Page 39 of Never Say Yes To A Stranger

(Still sort of Sam)

We don’t talk about it. We probably should, but we don’t.

The next morning turns into the next morning, which turns into the next morning, and then three more days pass. I have one more night until Beau is going to be in my bed again, and even though there’s been a prim and proper brick wall erected around us outside of the bed, where we’ve coexisted in the space oflet’s maybe pretend all of it didn’t happen and be as polite as possible,I’m not sure the wall is going to hold up in bed.

We’re electric in bed.

Our bodies aren’t on the same page as our brains.

I’ve never felt fire like that. Not even when I thought I was in love, and that’s supposed to be the safest, most wonderful, hottest sex because of all the trust and emotion involved. Maybe my body knew it wasn’t real. Or maybe, somewhere in the backof my mind, I knew there were red flags galore that I should have paid attention to.

It was never electric. It was never so hot that every fire department in the state would have to be called to put out the bed fire.

My body knows it’s still there, smoldering under the surface. It’s always known. I’ve tried everything to justify it in my mind, but maybe there’s no justifying it. It just…is.

So what if you both might have good chemistry? The man is as emotionally intelligent as a can opener, and his personality, or whatever he’s decided his personality should be, makes running through a park filled with mousetraps and sharp knives look comforting.

But that’s not how he really is.

Or is that something I keep telling myself to justify the fact that I keep falling for the same kind of toxic men?

No, not the same kind. Beau is so far from Aiden. The only thing they have in common is the chronological proximity of the first letter of their first names in the alphabet. Aiden lied to everyone. He lied about who he was. Beau is only lying to himself to protect himself after having to live through the worst pain imaginable.

Beau catches me in the barn on Friday morning after I’ve just fed the cats. They’ve already eaten, but they’re both hanging around, rolling in the loose hay all over the ground and in the sunbeams streaming in through the open door. It’s a lovely morning. I’m wearing a regular prairie dress that’s pink with white flowers. It was one of the first ones I ever sewed. I had to take it apart four times before I was happy with it, and it’s not taken in anywhere. It’s not fitted in the least, actually. I feel pretty ashamed for altering that other one. I truly don’t even know why I did it, other than maybe I wanted to be pretty and desirable for a minute again. Or that I wanted someone to lookat me and see…I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to feel seen, to feel real, to feel like I haven’t turned into a ghost out here, and there’s something and someone under all the layers. I wanted to feel that under all the deception and the fake ID, I was still just Sam.

Okay, and also? Beau’s really hot, which I can’t help noticing.

I can’t help noticing it right now as he walks to the barn and stops at the entrance. He leans against the wall, which makes his body do insane things in that button-down dress shirt and those fresh jeans. Why did he also have to look so good in jeans too?

He stops, scans my face with those cold blue eyes of his that aren’t quite as frosty because it seems not even he can resist a beautiful country morning, and then eyes the cats flopping around on the barn floor.

“Absolute Unit Cat,” he greets Mama. “And…Little Absolute Unit Cat.” Baby meows at him and does that weird tail-vibrating thing she does when she’s happy or pissed and pretty much anything in between.

I want to laugh, but laughing feels like we’re friendly or at least on the same page or not all freaking tense, and I don’t know if that’s the truth. I know it’snotthe truth.

He might be impeccably put together—freshly shaven, hair clean and styled, and clothing pressed like the ironing and drycleaning gods both smiled on the garments and decreed they should never wrinkle—but there’s something completely off about the way he carries himself. Either he’s finally reached the limits of how much of the country he can stand—even if he does get up and go for a million-mile run every morning and eat an endless supply of gross healthy things he has delivered and that appear magically on the porch in the morning, and his regular routine probably isn’t suffering all that much, at least not where his exercise and diet are concerned—or he has something on his mind.

I feel like I’m going to go straight through this bale I’m sitting on. Like it’s no longer sturdy and can’t support my weight even though it can. The feeling of sinking and falling isinsideme.

“Do you have news about Aiden yet?” Maybe that’s why he looks so out of sorts. Although, if that was true, and he could leave, I think he’d probably do a backflip from the sheer happiness, tell me the rest of the contracted hot bedding dates are off and that I can keep the change, and then wish me a great life.

He keeps leaning hard against the barn doorframe. It’s a huge beam right there, but he somehow makes it look small. “No. It takes time to nail down such a cretin. It has to be airtight. We’re still working hard on it, don’t worry.”

I can’t help the frustrated sigh that comes out of me. “Then what?”

“Then what, what?”

Argh, why does he look so confused? No, I see it. The spark in his normally reserved, cold eyes. He wants to say something. I’m sure of it.

His jaw clenches and releases and clenches again like he’s hammering a piece of gum to a pulp, but he’s not chewing anything. I’ve seen him pop mints into his mouth on occasion, but never gum. Also, for the love of chicken rumps, is it a sin to be jealous of mints when they’re the ones getting sucked on, and I’m…yeah, definitely wrong if you’re taking it that far.

“I think we…” he begins.

An entire generation passes while I sit and wait for him to finish that sentence. When it’s clear we’re going to be as fossilized as dinosaurs if I don’t help him out, I step in and say, “You think we need to talk?”

A storm of relief shadows his face, and he replies, “Yes.”

“About the contract?”

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