“I don’t know.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and noticed that his gaze was following the path of my fingers. “I don’t think she would?” I looked up at him and then winced. “But I was thinking about it the other day, and I realize this sounds totally spoiled, okay? But part of me wants to get to enjoy the perks of being Ian Butler’s daughter a little.”
“Why on earth do you think that makes you sound spoiled? Everyone in your position would want to be able to see how the other half lives.”
“I think because that life ruined my mom, and here I am, wanting a reason to go back there.”
“Did it ruin her?” he challenged me. “Or did she just have a shitty marriage?” He ran his fingers through the grass. “Roberta had a crappy first husband. Got her pregnant so young, cheated on her. She was different after that, I bet, but then she moved to the farm and fell in love with Luther and they’ve sort of become these bedrock citizens. Everyone relies on them for advice and help and just wants to soak up their wisdom. She’d’ve never met Luther if she hadn’t had a bad one the first time around, and I know she’d never tell me not to get married just because it didn’t work for her once. I don’t imagine your mom would want you to avoid something just because it didn’t work for her.”
I could see the storyteller in him, the biographer. He didn’t even know my mom, and still he drilled down to something so quintessentially true about her: she would never tell me to say away from LA if that’s what I really wanted.
The idea of chasing that dream—of really stepping out into the sun and owning that legacy—set something afire inside me, and when Sam caught my eye and held my gaze, I could tell he saw it too.
four
ON OUR SIXTH DAY in London we watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. The crowd was heavy and our bodies were pressed close as we all jockeyed for the best vantage point through the gilded iron fence. Sam’s proximity made me drunk. I would never have anticipated how longing could be so dizzying, how it could feel like he belonged to me without any proof or history at all.
In the jostling, Sam looped his pinky around mine. I was a tiny fish; he had me hooked. It felt almost criminal the way the physical reaction snaked up my arm, down my torso, between my legs.
He looked down at me and smiled, winking.
“Don’t forget to tell your mom I’m an all-around talented guy,” he said quietly.
I think he knew exactly what he was doing. Was it a good sign or a scary one that he seemed to enjoy how flustered he made me?
On a particularly crowded train on day eight, we let Nana and Luther have the only empty seats. Sam insisted I take the bar near the bench in the back, while he stood behind me, easily able to reach the handle directly overhead. It took a few minutes of a rocky ride for me to realize that he’d chosen that spot to protect me from the group of rowdy guys just behind him. And, with him standing so close, I felt the heat of him along the full length of my body, his front pressed to my back, rocking against me as the train slipped around curves and bends in the track. I was flustered and flushed by the time we reached Westminster station, tense with an unfamiliar ache.
Sam just grinned knowingly as we parted ways off the elevator, telling me under his breath that he’d see me later.
At nine, I found him sitting on the grass, facing the door when I emerged. As usual, the garden was empty. I felt grateful for this location in a new way; yes, it was a beautiful view, but the surrounding monuments were also a pretty capable distraction from the jewel of the garden; no one else was ever out here with us.
Sam smiled as I approached, watching me walk the entire distance from the back door of the hotel to where he was sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, leaning back on his hands. In the past two days, it seemed like everything had shifted; we’d stepped across the unspoken line from acquaintances into this new intimate