Page 28 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

CHAPTER 7

Lukas had known from that very first evening, when he’d stood up for Samantha against those ridiculous bullies, that he was going to have a hell of a time keeping his hands off of her.

He was twenty-one. Old enough to know better than to start something with an innocent eighteen-year-old girl still in high school. Yet the spark between them was undeniable. He balanced on a very thin wire, thinking a couple of dates would be enough, that they were such opposites it could never work, that he would soon become bored and break it off as he should.

But every date left him breathless and wanting more. She was beautiful and fascinating, angry and hurt and fragile in some ways but in others, tough as nails yet really kind. To animals and old people and kids. And him. She didn’t judge him, and she tended to see a version of him that was better than he was, which both pleased and frightened him. He was hopelessly hooked for the first time in his life and he didn’t have a clue what to do about it.

“Are you gay?” Samantha asked, leaning over closer to him across the table at PITS where they were eating burgers and shakes one night.

“What? No! Lower your voice. Geez.” He looked around the diner. It was ten o’clock on a January Friday, very cold, and it was pretty dead. But still.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of if you are.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Maybe it’s low testosterone. Or maybe I’m just not attractive enough.” She pushed out her bottom lip, all pouty-like, which made her even more irresistible.

She was killing him. Completely killing him.

“You haven’t asked me back up to your place since we started hanging out,” she persisted.

Of course he hadn’t. Because the second she walked through his door, he would simultaneously peel both their clothes off and have their underwear circling their ankles, no questions asked. She deserved better.

He’d never felt this way about a girl before. He’d fallen hard. He wanted to take her out, but what was there to do in the dead of winter? He was three years older than she was, and that was another problem. She hung with high school kids; he hung with some of the other mechanics, or his buddies from his band. Their worlds couldn’t be farther apart.

She told him she didn’t care, that she loved just being with him. Sometimes they’d go to the library and look up weird books. Other times she took him with her when she worked as an usher at live events at the theater. He ushered, too, and got to see the shows for free. He took her to meet Mrs.Ellis, who’d loved her at first sight and often invited her for dinner. But Sam never suggested bringing him to her house. It went without saying that her oldest brother would never approve of her dating someone like him.

They’d seen several film festivals at the Palace, one featuring horror movies and another on classics from the 1930s. They always had coffee afterward or a burger. He always met her somewhere but never picked her up at her house. Never even brought up the idea, knowing she had four older brothers, all of whom were capable of—and likely to—beat him to a pulp.

He’d never really had a girlfriend before. Oh, there were girls, but going out with one had usually entailed as much sex as he could get and as little talking as he could get away with.

He’d never told any girl about his childhood but for some reason, Sam made him want to spill his guts about his abusive, alcoholic parents, how he’d done his best to take care of his three younger brothers but failed because they all got taken away and split up into different homes. She had this way of looking at him like she just ... got him, like she was interested and what he was feeling wasn’t so weird or different.You were just a boy, she’d told him.It wasn’t your fault. No one had ever told him that before and it brought him a kind of mercy he didn’t even know he needed.

The thing was, he loved talking to herandhe thought constantly about having sex with her, something that had never happened before.

One night it was blizzarding so he dropped her off in front of her house, something he’d usually avoided. Their good-night kiss lingered and turned into a deep-throat make-out session that steamed the windows and had him struggling to touch her through seven layers of scarves, coats, and sweaters, and trying not to show how much pain he was in from the pressure in his jeans. The porch light flickered, signaling somebody had caught on to what they were doing, making them break apart, panting. Sam’s hair was tousled and her lips were swollen, her lip gloss smeared. She was the most gorgeous girl he’d ever seen and he couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear.

He walked her to the door. He wasn’t going to let her face whoever was in there by herself while he cowered in the shadows and besides, it was about time her family knew they were serious. To his chagrin, the door opened. Her oldest brother stood there, arms crossed across his big chest. Eyeballing him.

Lukas knew exactly what this guy saw. A kid with a nose piercing, earrings, tattoos.Trouble. Still, he persevered. “Um, hi, Mr.Rushford.” Lukas cringed. Did he really just call a guy who wasn’t even out of his twentiesMister? But he didn’t dare call himBrad. “I’m ... Lukas.” He extended his hand. No gloves, even though it was practically below zero.

Brad barely nodded. He focused his attention on his sister. “You’re late. Curfew’s midnight.” Then he opened the screen for Sam and disappeared into the house. Sam looked back at Lukas, making a mimicking face that made him smile a little. Then she blew him a kiss and closed the door.

The brother hadn’t even given him a chance. Sam had acted like she didn’t care, but he knew better.

For Valentine’s Day he bought her a fine canary-yellow silk scarf and gave it to her in the car after they’d gone ice-skating at the ice rink a couple towns over.

“You should wear color,” he said.

She fingered the soft material between her thumbs. “Youdon’t wear color. You wear mostly black. I like black, too.” Her voice was teasing, and there was a glint of mischief in her eyes.

He tucked a silky lock of her hair behind her ear. The curls immediately sprang forward, doing as they willed. Like her.

“You weren’t meant to wear black. You weren’t meant to be an angry rebel.” She was still dressing all in black, still rimming her eyes with heavy liner. But at least she’d let her hair go back to its natural red color.

She rolled her eyes. “Who am I supposed to be then?”

“Just yourself. Which is pretty terrific.” He moved closer to her, to her warmth. She smelled like grapefruity shampoo and he inhaled the scent greedily. He felt on the edge of control. Things between them were barreling forward on an inevitable course, he could feel it. Decisions would have to be made that would change everything.

“Can I ask you something?” It had been on his mind for a long time. He worried that she wanted to have sex with him to get back at her brother, who’d kept an even tighter rein on her after the trouble at school.

He didn’t want their lovemaking to be about revenge. He wanted it to be aboutthem.With a kind of terrible horror, he realized he wanted her tolovehim.

---