‘Why?’
He swallowed hard, still not looking up. It took everything she had not to reach across and touch him, tip his chin up, make him look her in the eye again.
‘Sam?’ she prompted.
‘That night, he told me he wasn’t my father. Told me in no uncertain terms that my mom was pregnant when he met her, that my dad was some kind of asshole who’d walked out on her. That he’d adopted me when they got married.’ He squeezed her hand tighter. ‘The way he said it though, Cesca, as if he wished he hadn’t bothered. It gutted me.’
‘Of course it did.’ A tear rolled down her left cheek. ‘That’s a disgusting way to tell you about it. What did your mum say when he told you?’
‘She doesn’t know I know. None of them do. Just me and Foster.’ He frowned, as though he was remembering something. ‘And . . . ’
‘And me?’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
So he’d confided in her. For some reason that touched her deeply. It hurt to see this man – this handsome, strong, talented man – brought low by memories he somehow couldn’t escape.
‘He never liked me,’ he whispered. ‘And
for twenty-one years I had no idea why.’
‘But he adopted you,’ she said. ‘Why would he have done that if he didn’t like you?’
‘I came as a package deal, I guess. He wanted my mom, and she was pregnant with me. He didn’t exactly get a choice.’ His eyes glinted in the flickering light of the candle. She grabbed his hand, folding it in her own.
‘What made you think he didn’t like you?’
Sam finally looked up at her, his face impassive. His eyes were piercing. It was as though they were digging through her, searching, looking. They made her ache.
‘Little things,’ Sam finally said. ‘And big things. Words, jibes, telling me I wasn’t good enough. My grades weren’t good enough, my acting was terrible, I was a terrible son to my mother. He actually smiled when he told me the truth about my father. Like he enjoyed inflicting the pain.’
Her face softened. ‘He’s a rat bastard.’
‘Anyway, that’s enough about my messed-up family.’ He looked straight at her. ‘I’d rather finish our dinner and get to bed.’
There was a heat behind his stare that sent her heart racing. The promise behind his words was enough to take her breath away. Everything inside urged her to take him upstairs, to comfort him, to hold him until the bad guys went away.
They could talk about his parents another day.
24
This is the very ecstasy of love
– Hamlet
‘Are you almost done?’
Cesca jumped at the unexpected question. She was at the spitting stage of her tooth brushing, the paste foaming out over her lips. She put her brush down and turned around, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Last night they’d fallen asleep together almost as soon as they’d got into his room, their naked limbs tangled together. Today, though, he seemed brighter, more like his old self. She’d spent most of the day writing, while they talked about silly things. His favourite book, her favourite meal, whether she liked blue better than green.
And now dinner was over, he’d suggested they get an early night. The way he’d said it had sent an army of shivers down her spine.
‘You scared me.’ Her voice was mangled by the fact her mouth was still full of paste. A little more escaped from the corner of her lips.
Sam smiled, leaning his shoulder on the doorjamb. ‘You missed a bit.’ He gestured at her mouth.
‘Can’t a girl get a bit of privacy?’ They were doing this all backwards. She hadn’t even made love with him yet and he was already seeing her at her worst. OK, so technically she’d fallen asleep with him, but apart from that they’d only fooled around.
Whatever ‘fooled around’ meant. Because it didn’t seem foolish at all to her.