Page 114 of So Wild

But Sam was already moving toward the gate, her black hair catching the morning sun as she walked. Scott watched her go, a bead of regret penetrating his numbness. He’d fucked up today and Sam knew it. It was all over between them. She wouldn’t tell him right away, she wasn’t that cruel, but it was undoubtedly over, and he ought to be glad. He and his family had hurt Samantha and her loved ones enough.

Scott returned his attention to his father, sliding his belt from his pants and binding his wrists together, refusing to think of Sam or feel anything at all.

Chapter 20

In the hoursthat followed the fire, Sam sat on her bed with her ice cream phone and dialed every number in the battered red address book her father kept. She called his great aunts and old school friends and—embarrassingly—an old lover from the 80s but no one had any idea where he was.

“You don’t understand,” Sam said with increasing desperation. “We had a fire at the shop today. Ineedto talk to him.”

The response to this was always some version of‘sorry, I can’t help you. Also, maybe go have a lie down, yeah? You sound a bit crazy.’

Samfelta bit crazy. Whenever she stopped for even a second, she saw the burnt-out shed and Greg Sanderson’s blank gaze as he flicked his lighter open. Those eyes that were the exact shape and color as Scott’s.

When the police arrived, Scott stayed with his father, accompanying him to St Michaels Hospital where he’d been taken for a psychological assessment. That was understandable, but Sam had the feeling he wanted to get away from her. She knew he was blaming himself for what happened and that made her ache for him. He’d never had a say in being born to a horrible, abusive father and no one could have guessed he would try to get revenge by burning their house down, nearly killing her sisters and six puppies in the process.

Fucking Greg.

It was hard not to hate him for what he’d done and hope wherever he was, he was suffering. But, thinking that way made her feel small and alone. Whatever his crimes, he wasn’t right in the head and she didn’t want to loathe him. She wanted to talk to her dad. He would show her the big picture, give her the strength to endure all this ugliness.

She’d been alone for most of the afternoon. After Scott left in the ambulance, there was a haze of police demands and metallic smoke. Tabby vanished with the dogs, Noah arrived, heard Gil ran away and promptly left to ‘have a word with him.’

The fire brigade declared the shop structurally sound, but the police urged them to cancel all their tattooing appointments for the next three days while they investigated the crime, which would net them a loss of almost seven thousand bucks.

As she and Nicole debated how they were going to rebook so many clients, Aaron, the cheating fucklord, barged through the door. Upon hearing about the fire, he’d caught the first plane to Melbourne, though he didn’t seem interested in comforting Nicole so much as giving her shit for leaving Adelaide—as her presence was the reason Greg Sanderson flipped his lid and tried to burn down their building.

Sam, slightly relieved to have someone to direct her anger at, told Aaron the firebombing was bad enough without having to see him, and to take an extremely long walk into the sea. Nicole was irritated by this and promptly left to have an ‘emergency talk’ with Aaron, because apparently their relationship was worth prioritizing right now.

So she was as she’d been a month ago—alone. No Scott, no Tabby, no Nix and no Dad. No shed or back door, either, soworsethan she’d been a month ago. And it looked like things were going to stay that way. Nicole would move back to Adelaide and resume her subjugation. Tabby would wander off into the ether the way she always did. Her dad was still nowhere to be found and she and Scott weren’t going to come back from this dad-arson-childhood-revelation thing. He hadn’t even called and it had been hours since she’d left him a voicemail.

Sam did something stupid. She opened her laptop and searched Google for Silver Daughters Ink. She’d gotten a few visits and calls from trash journalists wanting an insider perspective on the arson story. Sam had refused an interview, but they’d reported it, anyway. The police hadn’t given them any solid information, so the stories were mostly filled, but the cameramen had gotten a few pictures of her moving around the shop. She looked fucking awful—which was probably a revenge move on the journalists’ behalf. Her mood only got worse when she read comments.

“Wouldn’t f**k this tattood botch with your dads dyck.”

“Women with tattoos are emotionally damaged. They’re more implusive and statisticaly way more likely to have STDS. This is a FACT.

“God what a cunt.”

Most of them were about whether the commenter would or would not fuck her and how women with tattoos were gross sluts, but there were a few crackpot theories about why the studio had been burned down. The most popular was that they were a front for a sex trafficking ring. That theory had been expanded on Twitter where there was a #daughtergate hashtag trending with over a thousand contributions. Just the kind of publicity she needed a day out from the Fadeout Festival.

Sam slammed her laptop shut and wondered if Scott’s boss, Dragon McJizzcrackers, had watched the news. That would liven up any Christmas parties she’d be attending in the future, or more likely inspire Scott to dump her even sooner.

She lay back and stared at the Starry Night design she and her dad had painted on the ceiling when she was twelve. God she missed him. Sam rolled over and picked up the framed photo she kept by her bed. Her dad was sitting in a wicker chair in the same courtyard Scott’s dad had almost turned into a puppy inferno. Edgar DaSilva was grinning at the camera, Tabby on his shoulders, Nicole on his knee and herself sitting cross-legged at his feet, tilting her chin at the camera as though challenging it to a fight. Behind them was Scott Sanderson’s fence, and she smiled at the memory of the pretty blonde boy in his neat, grown-up clothes.

“I miss you,” Sam told the memory. Then she wondered what that even meant. She prodded her feelings until she came up with an answer—I feel your absence like a physical pain and I wish you’d come back.It wasn’t a perfect explanation, but it was close. She ached all over for Scott, for a time when things felt like they made sense, even if they didn’t. This was all so complicated and lonely. Her thoughts strayed back to Scott, how handsome he’d looked smiling at her in his office kitchen. She wanted to go back to that moment and bury her face in his chest. Let him carry her like a storybook knight, pretend like none of this other stuff had even happened—but it had, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Her crying was tapering off when she heard someone come home, slamming the front door and rattling keys.

“Helloooo?” Tabby called. “Where are you, beloved sister?”

“In my room,” Sam called, knuckling the tear trickling down her cheek. “Don’t come—”

Tabby burst into the room. She was holding two puppies and the other four were yipping at her ankles. Their mother followed with a look of canine indulgence, as though Tabby was just another of her brood.

“What are you doing? You were meant to be taking them to a kennel!”

“I know, but I didn’t, and before you get mad at me, I can tell you need cheering up and there’s nothing more cheery than puppas.”

Tabby jumped on the bed, placing the puppies on Sam’s legs and bending over to heft the rest of them onto the duvet.

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