Page 93 of So Wild

Sam screwed up her nose.

“What?”

“I don’t know, he’s so posh, and corporate andBritishand—”

“And you’ve never dated anyone who’s challenged you,” Nicole countered. “You’re always falling in with guys who worship you or try to control you, but you’ve never been with someone who made you feel vulnerable the way Scott does.”

“He doesn’t make me vulnerable!”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “Of course, no one has. You know, you walk around with your loud voice and your tattoos and your drinking, and most people don’t realise what a coward you can be, but I do. I know when you’re running away from something, and you’re running away from Scott.”

They stared at one another and as she looked into her twins eyes, Sam felt her anger transmute into an ache high in her chest. “You’re cutting me deep today, Nix.”

Nicole’s mouth softened but her eyes remained hard. “Someone should. I think you and Scott deserve that. Can you tell me something?”

Sam blew out an impatient breath. “Yeah, okay, what?”

“What do you like about him?”

“I don’t know, he’s cute and smart—”

“That’s surface stuff. Think about it, if you had to tell someone what the best thing about Scott is, what would you say?”

“Umm…” Sam closed her eyes and thought about it. She remembered the way Scott had calmly dispatched the gang of drunk teens, how he’d talked to Toby when they were playing with the puppies, how when they were ten, she’d seen him pick up a footpath snail and gently place it on the grass.

“He’s good in a way that other people aren’t. He’s legitimately kind and…I don’t know,honourable.”

“Like a knight?”

“Hey, have you read Le Morte d’Arthur? Most of the knights were pricks.”

“But not Galahad.”

“No,” Sam admitted. “Not Galahad.”

Nicole took her hand. “I think it’s worth taking a chance to trust a man like that. Maybe you should just go and see him? I know you want to.”

The mere idea instantly turned her stomach into a mass of winged insects. “Okay, somaybe, I want to. AndmaybeI’ll head over to his after work.”

“Brilliant! But first we need to look up the Fadeout announcements and see if you’ve made it through the ballot.”

Sam’s internal butterflies instantly fell still. “Fine, but I bet I didn’t get it. Someone would have called or emailed.”

“Maybe, but we’re going to look it up together right now. Get it over and done with, okay?”

Sam knew her sister wasn’t going to budge so she picked up her iPad and searched the Fadeout twitter feed, knowing it would have been announced there before—

“Holy shit,” she whispered. There it was, posted twenty-three seconds ago, the news that she was the wild card pick for the Fadeout lineup. Nicole let out a piecing scream that Sam couldn’t help but reciprocate. They hugged each other, jumping around in a semi-circle. “We need to post it on Instagram. Maybe we can get a picture of you like reclining in the red leather chair like a queen, holding a tattoo machine with a glass of champagne?”

“Uh sure, but…”

“What? Why are you not beside yourself with excitement?”

“I am, I just…I want to tell Scott. He believed in me, at Ink the Night, he said I was going to get into the competition.”

“And?”

“And if he didn’t take our underwear and I could possibly like and trust him, I need to say that I’m sorry for being a dick.”

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