Heaven and Hell (41 page)

Sam pulled out.

My head righted with a jerk.

“Sam –” I started but he was gone then I was
moving, he was seated, back to the headboard, he pulled me to
straddling him then with an arm wrapped around my waist, he impaled
me on his cock.

Oh yes. That was nice. That was freaking
amazing.

“Baby,” I whispered, my head tipping
forward, my lips touching his.

“My Kia deserves beauty.”

My body stilled, even my breathing.

Oh God.

Sam wasn’t done.

“She deserves hope.”

Oh God!

“Take it, baby,” he whispered against my
mouth.

My hands moved to either side of his head
and I looked through the dark into his eyes as I moved up and down,
slowly then faster, harder, his thumb moved to my clit and started
rolling and I sucked in breath.

“That’s it, Kia, honey, fuck me. Take what
you deserve.”

“Sam,” I moaned, his thumb put on more
pressure, my neck and back arched, it tore through me leaving a
wake of sheer ecstasy and I cried out.

Before I was done, Sam flipped me to my back
and pounded deep, his breathing labored, one arm tight around my
middle back, the other hand cupping my face.

“Even in the dark, all I can see is how
beautiful you are,” he growled.

His words tore through me too and their wake
was no less beautiful.

I lifted my head and kissed him. He took
over the kiss, his tongue driving into my mouth. One of my legs was
wrapped around his waist, holding tight, the other one around the
back of his thigh, doing the same. My hands were running along the
skin of his back when his mouth disengaged from mine, his head
snapped back, he thrust in deep and groaned deeper, the sound
rumbling through me spectacularly, its origin not from his throat
but between my legs.

And I lay under Sam, listening to his
breaths even out thinking of his words, his actions and how they
coated my skin, seeping in, reminding me that with Sam, I was
invincible.

I held him close as his head tipped forward,
his face disappearing into my neck and I felt his mouth move there
as his hips moved, stroking tenderly.

God,
God,
but I loved it when he did
that.

My hand drifted up the sleek muscle of his
back, his neck and I cupped the back of his head.

Then I turned mine and whispered in his ear,
“You make me feel invincible.”

I felt his body still for a moment then he
muttered against my skin, “Good.”

I held on, loving the feel of him, his
weight, his warmth, all that he’d just given me, allowing myself a
moment to glory in that before I did what I knew I had to do and
went on, “But I think we have to talk.”

Instantly, Sam pulled away. My limbs
tightened to hold him to me but he was stronger. He rolled off and
suddenly I felt cold and, for the first time since our first date,
I felt strangely alone.

His hand came to rest on my belly and his
mouth came to mine. “Later. Now, I gotta crash.”

“Sam –”

His hand pressed in, his head moved back an
inch and he cut me off with a quiet yet firm, “Later, baby.”

I stayed silent. This was important, at
least to me. And it was growing more important every day.

But Sam Cooper gave a lot and he didn’t take
very much. He didn’t want to do this now that was clear. So I felt
I had to give that to him.

So I let it go but still whispered,
“Promise?”

His hand slid up my body to curl around the
side of my neck and he whispered back, “Promise.”

I studied him in the dark and decided
Sampson Cooper would honor his promise.

“Okay, honey,” I said softly.

Then I lifted up, touched my mouth to his,
pulled away then rolled off the bed. I went to the bathroom,
cleaned up, went back to the bedroom, tagged my nightie from under
the pillow, located my discarded underwear, tugged on both and
joined Sam in bed.

Without delay, his arm shoved under me and
he curled me into his side.

Yes. Okay. Everything would be okay.

I settled.

Memphis jumped up on the bed and sprawled on
the side I wasn’t using considering I was on Sam’s side.

Then Sam crashed.

Then Memphis did.

A little later, so did I.

You Okay?

Eleven days later…

“You okay, babe?”

I turned my head from watching Sam standing
in my yard, talking to my brother Kyle to Paula who was standing
beside me, holding my plastic cup refreshed with lemonade, part of
the many refreshments my mother brought to see us through the
day.

It was early afternoon of my yard sale and
after we finished up, Dad, Kyle and Sam were going to haul anything
left to the Goodwill. Then we were going to Paula and Rudy’s for a
barbeque. Then Sam and I were driving to Indianapolis, staying the
night at the Hyatt and getting on a plane headed to North Carolina
late the next morning.

Not that there would be much to go to the
Goodwill. Firstly, an everything must go sale stated pretty clearly
that the person having it wanted everything to go and not many
people were adverse to a bargain. Secondly, everyone in America
knew I was with Sam, which included everyone in Indiana so
practically everyone in Indiana showed up.

We had our first person arrive at five
thirty in the morning.

Sam didn’t even open the door. But he and
Memphis got out of bed and walked to it then I heard him shout,
“Come back on time. Eight o’clock. No sooner.”

Memphis yapped her concurrence.

Then Sam wrote a note, put it on the door
and came back to bed. It didn’t stop a few people from knocking but
he didn’t get up again. At seven thirty, my posse showed and we
started dragging stuff out to the yard. The minute we did, all the
doors on the cars lining the road in front of my house
and
down the side streets opened and they descended en masse.

Half the stuff was gone by nine o’clock.

Another quarter of it was gone by ten
thirty.

Now it was two in the afternoon and only the
dregs were left. I’d been so busy, I’d barely noticed if Sam was
inundated by admirers (though I did notice many occasions he was
chatting with people but just like him, he seemed to take this in
stride). My house was empty save for Sam and my suitcases. I’d
hired professional cleaners to come in on Monday and I’d given Mom
power of attorney to close on the house for me, something that was
happening on Thursday.

It had happened.

All that was Cooter and I was gone except
for the dregs sitting on my lawn. I’d sifted through everything and
there was nothing left. I’d even sold nearly all of my clothes
except ones I’d bought in the months after he died and when I was
on vacation.

I felt relief about this and it ran deep. I
also felt a shimmer of elation. It was done. I could move on. Any
memories I had were no longer physical, they were only in my head
and those would fade.

That said, it was only a shimmer of elation
because the answer to Paula’s question was no, I was not okay.

And I was not okay because Sam had broken
his promise.

At first, I’d been patient and given him
time. We were busy sorting through the stuff in the house, renting
a small storage unit for anything I intended to keep and going on
approximately three billion, four hundred and twenty-seven viewings
with Paula (none of them fruitful, alas). Then there was hauling
stuff to the storage unit, dinners at Mom and Dad’s, Paula and
Rudy’s, Missy’s, Teri’s or meeting them at restaurants. There was
also finding and hiring a cleaning firm. And working with Teri to
arrange travel to North Carolina. And also Sam’s workouts and
frequent telephone conversations with his crew of badasses and
Ozzie.

But after awhile, the hard work was done and
it was mostly waiting for the yard sale to happen sprinkled with an
occasional (fruitless) viewing.

When we had time on our hands, Sam filled
it. He did this by telling me he wanted to visit the places he’d
frequented when he’d lived in Indianapolis.

I’d been surprised. I knew he lived in Indy
for several years but I didn’t know he held any nostalgia for
it.

This was because he hadn’t told me.

So we went to Eagle Creek Park where Sam
said he would go and run, he liked it and he missed it though,
luckily, he didn’t run when we went there but we did walk for over
an hour. We drove around the Circle. We went to an Italian
restaurant called Patrizio’s where, the minute Sam walked in, the
owner (the aforementioned Patrizio) greeted him like a long lost
son. Interspersed with his many duties running a popular but kind
of hole in the wall restaurant, Patrizio hung at our table and I
learned more about Sam from Patrizio than I did from Sam. But,
again, all of it was fun, reminiscing, nothing meaty, nothing
profound.

In other words, in our time in Indiana we
did a lot, we were together almost constantly but what we did not
do was talk as Sam promised we would.

He was no less attentive, no less
gentlemanly, no less Sam which meant he was no less guarded.

And that was what it was. I’d figured it
out. And I’d figured it out not after the first time I gently
attempted to steer our conversation to him, his intensity about me
and where that was coming from, his history, his heart and had been
just as gently rebuffed. Nor did I figure it out after the second
time I, a little less gently, tried to approach him and was again
gently rebuffed.

No, it was the last time, last night, after
we’d had sex, were cuddling and murmuring about nothing important
when I’d tried to move it to stuff that was important and was not
gently rebuffed.

And I did this by cautiously and gently (I
thought) asking about his brother Ben.

“Don’t, Kia. Yeah?” Sam had said, his until
then soft murmur suddenly holding an edge.

“Don’t?” I asked carefully.

“Don’t,” Sam confirmed.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t push it.”

I pulled in breath then asked, “Push
what?”

Sam didn’t answer.

No.

What he did was lift up and twist, coldly
dislodging me from where I was lounging on his chest. Then he
turned off the light. Then he settled in bed with his back to
me.

Yes, that was what he did. He gave me
nothing and then he completely shut me out.

After the shock wore off (and this took
awhile), I rolled to my back, cuddled Memphis and stared at the
ceiling, feeling a pain stabbing close to my heart.

Because I knew at that moment that it wasn’t
about us being new, getting to know each other, feeling each other
out. It wasn’t about things being intense, our feelings for each
other and all the stuff swirling around me. And it wasn’t that we
were jetlagged, busy and there were a million things on our
minds.

It was that Sam did not intend to share and
I couldn’t figure this out. He was demonstrative, affectionate and
communicative. He listened, I knew, he always paid attention. He
cared what I said about practically everything even if I was waxing
on about how awesome pasta was at Patrizio’s.

He just wasn’t letting me in.

The one time I put up what Sam called “a
wall” he got seriously ticked and tore it right down. But turnabout
was obviously not fair play with Sam Cooper.

He’d broken his promise.

And that hurt.

I looked from Paula back to Sam and suddenly
I felt my head start to throb dully.

I was in unchartered territory.

Of the things Sam
had
shared, he’d
made it clear he didn’t want me gabbing to my girlfriends about him
though this was mostly about how he was in bed.

I didn’t know if it was okay to do what
every girl in the world did and that was pick apart her
relationship with her boyfriend. I didn’t want to piss off Sam
especially not now, when I felt things were at a fragile
juncture.

It didn’t seem fair if the rules of dating a
famous hot guy included the fact you couldn’t seek advice from your
girlfriends, especially in the beginning and seriously especially
at a fragile juncture.

“Babe?” Paula prompted and I looked back at
her. But before I could speak, she handed me my lemonade and
declared, “You know, this is good.”

My mind on Sam, I didn’t know what she was
talking about.

“What’s good?”

“This,” she swept her arm out to the yard,
my eyes followed it and when they did I saw Teri and Missy heading
our way. “This is good,” she went on. “Letting that dickhead go.
Exorcising him from your life, all of it, all of him. It’s
good.”

“It is, you know,” Missy told me when she
and Teri stopped close.

“I know,” I replied, looking amongst my
friends.

Paula was petite, had dark, thick, curly
hair, gray eyes and she was a little plump but she worked it. Teri
was tall like me, way rounder than me but she also worked it. She
had ash blonde, wispy hair she spent a fortune on having cut so it
didn’t look so wispy. Missy was also tall, but she was blue-eyed,
dark-haired and reed thin by design. She worked out daily at the
gym, getting up at five o’clock in the morning on weekdays to do
it. Since Rich died, it was another of her obsessions. She dropped
fifteen pounds she didn’t need to lose due to grief and kept it off
due to an obsession with fitness that took her mind off what she
lost.

They were my friends, my posse, my best
buds. But I had kept them distant from me for years as I lived in
hell. They were friends who would have helped me, friends who stood
beside me even though I didn’t let them in and still, even learning
that lesson, I was undecided about sharing about Sam.

And I didn’t know how to feel about this
either.

On the one hand, I was falling in love with
Sam and if he could grow to trust me, I could grow to trust that
maybe the same thing was happening for him too. And I didn’t want
to do anything that might harm that.