Page 63 of Without You, Scotch and Sammy 2

Sam chuckles softly. “Don’t steal it.”

“I’m a reformed man! I don’t steal. And I especially don’t admit to stealing with the deputy standing right there giving me the hairy eyeball.”

Sam laughs louder this time, but Alex sounds like he’s growling. “One more fucking person ‘round here calls me the deputy, and I’m gonna shoot some people.”

“Come on.” Sam leads us forward, away from his pissed off siblings and the dog who hasn’t stopped glaring at me since we all stopped, and he leads me around the corner until we’re near my former hotel. “I’m sorry about that.”

“You’re sorry?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry Britt was so mean. She’s an amazing woman, a great sister, a wonderful mother. I’m sorry you didn’t get to see that.”

“Looks to me I saw the great sister part. She was ready to rip my face off for you.”

He chuckles humorlessly. “She can get a little hot under the collar sometimes. Especially when it comes to family.”

I get that I left him, but the heat under her collar about a teenage breakup is out of this world.

“Come on, lets go home.”

I nod and turn my face away discreetly, because my eyes are stinging and I don’t want him to see. I hate that people hate me so much. I hate that the actions of a teenage girl who was being bullied by her parents can still evoke so much emotion such a long time after the fact. I simply hate being hated. I was one of them once upon a time, but now I’m the leper on the outside, and the irony is that my heart was ripped out too. I was hurt and scared and sad and alone too. I was trying to protect Sam and his family, but I’m the villain in this story.

I want to insist on getting my own apartment again. Before, I was worried about Sam’s comfort in his own home. I was willing to endure just about anything to keep my foot in his door and force him into helping me. But one single emotional morning, especially after the night we had where we didn’t fight and I slept a full nine hours, has me wanting to give up. It’s not about his comfort now. It’s about me wanting out. I don’t want the hate and anger anymore. I just want the people who once treated me with such undying love to stop treating me so horribly. I want to cry alone for a few hours. But I can’t, because if I suggest leaving, Sam will get mad again, which will only make me feel worse.

We walk the couple blocks toward his apartment in silence, and as though she’s truly rested after such a big sleep, Lily just watches us from the stroller. Her pacifier takes up half her face, but her eyes continue to flick between the two of us as she squeaks and fights a bout of hiccups.

We walk to the base of his outside stairs, then Sam unclips the carseat from the stroller base and carries her up without another word to me. With a sigh, I take the diaper bag and follow him up.

He tosses his keys onto the kitchen counter and sits the carseat on the table, then unlatching the straps, he pulls her out and cuddles her against his chest. He starts humming to her in the way he did a million times in the past for me, and swaying as he moves, he walks out of the kitchen without a second glance at me. Like I don’t exist. Like my feelings don’t matter. Like I’m not even here.

I want to go to my room and cry.

I want to go into the living room and hit him for hurting me so much. My mom was the first person I ever hit, and she damn well deserved it. Sam might be the second, because I don’t know how else to channel my pain and energy.

He’s protecting me from psycho sisters, but he still hates me.

Well that’s fine, because his blasé dismissal has my anger skyrocketing. He can hate me all he wants, because I kind of hate him too.

I stomp past him and into the spare room, and the fact it still smells of him sends my temper another notch higher. I throw my bag down on the bed, accidentally slamming it against the headboard noisily and busting the zipper open. Diapers and pacifiers fall out, tubes of creams and gels and a million other different baby things that help soothe rashes and pains spill out across my covers. A small tub of pre-measured formula pops open and the powder spills in the gap between the covers and pillows, essentially digging its way between the sheets just to be a royal pain in the ass. I let out a cry of frustration as I pick my shit up, shoving them in the bag without ordering them. I scrunch tiny little diapers and shove them in, then bibs and the creams. I pick up the formula tub and throw it against the wall for good measure, because shit can’t get any worse for me.

I rip the sheets off the bed and toss the pillows to the floor in anger. My arms shake with a newfound rage that I haven’t felt until this day. Brittany Turner broke me, because of all the people in the world I worried would hold a grudge against me for leaving, it wasn’t his nine-year-old little sister.

Britt and I spent a lot of time together when we were younger. I sat around braiding her hair a million times as we watched the guys practice. Britt and I played with her new temporary tattoo stencil maker for hours while we giggled and chatted. She was just a kid, but she was cool, and she was sweet. She thought I was the coolest girl around, because I was a high school senior and because her big brother adored me.

Even at her age, she attempted to teach me how to skate, and she was good at it. She was nimble where I was not, and she was fast, where I was slow. She giggled when I fell, and she teased me when I wobbled. But above it all, she was kind and sweet, and she loved me like I was her sister too.

Fuck that bitch.

I roll up the sheets and storm out of the room. I stomp past a curious Sam as he watches me with a lifted brow and dirty smirk. I hide my face so he doesn’t see the angry tears in my eyes because his sister was a big meanie to me, and I rush through the kitchen and out the back door. I slam the heavy wooden door closed, then dropping the pile at my feet, I yank at the sheets until one separates itself from the other. I snap the fabric out in front of me so the powdered formula shakes free, but the wind blows it back in my face. I scream silently and clench my teeth in anger.

I want to go home.

I hate this town.

I pick up the next sheet and shake it out, then balling them in my arms, I rip the door open and swing it wide. The handle on the inside slams against the wall, but I’m not sorry. Sam Turner’s door can go fuck itself.

I race back through the living room, slowing when I find him rocking in the recliner with a bottle between Lily’s lips. He doesn’t speak, he simply watches my mini-breakdown with a mildly bored expression on his face.

Fuck him! And his door. And his sister.

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