Page 37 of Touch of Innocence
SEVENTEEN
Sam stared down at the brightly glowing screen of the laptop, the dark words marring the cheerful white page of the email that he was writing. It was an email he had intended to write for months now, an email that he had been terrified of sending because he feared the rejection that he thought was inevitable.
Before, he had been scared because he was positive that he was going to have to give up on all of his dreams, and that the request to come back to Harvard would be denied. So he’d planned on it like he already had permission, but in truth, he didn’t even know if he could.
Now things were a little bit different, and Sam wasn’t sure that he was ready to send this email for entirely different reasons. Did he want to leave Texas after all? He had always been so sure that the answer was yes, but now things had changed.
Sam’s fingers hovered over the mousepad, right on the very brink of sending the email, which was a very politely worded few paragraphs to one of the admissions officers. Did he want to do this? Deep, deep down, did he?
Undergrad degree. Law school. Working hard until he became a partner. That was his path or had been before he’d flunked out. This could be his second chance, but the problem was simple.
Gunner was here, and Sam couldn’t be sure that whatever they had could survive if Sam went off to college again. On the other hand, ever since that night a week ago when Gunner had talked Mike into letting him drive his Jaguar, and Sam into going along with it, Gunner had been withdrawing.
Or had Sam been the one to pull away? Once more, he read the lines of type and closed his eyes. He wasn’t running away. He wasn’t. He was just doing what he needed to do, what he’d planned to do, long before he’d ever known that there was a man who could make him feel all of these things at all.
It was his future. That was all there was to it. Rubbing his fingers into his temples until it almost hurt, Sam fought with himself. Fought to know what the right thing to do was, the right thing for himself and the right thing for Gunner.
“Hey.”
Speak of the devil, or, in this case, think of him. Sam glanced up, nervously shutting his laptop, the unsent email still on the screen. But his face must have shown his guilt or something, because Gunner wandered over and, before Sam could hide it, flipped open the computer to peer at the screen.
“What are you hiding there?”
Panic gripped him, making his chest feel so tight that he was sure he couldn’t force air through it at all. Sam grabbed his computer, shut it, and held it firmly to his chest, hoping against hope that Gunner hadn’t seen anything. That Sam had acted in time, but Gunner wasn’t stupid, or unobservant.
“So you’re doing it. You’re really going back to school,” he said, and there was a vague accusation in his eyes. But Sam was also pretty sure that he saw some relief there, too.
“I never said that I wouldn’t …” Sam heard the thinness of his own voice, and stood up, trying to use his extra inches of height to tower over Gunner. To give him some authority, though the accusation that he saw in Gunner’s face fit just a little bit too well against his own guilt, some sort of twisted jigsaw puzzle.
“Yeah. You asked me to stay, but you’re gonna take off and go to school halfway across the country. No big deal.” Gunner glared at him, then spun to yank open the fridge door, like he might pull it right off. But he didn’t, he simply glared inside, not reaching to take anything out.
He was angry. For the first time, Sam was seeing Gunner well and truly angry, and it was a little bit terrifying.
“I didn’t send the email yet, but yeah. It’s my future.” Sam kept on repeating that, those three words.It’s my future.They were starting to have almost no meaning to him at all, but he grimly clung onto them, a man drowning in an ocean of uncertainty. What else was there, if not his future?
“Yeah, I get it.” From the tense set of Gunner’s shoulder and back, the hard, uncompromising tenseness of the muscles, Gunner wasn’t all that happy about it, though. Sam bit his lower lip and tried to figure out just what he could say to try to explain.
But how could he explain when he couldn’t even figure out himself what he wanted? He was poised to jump, but he didn’t know which way he was going to go yet.
Sam set his computer down on the table once more, his hands gripping onto the edge of it as if he could somehow hold on to something. Retain some sort of certainty. Slowly, he slid the computer open, then looked at the email, which still sat there, the send button seeming to mock him.
He couldn’t do it. No matter how weird things were with him and Gunner, he couldn’t abandon what they had. Not until he knew that there was no hope. He wasn’t quite there, and his fingers touched the button which would delete the whole email, scrap it entirely.
“Gunner,” Sam started, and then there was a knock on the door.
Not just any knock on the door, either. There was something about it, something brusque and rushed and officious, like the person on the other side was in a hurry and not particularly interested in waiting.
The sound of it pulled Sam away from his computer. Leaving it on the table, Sam went to pull the door open and then froze right in his tracks.
Two men in black suits stood on the other side of the door. They had to be sweltering in the summer heat, but if so, you wouldn’t know it to look at them. They both looked cool and calm and controlled, their shirts gleaming white, ties and suits as black as night.
“FBI,” one of them, the taller one, said, and they both showed their badges. “We’re looking for Gunner Smith.”
Gunner? Why? Sam swallowed and then turned to look over his shoulder. Gunner was there, looking a little bit pale even under his golden tan, but he walked over to stand beside Sam.
“That’s me,” Gunner admitted, and Sam looked back at the FBI agents, both of whom were looking at Gunner like he was a particularly juicy steak and they were starving to death.
“Gunner, what the hell …?” Sam started, and Gunner sighed and shook his head.
