Page 44 of Resilience

The next evening, Athena turned off the highway and onto the winding, two-lane road that took her through the little town of Grant to another, narrower, unlined road. She was on her way to the Wesson farm.

She and Sam had not spoken for more than a day. That was rare in the twenty-two years of their friendship, but it wasn’t entirely unheard of. What was unheard of, however, was such a long silence when things weren’t good between them. They didn’t fight often, but when they did, they tended to rush back to each other the second they cooled down.

But they’d never had a break like this before.

Athena was going to Sam, without letting him know to expect her, for a few reasons. The first and most important was that she needed her friend. It was tearing her apart to think that they might really be broken. She had to make sure they found a way to fix things. Also, as she’d lain in bed the night before, fighting as usual to retain one corner of her pillow while Minnie stretched out over the rest of it, Athena had realized that she’d been lumping Sam in with Hunter, and that wasn’t fair. At all.

It freaked her out, badly, to imagine Sam wanting her, to go through all her memories and wonder if things she’d thought were completely platonic and innocent, things she’d felt comfortable doing and being because Sam didn’t see her that way, and wonder if—and when—he, in fact, had seen her that way.

There had to be a path through this mess—and the path was honesty. Communication. They had to work it through; there was no hope if they didn’t. But this wasn’t something Athena could do in text or on FaceTime. She needed more than words to understand. She needed to be right in front of him, where neither of them could dissemble or otherwise obscure the truth.

Sam was her person, and she would not lose him.

That was the other reason she was making this drive: Athena had always known that Sam was her person, that no one else, not even her parents, was as important in her life as he was. She’d never really considered any implications of that truth; it was simply true, the way her deafness was true. A simple state of her being. But Sam’s ... Assertion? Profession? Confession? ... shone a new light on that truth. For the first time, she wondered if it was strange to value a platonic relationship above all others.

Or maybe that was the wrong way to think of it. Maybe she was wondering if she, too, had deeper feelings for him than she’d understood.

Truly, she never had thought about him in any kind of sexual way. She knew he was a good-looking guy; she was deaf, not blind. He was tall and broad-shouldered. He was strong and looked it. Her perception of physical strength was perhaps a bit skewed by her father’s very muscular body, but even by that metric, Sam had a good body. And his hugs were second only to Dad’s.

She liked Sam better when he was shaggy than this new, more styled look Lark had given him, but that was, she thought, mainly because he liked himself better shaggy. He looked good either way. He had beautiful hazel eyes: bright and curious. And a great smile, one that crinkled the corners of his eyes and drew parentheses around his mouth.

But his looks had never featured at all in her feelings for him. She’d never wanted to kiss him, had never felt turned on by his touch. Every single time she’d ever come near thinking of him in a sexual way had been her and Sam being equally grossed out by their parents trying to push them together. Incest, they always said. It would be like incest.

Sam had felt the same way. Either he’d been lying, and doing a terrifyingly great job at it, or this thing where he thought he was in love with her was new.

Was it new? Was it real? What had changed? Was she having feelings she hadn’t realized were happening? And could feelings she hadn’t realized she had be real?

WHAT THE FUCK WAS HAPPENING?

The only way to know was to ask. Work it through. Figure it out. FIX IT. Thus, she was driving up the gravel lane to Sam’s family home.

The reason it had to happen right now, before she’d figured out what was going on in her own head: a run to Nevada was happening tomorrow, and Dad had told her that both prospects were on the run. She couldn’t let Sam go on a fucking gun run with this mess between them.

He was outside, washing his truck and his bike, as she pulled up. Tank, who’d obviously been getting frequently sprayed with the hose, started his barking butt-wiggle dance as soon as she crested the rise.

Sam wore an ancient pair of jeans, ripped up and washed nearly to whiteness. His t-shirt was draped over a viburnum bush at the corner of the drive. Holding a big, dripping sponge, he watched her drive up and park, but he didn’t smile.

He set the sponge on the hood of his truck and went to the bush to get his shirt. When Athena climbed out of her Fiat and closed the door, he walked over, pulling the tee over his chest.

She crouched and gave Tank the requisite greeting snuggle. She’d left Blanche at home this evening; Blanche wasn’t yet sure what to make of Tank’s enthusiasm.

“Hey,” Sam signed as Athena stood. He still wasn’t smiling. He looked like he was waiting for trouble.

Athena had run from him at the station, after he’d told her he was in love with her. She’d run because she was freaked out and needed to get away and try to arrange her thoughts into some kind of sense. She hadn’t meant to hurt him, but obviously she had.

Of course she had. She’d gone to the station because his lack of communication had hurt her, and then she’d run from him when he’d made himself vulnerable.

Right this second was the first time she’d understood that part: he’d told her a truth that scared him, and she’d run away. She was so spun by her Hunter problem she’d hadn’t thought of Sam’s feelings, what Sam had risked to tell her the truth.

“Hi. Can we talk?”

He nodded. “You want to go inside? Mom’s making dinner. She’ll want you to stay.”

Athena’s attention snagged on his bike, gleaming in the late-afternoon sun. She hadn’t ridden with him since before he’d signed on as a prospect. Maybe it was a bad idea to do it now, with the strange uncertainty suddenly between them, but the impulse was strong nonetheless.

She nodded at the bike. A 1993 Wide Glide that his father had handed down to him. “Can we take a ride?” she asked.

Sam frowned at her. He looked over his shoulder at the bike, then back at her, still frowning. “You sure?”

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