Always Was

by Amabel Daniels

  Staring into his green eyes, she accepted his optimism in the present. “I’m not. Not anymore.”

  He nodded once with a smile, as though her words cemented a fact.

  Ironically, though, her decision to pursue her dream of being an artist landed her in a precarious, money-needy situation. If she’d become a doctor, lawyer, or broker, like her parents had wanted her to, she wouldn’t be desperate for a trust fund to keep an eighty-year-old neighbor in her home. Then again, she never would have met Clare, either.

  A tray of steaming food approached, balanced on the veiny hand of the white-haired waitress, and Sammy was grateful for the distraction from weightier topics. Digging into her meal, she was happily preoccupied, at peace to simply consume greasy goodness. And as Adam ate with equal gusto, she was glad he was too busy to be nosy again.

  Stomach full of food, Sammy wondered if Adam would reclaim the steering wheel for the rest of the day’s worth of driving, because with the lull of a zooming vehicle, she would have no power to deny herself a nap.

  “How about I bring this for Ink?” Adam asked, pointing his fork at an eighth of his burger and a few fries.

  “Do that, and you’ll have a best friend for life,” Sammy said. She frowned and wiped her lips for what felt like the hundredth time in ten minutes. “Do I have something on my face?”

  “Two eyes. A nose. A mouth.”

  “Smart-ass. Do I have ketchup or something?”

  He shook his head.

  Unable to resist, Sammy glanced at the man sitting two booths behind Adam, checking again—yep, he was still staring. Directly at her face.

  “Why do you ask?” Adam asked. Following her gaze, he turned around to scan the diner.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “I swear to God. You say that too much.”

  She bit back a groan. “Just … that guy. He keeps looking at my mouth.” At first, she’d thought he was hungry, jealous of her food since she’d been served first. When his stares didn’t diminish, her prickly senses heightened. Was there something wrong with her? Why would he be watching—

  Adam’s chuckle snapped her back to attention. “He’s looking at your lips. Can’t blame him.”

  What the hell is wrong with my lips?

  “Nothing’s wrong with them,” Adam said.

  Tension spread through her shoulder blades at the realization she’d spoken aloud.

  “Probably imagining tasting them, or wrapped around his—” He wiped at his face. “You’ve got some luscious lips, Sammy.”

  She frowned at him. Luscious? According to him? Is he imagining tasting—

  Adam leaned forward. “Are you actually this unaware of how sexy you are, or is it a game?”

  A scream tickled at the back of her throat. “No.”

  “That was an ‘or’ question.” He laughed lightly, slanting closer over their plates. “You’ve got the perfect kind of lips for kissing. For sucking. For teasing.” His thumb reached out, swiping a caress on her lower lip.

  Shocked, and stupefied at the realization that she’d been staring at him with her mouth agape, she slammed her lips shut and arched away, like she was flinching from fire.

  “If you weren’t Jake’s sister, I’d be tempted to have a taste, myself.”

  “Like hell.” She scooped his leftovers for Ink onto a new napkin, avoiding his smoldering gaze, and the creepy leer of the other diner behind him.

  Fuck-me hair? Luscious lips? Was that what all men saw? She’d never deluded herself into assuming she was sexy in her youth. She was too busy being … youthful. But after that single night of hell on campus, she’d accepted she might be attractive, worthy enough of inducing attention—and since then, she’d deliberately refused to show any beauty.

  Hair and lips, though. How the hell could she cover herself that much? Wear a goddamn ski mask all day and look like a bank robber?

  “Are you doubting me?” Adam’s expression was dubious. “You don’t think I find you sexier than hell?”

  “No. I mean, you wouldn’t just ‘get a taste’ of me.” The words felt like venom spitting from her mouth. Had she been wrong about him? She couldn’t trust him after all? Was he merely another man, ready to show her who had the upper hand?

  His brows angled to show the pinch above his nose. “Meaning … you’d want to give me more?”

  “I mean,” she managed between her teeth as she tidied the table so the waitress wouldn’t have too much trouble, “you wouldn’t touch me unless I gave you permission to.”

  She huffed and began to scoot out of her booth, only to be stopped as Adam’s strong hand gripped her wrist, defying the very statement she’d just spelled out.

  “What do you mean?” His eyes bore a lethal danger. Not quite at her, but unsettling nonetheless.

  Eyeing his hand on her, she focused on breathing steadily, not because she feared him, but because she dreaded explaining herself.

  “Has someone—” He let go of her wrist with an abrupt jerk. “Did someone—” He rubbed at his face again, as though he couldn’t bear to voice the words. “Did someone hurt you?”

  Blinking quickly, Sammy barely shook her head. Not now. Not here. Not ever, or anywhere. “I’m ready to go.” Without waiting for his reply, she left the booth, ensuring she’d left enough bills to cover their meal and a hefty tip for the waitress.

  Her feet hurried her out of the diner, but she wasn’t running. She wasn’t fleeing. She’d already done that once. And what could she do, desert Adam in the middle of nowhere, simply because he was curious and had asked a question? She stepped outside and raindrops pelted her face. Leave him in a storm? No, she wasn’t ditching him, and she knew he wouldn’t give up on his questions. Maybe he’d wait before launching his suspicions again, but he wasn’t going to give up. Because underneath that bold anger in his eyes, she’d seen his concern.

  He cared.

  And Sammy didn’t know what was worse. To be uncared for but free to escape, or concerned about and obligated to revisit an ugly experience?

  Running from the deluge, Sammy unlocked the car from the remote, opened the back door, and scrambled inside. Besides precipitation, the storm also brought a respite from the heat, squashing Sammy’s misgivings about the dog overheating in the car during dinner. Ink danced and yipped with her Lilliputian excitement, and Sammy opened up the napkin with the food Adam had saved. Shivering, she rubbed her arms. She was unsure if her chills were from the drop in temps or the anxiety of her past encroaching into her present.

  When Adam didn’t show at the car, Sammy began to search for him through the water-streamed windows. Like a dark omen, she saw him, walking slowly as though it weren’t pouring buckets of rain from the sky, leaden clouds whipping furious winds and pierced by cracks of thunder.

  He didn’t even hurry as he entered the driver’s seat. In the rearview mirror, Sammy noticed the grim set of his lips, the cold, shielded glare in his eyes, and his rigid, stiff movements.

  She swallowed thickly as he started the car, not speaking a word or acknowledging her presence behind him. Ink trembled on her lap, gleeful at the junk food she was treated to, but terrified as she always was at a rumbling storm outside.

  Silence stretched irritably in the car as Adam left the diner’s lot and returned to the expressway. Visibility was worse than poor. Even with the wipers sashaying at their fastest speed, rain rendered the windshield a pane of blurred roadway, the brake lights of the semi ahead like hallucinated blobs of red diluting in the air.

  Not daring to speak a word, Sammy watched as Adam drove slowly, his shoulders bunched beneath his soaked t-shirt, his short black hair wet with droplets sliding down his neck. On the steering wheel, his knuckles shone with moisture from the rain, and were brightened with white flesh in his steely grip.

  Should he be driving?

  She sure as hell didn’t want to in this rain. But it wasn’t so much the obscured visibility as his seething, simmering … ire, she guessed, that ma
de Adam a questionable driver.

  In a controlled but unpredicted movement, Adam flipped the turn signal on and maneuvered to the shoulder of the highway.

  He slammed the gear stick into “park” and took a deep breath. Turning his head toward the window, he stared at the shadowy madness of precipitation.

  If he wasn’t confident to drive on, she wouldn’t argue. And if he didn’t trust himself to get them to a motel for the night, she could try. Wiggling through the space between the front seats, Sammy crawled over the middle console to sit in the passenger seat.

  Only, once she was up there at his side, she couldn’t summon the courage to make an offer, or to speak at all, really.

  “Did someone hurt you?” His voice was low, wretched, like he hated to ask.

  There was no point lying or hedging. He’d already caught on. She nodded. When she realized he couldn’t hear her head moving, she cleared her throat to reply.

  His hand shot out to grab hers, and she guessed he’d seen her nod in the reflection of his window. Halfway to her, he hesitated.

  “Back home?”

  Gee, what gives? My running away? Another nod.

  “Is it someone I know? Your…” He faced forward, his eyes closed, hand over his forehead. “Dad, or—”

  “No!”

  She might have had a screwed-up childhood, with too much emphasis on wealth and no sense of paternal love, but she hadn’t suffered anything so barbaric as… Good God, no.

  “Someone at college. A guy…” she said. Well, no shit, a guy, Sam. You probably could have defended yourself from another girl.

  “Did he…” Adam didn’t end his sentence, maybe dreading the truth.

  “I was assaulted.” Simple, bare fact. He could digest as he saw fit. She was not sharing the whole story with him on the roadside, trapped in a storm, even if his grimaces gave her a stupid, foolish sense of security, as though she mattered to him, as though she was worth caring about.

  His hand fisted into a formation of barely sustained fury, his skin shaking from clenching it so tight.

  Yeah, she so wasn’t digging up old history with a violently furious man in a compact car.

  “I’m sorry to have upset—”

  “You’re sorry!” He faced her then, a mask of supreme hatred and rage. “What the fuck for?”

  She sneered, refusing to cower at his outburst. “Clearly I’ve pissed you off.”

  “Not at—” He growled, closing his eyes. “I’m not mad at you! I’m pissed this happened. That some fucker hurt you. That some asshole dared to fucking think about taking advantage of you!”

  “I-I see that.”

  “Don’t concern yourself with my anger.” He stabbed a finger at himself. “Don’t think this is some petty little secret you’ve slipped up. So you’ve got me mad. You’re goddamn right I’m mad! I’m fucking furious!”

  He roared another sound as he put both hands on the steering wheel and shook it. Ink whimpered in the backseat.

  Collecting a deep breath, he set his forehead on one of his hands, his eyes closed. His mumbles were steady, calmer, as though rationalizing to himself. “Of course it makes sense now. Why else would you take off, not stopping until you were thousands of miles away, not even telling Jake your reasons to dodge town? You barely let me hug you. You flinch when I take your hand. You freeze when a man touches you and get pissed if a guy thinks you’re gorgeous. Hide under all those ugly clothes.”

  Hey, they might not fit, but they aren’t hideous. Not like I’m a bag lady.

  “Needing your permission…” he whispered. He leaned back to the seat, seemingly spent. “Yes, Sammy. No one should fucking touch you without your consent. Me included. I’m sorry I—”

  She grabbed his hand. Shit. No. Not him. He wasn’t like that. He couldn’t be. He thought he acted untoward, like that monster at the party on campus back home? Adam was comparing himself to that bastard?

  Adam had hugged her like an old friend would. He’d been her knight in shining armor when she was leery of that huge man at the convenience mart. His comments about her, his admission of thinking she was hot. Yeah, she’d been stunned silent. Because it was Adam. Adam. Fessing up that he—he—found her hot. Of course she was shocked, but not because he was acting like a creep, trying to force her into something. She might have stiffened at his attention, because it was so far out there, things she’d only dreamed of since a teen. His raw honesty presented her with baby steps of how she could react, how things might be when she was ready … coaching her how to handle the reality of a warm-blooded, single male hinting at liking her.

  She’d never envisioned telling anyone about her incident, so she couldn’t have wondered if she’d have been immediately consoled and wrapped in a tender hug, or … what. Adam was a fiercer soul, and oddly, it was what she’d needed. No sappiness, because what happened to her was no light matter.

  For him to react so severely sparked an ember of confidence. He was outraged because she was assaulted? Damn straight. He should be. She graduated to furious as well, and anger was much easier to wield than fear.

  She tucked his huge hand into both of hers and brought it close to her lap, clutching it. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “So you can dance around me like I’m a delicate sissy?” On top of still seeing me as a baby sister? “When could I have explained this? You weren’t here to hear me out.”

  “I—”

  “You were overseas. Living your own life, serving the country. I never even knew where you were. No emails, no texts, no calls. You dropped out of my life.”

  “Would you have told me if we’d stayed in touch?”

  She shrugged.

  He wiped at his face again.

  All right, so it was his show for frustration, but didn’t he realize hands were usually the harbingers of many germs?

  “I wouldn’t have told you that you had fuck-me hair. Or luscious lips. Or…” He met her gaze then, something painful and too heavy weighing down his usual charm. “I would have kept the goddamn kid gloves on with you and been a polite asshole instead of an inconsiderate one.”

  Kid gloves? But she was, as he’d pointed out, a woman now. And if he hadn’t so bluntly expressed himself, who would have?

  “Not a kid anymore, remember?” she said, hoping to lighten the tension. Instead, his face crumpled even more.

  “Because some asshole took your innocence from you.”

  If he spouts some old-ass crap about deflowering me like a freaking perennial or some shit… “Because we don’t stay teenagers forever, Adam.” She patted his hand. “Look, we can’t drive anymore in this storm. Let’s find a place to call it a day and hopefully we’ll get more miles in tomorrow. Okay? If you don’t want to deal with this rain, I’ll try for the next exit.”

  He sighed and nodded. “I’m… I’ll be fine. You’re right. But I’ll drive.”

  As he tried to pull his hand away, Sammy kept it in her hands, letting him steer one handed, only to reinforce her insistence she wasn’t about to be babied by him because of her secret.

  Ink’s whine stole her attention. She let go of Adam, because, hey, two hands on wheel had to be better than one when the view out the window was like looking inside out from a washing machine. She reached back, grabbed the dog, and cradled the animal on her lap. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “Nothing to be scared about.” She took Adam’s hand back, twining their fingers together for no other reason than missing his warmth.

  And she couldn’t help but comfort herself with those words too. It was okay, or it would be. She had nothing to fear by telling Adam she’d been assaulted. He’d reacted strongly, but she was relieved her biggest worries—of negative labels being slapped on her—were petty. Speaking of her demons and darkness, even just the tip of the iceberg like she had…

  Whew. Talk about a weight off my shoulders.

  “It’s okay,” she told the dog again.
r />   And she allowed the hope that her future would be all right, too.

  Chapter Eight

  Grand Junction, Colorado

  Sammy pointed out a sign for the next exit ramp, squinting and leaning forward over the dashboard. “There’s one motel advertised here. It’s going to have to work.”

  He wasn’t about to argue. The tension crackled in the car sharper and with more zing than the saturated rain clouds taking a piss above them. And he could hardly see anything in front of them, even at—he checked the speedometer again—fifteen miles an hour.

  Horrible visions flashed in his mind. Sammy crying. Sammy begging some fucker to stop. Sammy cowering in a corner, hurt and bruised. He gritted his teeth, forcing back the urge to groan, scream, growl. He must have tightened his hand again because she began rubbing her palm over his knuckles.

  “Bitch of a storm, huh?”

  No. It was a bitch of a revelation. How could she have kept it secret? From Jake? If Jake had known, Adam would have known. He’d have been the one to bury the body.

  I dropped out of her life? No, he’d done the only thing he thought was right, enlisting and doing his patriotic duty, just like his dad … and ending the chance for her girlish adoration to evolve into something heavier.

  If only I’d been there… Then what? She still might not have trusted him enough to tell, and assuming she thought she couldn’t depend on him hurt the most.

  And here she was, commenting on the damn shitty weather, like it was an ordinary day.

  Finally braking at the stop sign after the exit ramp, he chanced a glance at her. She might have been soothing him by holding his hand, but she was still frowning, still showing signs of uptight nerves. She deserved an Oscar for hiding herself, for keeping it all in.

  He only wondered when her bottle would be too full and explode.

  Maneuvering carefully, he turned the car toward the only motel, feeling a small dose of gratitude for the awning at the entrance. Even though there was a solid structure blocking precipitation from sky to land, nasty air currents still smacked rain in their faces as they ran inside, leaving the car locked with a terrified Ink inside, burrowing under a blanket.