True North Book 3 - Finding Now Kate and Sam (27 page)

I’d thought for sure there would have been some way to get her alone to talk, even for a moment. Then I had the stupidest idea ever! But I saw no way around it. I’d have to trick her.

On Thursday, before the concert, I snuck into More Hall. I wore disposable rubber gloves and had my hands stuffed in my pockets so no one saw. The hallways were clear when I nonchalantly strolled past the fire alarm and activated it. Quickly, I closed myself up in the janitor’s closet outside her classroom and waited.

Students packed the hallway like spawning salmon as they made their way out the door. They were obviously just thrilled to be getting out of class. Just as I’d hoped, Kate hadn’t seemed too troubled about the alarm. She took time to gather her papers together and grab her laptop, briefcase and jacket. And finally she was alone!

The moment she walked by, I sprang out of the closet, and yanked her into it.

I took her completely off guard. “Holy fuck! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“You won’t talk to me! I had to do something!”

“And wasting the Seattle fire department’s time was all you could think of?” she snapped coldly.

“I leave tomorrow morning.”

“I know.” Her voice softened as her eyes met the floor.

“Kate, you haven’t answered my calls or texts or even read my letters. You haven’t gone home for two weeks! I have to see you, I need to talk to you.” I could hear the pleading in my voice.

“I think I already told you that what we had was over,” she answered curtly before turning on her heel to get out.

Without thinking, I pulled her back to me, pushed her back against the door and smothered her protests with my mouth. She tried to fight me off at first, pushing and slamming her fists into my chest, but a moment later, her tension-filled body relaxed in my arms and she began returning my kiss.

“I can’t live without you,” I mumbled against her lips, so soft. I’d missed them so much. “I haven’t slept three hours put together since you left.”

“You’re not giving up your life for me. I won’t let you. You’ll think you’re making the right choice, then a few years from now you’ll end up resenting me, or worse, hating me,” she said, her voice caught between the little whine she’d get when she needed me to touch her everywhere, and a cutting sorrow that I hadn’t heard since the night she told me about her brother.

Both sounds threw me off my game, and when she smacked her open hands against my chest to push me away, I stumbled backwards.

“It’s over! There is no more us and there never will be!” she shouted and burst out the door.

Logan and the boys were expecting me in two hours, but I couldn’t get my head together. I wandered around downtown, feeling like an animal caught in a trap—damned no matter what I did.  When I stopped, I was in front of her apartment building. I looked up at the sky rise and wondered where the hell she’d been staying the past two weeks. A hotel? Would she come back here to get her things? How the fuck was she pulling off this disappearing trick of hers?

I heard a set of car speakers behind me, blasting a tune I was pretty familiar with. So much so, that it made me pause and turn to look at it. The older model GTO was stopped at the corner. The guy in the passenger seat had a cigarette between his fingers, which hung out the rolled down car window.

Why did I feel like that song was my very last hope?

Kate

Sam’s stunt in the closet nearly broke me! I ran as fast as I could to the bicycle I had locked up in staff parking and got the hell out of there. When I got to my hotel room down the street, I closed myself in, locked the door and bawled my eyes out. I only had to hold on for two more days and Sam North would be long gone.

Friday morning’s class began. In robot mode, I led the class’ discussion about wind turbines. As they began to talk amongst themselves, my gaze wandered out the window. It was raining, of course. I couldn’t help but think about dancing in the rain with Sam. Was I doing the right thing?

I shook myself.
No! You aren’t going to ruin this for him!

He wants you to go!

He thinks that now, but life on the road will be different. You think girls throw themselves at him now? Just wait. And if you went with him, he’d feel tied down to you. Stuck. It’s better this way.

But, what if he wants to be tied down …

“Ms. Jolie?”

I snapped out of the discussion I was having with myself, feeling more than a little crazy.

“Don’t you agree?” the student was asking.

I hadn’t heard anything that was said. “Keep working it out amongst yourselves.”

Sam’s voice drifted through my mind. “
My whole purpose for living now

is making you healed and happy and watching you smile every fucking day, knowing I’m the one responsible for it”

“Come with me …”
he’d said. Had he meant it? I think he had. What if he’d meant it? Truly. Not just for now, but for always.

I stood there, remembering
. “Kate, you are my Everest. And now I don’t want to come down for anything.”
And
“I love my music and racing and the adrenaline of both, but this … There is no other thrill like you.”

I closed my eyes at the onslaught of emotions that were ready to carry me away with them. If I left this life, would I be leaving Ethan? That’s how I’d always felt.

But are you happy, Kate?
Sam’s voice seemed to say.
Ethan would want you to be happy.

“I don’t think I could ever be happy without you, Sam,” I whispered under my breath.

I recalled the last song we had written, right before he told me he was leaving.
“And I realize you are the one I want to stay.”

He’d said that to me once before—after we’d first made love, long before we’d written the song together.

Oh my God! He’d had it planned. Written that lyric down just before
he told me about the tour. He didn’t want to let me go! He’d wanted me to stay with him, to go with him!

And what if, a year down the road, he ends up cheating on you or sick of you?

Then I’ll deal with that, if it comes up, in a year from now
, I thought, feeling peace for the first time in two weeks.

“Excuse me, Ms. Jolie!” I snapped my head up to find the class staring at me and Lexy Bordeau standing in front of me with a box in her hands. “I found this on Sam North’s chair. Looks like it’s for you.”

My name was written across the top in bold black marker. Immediately I recognized the handwriting. 

Shaking, I took the box from her hands. “Are you alright?” she asked, concerned.

“Yeah, more than alright,” I answered and then called out, “You’re all dismissed early today. Have a great Christmas holiday!”

I rushed back to the desk and ripped the box open. Inside were at least a dozen envelopes, all addressed to me from Sam. They were dated over the past two weeks and had obviously gone through the post office. I hadn’t been back to my place since we split. He still had a key … probably came to my place, saw them still there, and took them back. There was a CD player too. I lifted it from the box.

What the …?
Folded around the handle was a piece of paper.

I unfolded it and froze. There, written in Sam’s neat handwriting was a song … but it wasn’t just any song. My heart leaped into my throat to choke me. I breathed through my nose, trying to steady myself.

Did he know?

Sam had written the words to “If You Only Knew” by Shinedown, and before the lyrics he had written:

Kate, I hope you find this. I love you so completely and I believe in you and us. I’ll never give up on us. Whatever it takes, no matter how long we’re apart or how far away we are from each other … this love we have will find a way.

I’m helping you check off #9—Play your favorite music. Shinedown was your favorite band, I know that, so maybe these words will speak to you as if I wrote them and sang them just for you.

If you only knew, you’d be here next to me.

If you only knew, you’d have never walked away.

If you only knew, you’d know I meant everything I said and I want you by my side.

… If you only knew,

Sam

Push play – Track 6

“If You Only Knew” had been on my favorite album,
The Sound of Madness.
And that was the concert tour Ethan and I had gone to see, and the same album that had played in the car as he died.

Turn it on.
My memory of Ethan, happy and alive, seemed to urge me on.

I shook my head no.

Wait to see how alive I am in you when you listen to it.

The two men I loved most in the world, Sam and Ethan. Did I have to let one go to still love the other? Would I be staining the memory of my brother if I left to be with Sam?

My finger was trembling as I held it over the silver plastic. I closed my eyes and dropped my finger.

The music swirled up from the player and into my every pore. In that moment, I heard the boy I loved with my whole heart telling me he loved me back and still wanted me, that he couldn’t live without me and that he needed me for his very breath; simultaneously it was my brother saying he’d be with me no matter what I decided and that he loved and forgave me and wanted me to live my life for me.

“Sam,” I breathed.

I grabbed my phone and dialed his number, but he didn’t pick up.

“Shit, shit, shit!” My watch read 11:55 a.m. He’d said the bus left in the morning. I felt my heart begin to sink.

But he played last night. He’d have slept in, and he’s always late. I still have a chance.

I rushed to grab my laptop, briefcase and coat. No way would he still be at his apartment. He would have left already.

What was the name of the tour bus company his band was going to use?
I couldn’t remember. The room around me blurred as my eyes filled with tears.
Think, Kate, think!

It was something “Tour Lines.”

Maybe there was a clue in the letters? But I didn’t have time to read through letters, it was already almost noon!

I picked up the CD player and song and stuffed it back into the box before running out the door.

Once I was outside, it hit me.
Celebrity Tour Lines!

I grabbed my phone and Googled directions from the university to the tour lines.

“Oh fuck.” My heart dropped into my stomach.
It was impossible.

The tour lines were on the other side of the city, by King County Airport. Riding my bike, it would take me at least forty-five minutes, maybe fifty, and there wasn’t another bus due for half an hour.

I looked back down at my phone. Google Maps said in the current traffic conditions it would only take fifteen minutes.

At that moment a yellow taxi cab zipped past and turned the corner by the university.

“A cab?”
A cab was a car!
“Fifteen minutes.” I trembled.

Without another word, I ran out toward the street with Shinedown singing in my head.

Oh, Sam, if you only knew.

Chapter Nineteen

“Raging Fire”

Phillip Phillips

Kate

I didn’t have time to waste or think or panic. I flagged down the yellow taxi and watched as the driver pulled to the curb.

“Oh, fuck!” Steeling myself, I threw open the back door and slid inside.

Immediately, I began to hyperventilate.

“Where to, lady?” The driver spoke, but it seemed like it was an echo from far away.

“Celebrity Tours, by the airport.”

“You got it.” His hand slapped the taxi meter and the numbers fell to zeroes.

“Sam …” Attempting to steady my breath as the driver swerved into the afternoon traffic like a freaking madman, I tried to think of the only person who could have ever gotten me to get into a car again.

A smile played across my lips. The memory of my last time in a car wasn’t sad or fearful, but was thrilling and had possessed my very soul. I laughed out loud and the driver peeked at me through his rearview mirror, looking at me like I was manic.

Sam had changed even the worst memory in my life, altering my terror of cars into a reminder of our love.

“Can’t you drive any faster?!” I pressed the driver.

Sam

“Dude! You have to hurry up. We have suits waiting for us.” Logan was starting to get mad. So were the other guys for that matter. Everyone was on the bus and ready to go.

“Just five more fucking minutes!” I snapped back.

“Sam, you said that forty minutes ago. She’s not going to show.”