SAMANTHA
Zero. That’s how many times I’ve stopped practice early.
I’ve never been someone overly interested in breaking the rules. A people pleaser, that’s me. Especially if the person is a hard-ass. My dad wanted me to play the violin perfectly to impress his diplomat friends? I did that. He wanted me to clean our little apartment and cook dinner? I could make roast chicken with a side of green beans by the time I turned five. He wanted me to follow him around the world without uttering a single complaint. Done.
When he died, some part of the twelve-year-old girl thought it had to be my fault. My mother was from Indonesia. She met my father when he lived there—and she died a long time ago. My older brother had no interest in coming back to take care of me.
It was Liam North who stepped up to do that duty.
I knew, without anyone telling me, that I couldn’t mess this up. We weren’t even related by blood. He was friends with my father. Or as he’d said to the reporter, I felt it was my civic responsibility to step in. I was just a kid, but even kids understand basic math.
There was no one left on this earth to care about me.
I took every independent thought, even the tiniest shred of rebellion through my teenage years, and poured them into my music. Something safe.
Suddenly it’s not enough.
I want to do something wild and crazy like go skinny dipping in the lake down the hill. I want to ride in fast cars and parachute out of a plane. I want to do something shocking.
My room looks the way I left it this morning, everything neat and orderly, my books in alphabetical order. Alphabetical order! I can’t even blame that on my quasi-military surroundings. Liam North does not require this kind of precision from me. Well, he also doesn’t really read anything that isn’t a classified brief, but that’s beside the point.
I pull out A Concise History of Western Music with its worn spine and shove it next to The Rose That Grew from Concrete.
And then clench my hands into fists to keep from moving it back.
“Such a rebel,” I mutter to myself. “You’re the actual worst at this.” It’s going to take a lot more than unalphabetized books to fix this ache inside me, and I can’t even manage to do that much.
Rest, Liam told me.
He’s right about a lot of things. Maybe he’s right about this. I climb onto the cool pink sheets, hoping that a nap will suddenly make me content with this quiet little life.
Even though I know it won’t.
Besides, I’m too wired to actually sleep. The white lace coverlet is both delicate and comfy. It’s actually what I would have picked out for myself, except I didn’t pick it out. I’ve been incapable of picking anything, of choosing anything, of deciding anything as part of some deep-seated fear that I’ll be abandoned.
The coverlet, like everything else in my life, simply appeared.
And the person responsible for its appearance? Liam North.
I climb under the blanket and stare at the ceiling. My body feels overly warm, but it still feels good to be tucked into the blankets. The blankets he picked out for me.
It’s really so wrong to think of him in a sexual way. He’s my guardian, literally. Legally. And he has never done anything to make me think he sees me in a sexual way.
This is it. This is the answer.
I don’t need to go skinny dipping in the lake down the hill. Thinking about Liam North in a sexual way is my fast car. My parachute out of a plane.
My eyes squeeze shut.
That’s all it takes to see Liam’s stern expression, those fathomless green eyes and the glint of dark blond whiskers that are always there by late afternoon. And then there’s the way he touched me. My forehead, sure, but it’s more than he’s done before. That broad palm on my sensitive skin.
My thighs press together. They want something between them, and I give them a pillow. Even the way I masturbate is small and timid, never making a sound, barely moving at all, but I can’t change it now. I can’t moan or throw back my head even for the sake of rebellion.
But I can push my hips against the pillow, rocking my whole body as I imagine Liam doing more than touching my forehead. He would trail his hand down my cheek, my neck, my shoulder.
Repressed. I’m so repressed it’s hard to imagine more than that.
I make myself do it, make myself trail my hand down between my breasts, where it’s warm and velvety soft, where I imagine Liam would know exactly how to touch me.