might believe there’d still be a chance. But I’m not being fair, the way I’m describing it. It’s not the only thing that happened.”

  “Tell me,” Claire said gently. “I’m not going to judge.”

  Sam let out a long exhale. “You should. Austin has every right to.”

  Claire brought her legs back down and began pushing on the tops of her ankles. The pressure was strange, but when she let up, Sam could feel it. The line down the front of her legs felt open, stretched.

  She wasn’t pushing Sam to say anything. She was simply giving her the space to get there on her own. When Steven called, Sam had been forced to confess. This time, it was up to her.

  “Austin didn’t tell you my full name when he booked the appointment. I didn’t put it on the intake sheet, either.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but in the quiet room it felt too loud. You don’t have to do this, she reminded herself.

  But she did.

  “That’s okay,” Claire said, marching a sweet-sore line of pressure up her shins.

  “He didn’t tell you because he didn’t know it.”

  Claire took her hands off Sam. Sam felt the absence immediately and regretted what she’d said. She wasn’t thinking properly. She was going to make everything worse.

  Claire was friends with Austin. She’d probably spent countless nights hanging out with Mack and Connor at the Dipper, downing beers and going on about those awful Kanes. Claire wasn’t going to tell her this wasn’t her fault. Claire was going to throw Sam’s clothes at her and tell her to get out.

  “So, what’s your name?” Claire asked. She said it like she was asking a new patient where they’d grown up, or what they did for a living—just a way of making conversation. But she wasn’t touching Sam. It was clear the massage had stopped.

  Sam took a deep breath and forced out the answer. “Samantha Kane,” she said, only it didn’t come out the way she usually said it, strong and proud. For the first time in her life, she was ashamed of the person she’d become.

  Claire didn’t say anything. Sam stared at the ceiling, a tear trickling down her temple. When she dared to tilt her head to look over, Claire was staring at her. “Seriously?”

  “The one and only.” Sam sighed and went back to her ceiling view. “Only I managed to keep that minor detail from Austin until this afternoon.”

  “Well, shit.” Claire used a towel to wipe massage oils off her fingers.

  “I can go,” Sam said, starting to shift. “I’m sorry, I know I’m not welcome here. I shouldn’t have wasted your time. Or his.”

  “Lie down, Sam. I still have to do your head. I’m afraid if I let you out of here carrying this much tension, you’re going to explode.”

  Sam did as she was told. As Claire pressed her fingertips to Sam’s temples, Sam told her everything. About how she’d come to Gold Mountain wanting one thing, only to find something else altogether.

  “But now it’s too late. I know we’d never be able to make it work anyway. But I made it so much worse by pretending. I should have been up front from the beginning
. Even if it meant I couldn’t have him at all.”

  Claire sighed and handed Sam another tissue. “I don’t know if Austin told you this, but he and I dated for two and a half seconds, ages ago. Don’t worry,” she added quickly. “I think he’s wonderful, but we’re better as friends. I have a daughter, Maya, and I love her to pieces, but having a four-year-old isn’t great for my social life. Trust me when I say you have nothing to worry about.”

  “Thanks, I believe you. But the real reason I have nothing to worry about is because there is no me and Austin. It’s been three days. I live in Seattle. He hates me. I hate me. It’s really not a thing.”

  “What I was going to say is that I know Austin pretty well. I know how tight-lipped and impossible he can be.” She laughed wryly. “The fact that you’ve been to his house, that you know things he barely shares with anyone—you may have started this thinking there’d be no strings attached, but it’s clear that wasn’t true.”

  “If only that meant anything,” Sam said. She closed her eyes, trying to let the feeling of Claire’s hands transport her, but it was hard to feel relaxed anymore when all she wanted was to curl up and cry.

  “Of course it does. Things changed for you. No matter what happens with Austin, you can’t deny that you’re leaving Gold Mountain different than when you came.”

  The evidence that Claire was right was there in the quickly mounting pile of tissues balled in Sam’s fist. But even though Sam had to admit that yes, she had changed, no one could do a complete 360. She was still her. Samantha Kane.

  What was more, she still wanted to be her. Sam had pretended she could divide herself into two parts, the one she was with Austin and the one coming for his land. But they were the same Samantha Kane, just as he was the Austin she’d known in person and the Mr. Reede who’d once been nothing to her but a name on a page.

  “I just can’t imagine going back to Seattle as though none of this happened,” Sam said with a sigh.

  “So don’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t go back to Seattle as though nothing happened. Just because it didn’t work—because you’re too different, or can’t be the people you need, or you’ve simply hurt each other too much—doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice. We always have a choice. You don’t have to pretend nothing happened here. Who knows,” she added. “It may make you feel better if you have to come back for work some time.”

  Sam lay on the table in the dark for a long time after Claire left, feeling the quiet, floating sensation of her body after the massage. She felt slippery, soft, like her limbs were no longer attached. The massage hurt but in a good way, the pain pushing out the underlying soreness, leaving her tender and new.

  She wasn’t exactly sure what Claire had meant by saying Sam had a choice. It wasn’t like there was anything left she could do. But the words stayed with her as she went back to her car and asked herself, what next?

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You drinking that beer or just looking at it?” Mack shot Austin a look as she ran a cloth over the surface of the bar.

  Austin took a halfhearted sip.

  “What’s wrong with you, anyway? Where’s that Sam girl? I liked her—even if she has no taste in burgers.” Mack stopped cleaning and frowned at him. “Don’t tell me you scared her away.”

  “Believe it or not, I wasn’t the asshole this time,” Austin said glumly, and Mack raised an eyebrow.

  “Shit, Austin, I was just kidding.” She rapped on the door to the kitchen to get Connor’s attention. “I’d pour you another beer, but you’re barely making it through that.”

  “I don’t want anything.” Austin stared into the glass. “I just want to sit here and feel like an idiot.”

  It beat feeling like an idiot at home, which was what he’d been doing, staring into the ashes of the fireplace and thinking how blind he’d been.

  Then he’d discovered an even better way to torture himself. A Google image search for Samantha Kane yielded hundreds of photos. He’d scrolled endlessly through a repeating loop of her face. Sam smiling for the cameras. Sam looking stern walking out of the Kane offices with an entourage in tow. Sam standing behind a podium, bathed in stage light.

  Sure, he’d read the news stories about the company, the turnover from father to daughter. He and his friends talked plenty about Kane’s plans to transform Gold Mountain into a massive resort. But he’d never looked closely enough at her picture to imprint her face in his mind. He thought of everything Sam—no, Samantha—had said about her father, her grief, and how much she seemed to love the places he took her in the snow. It was impossible to put together the heartfelt person he’d met with the impersonal face looking out from his screen.

  He’d slammed the computer closed, heart pounding, and booked it over to Mack Daddy’s. At least there he had company, even if he wasn’t much for talking.

  Although, he was beginning to think it would have been better to stay home alone. Mack was darting him worried looks, Connor was calling for someone to cover him, and he was in the process of telling them both to leave him alone when Claire slammed down on a bar stool next to him and said, “Don’t even think about doing that thing I know you’re doing.”

  “Uh, nice to see you, too. It’s been a while. How’s Maya?”

  “I put Abbi on emergency babysitting detail so I could come over here.”

  “How’d you know I’d be here?”

  “Because there are so many other places any of us go when a relationship ends?”

  Austin felt three faces looking way too intently at him.

  “It wasn’t a relationship,” he told Claire. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Sure,” Claire said. “If you insist. But you should at least keep the gloves.”

  He spun on the bar stool. “How’d you know about that?”

  “She came to see me.” Mack poured a glass of wine, and Claire took a sip like Austin wasn’t about to jump out of his seat, wanting to know every detail about where Sam had been, what she’d said, what Claire thought of her. “That massage, you know.”

  “I can’t believe she stayed for it.”

  “I can’t believe you want to return them.”

  “Wait—she got you a new pair of gloves?” Mack looked from Austin to Claire and back again. “You? That’s, like, serious.” She sounded impressed.

  “This is a lot more complicated than a pair of gloves, you guys,” Austin said before they could all gang up on him.

  “She told me who she is,” Claire said.

  That got Austin’s attention.

  And everyone else’s. “Who is she?” Mack asked eagerly.

  Claire glanced at Austin. He gestured for her to go ahead and say it. He couldn’t get the words out without them sticking in his throat.

  “Samantha Kane,” Claire whispered.

  Mack’s mouth froze in an O. Even Connor let out a “holy shit.” Austin groaned and covered his face in his hands.

  “So now you all know and we can move on to pretending this never happened.”

  “I don’t get it,” Mack said. “How on earth did you fuck Samantha Kane?” Austin glared at her, and she held up her hands. “I’m just saying.”

  “I didn’t know she was Samantha Kane when I was—” fucking her, he almost said but couldn’t. “With her,” he decided, since it wasn’t like they’d had sex one time and that was it. No—regardless of how he’d insisted it wasn’t a relationship, he’d taken her to the shelter, and up to the peak, and said those things to her about the metal that flashed in his dreams, the cries that filled his mind in the night.

  Once again, it hit him how he’d been played. He’d felt that close to her, too close to brush it off as nothing. And yet he hadn’t even known who she was.

  “So she lied to you.” Mack refilled Austin’s glass and handed it back to him. “On the house,” she added. “That fucking bitch.”

  Connor made a face. “That seems a little harsh. She didn’t t
ell him the truth, yeah. But that’s not the same as lying.”

  Mack raised an eyebrow at him. “Remind me never, ever to date you.”

  “I’m just saying. We weren’t there. We don’t know her the way Austin does.”

  “Aren’t you listening?” Austin interjected. “That’s the whole point. I don’t know her, either.”

  “It’s not like you slept with an ax murderer.”

  Mack rolled her eyes. “I love how Connor thinks truthfulness about her basic identity and/or her motivation in completely fucking Austin over are irrelevant here.”

  “Yeah,” Claire said. “But what about the fact that Sam likes him?”

  “Don’t sound so shocked,” Austin grumbled.

  “I just mean that even though this started one way, something changed for her. She was crying on that massage table, Austin. She didn’t get those gloves for you to buy you out. And she didn’t press you about your life so she’d have leverage. She was falling in love with you. And you—” She threw up her hands. “You were you, which means you showed her the time of her life and then started pushing her away even before you knew you had an ironclad excuse to get her out of your life.”

  “Now that,” Austin said, raising his glass to clink it with hers, “is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve heard all week. And believe me when I say I’ve heard a lot.”

  Claire slid off her stool. “I’m just saying. You guys obviously connected in a real way or neither of you would be this upset. And she’s obviously more than just some CEO or you wouldn’t have had anything to connect over in the first place. You think you have everything planned out, like God forbid you let anyone into your life to shake things up, but think about it, Austin. Just—don’t be so quick to throw this one away.”

  She gave Austin a hug. “And now I’ve got to go pick up my evidence that I know all about plans going awry.” She laughed at herself as Mack told her to bring Maya next time, she’d have a hot chocolate waiting for her with extra whipped cream.