know he never calls. If they talk, it’s because she’s calling him.”
“He sounds like trash. Is it weird that I’m imagining Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman?”
“Actually, that’s disturbingly accurate.”
“And it doesn’t bug you that he’s so . . . lame?” I asked.
“Honestly? Not really. Luther and Roberta are the best parents I could have had.”
God, he was so levelheaded. And what different lives we’d lived. Me, cherished, but held beneath two sets of very neurotic thumbs. Sam, given all the freedom he could handle—and then some—with just as much love.
The elevator doors opened, and we stepped apart. Usually, Sam went to his end of the hall and I went to mine, and we would wave at the door before ducking silently inside. But that night, he walked me down the hall to my room.
“I don’t like what you said,” he whispered outside the door, stilling my hand before I could use the key card. “Earlier. About it just being sex for me. You think I’m like that?”
“No. I don’t.” I looked up at him, taking in his tight, controlled expression. “It’s just this awesome-terrible situation. I feel more for you in the past week and a half than I did for Jesse in three years. And it’s going to end. It just . . . sucks.”
He pulled back, alarmed. “Why’s it going to end?”
“Because—”
He bent, cutting off my words with his mouth, the sweetest kiss that stopped me in my mental tracks. Pulling away, he cupped his hands to my face and looked me square in the eye. “Because nothing,” he said, “okay?”
I nodded, a little breathless. “Okay.”
Sam kissed me one more time and then hesitated. His cheeks flushed just before he admitted, “I think I’m falling in love with you. Is that crazy?”
Biting my lips was the only way to hold in my elated scream. Finally, I managed, “No. It isn’t crazy. Because, me too.”
eight
I COULDN’T EVEN LOOK at him at breakfast when he and Luther arrived at our usual table, because I knew I would burst into a giant, stupid grin and Nana would not only realize that I was infatuated with this guy, but probably that we’d had sex and were pretty much thinking about only that whenever we were together.
I think I’m falling in love with you.
“Where’s Luther?” Nana asked.
But at this, I looked up. Usually Sam grabbed his plate after a quick hello and made a beeline for the buffet. But that morning, he looked haggard, pulling out a chair and sitting heavily down. “He’s still in bed.”
Sam caught my gaze, and his normally smiling eyes were oddly flat. He winced, opening his mouth to speak before seeming to think better of it, and broke his gaze away, looking out the window into the garden. I watched him lift a hand, chew his thumbnail, and we all fell silent for a good ten seconds, unsure what to say.
My lungs, heart, and stomach seemed to fall away. Nana and I exchanged anxious looks.
Worry etched another crease into her forehead. “Are you okay, hon?”
Blinking back over, he inhaled sharply, as if he’d forgotten where he was. “Yeah. I’m good. Hungry.”
Without another word, he stood, walking away toward the buffet.
Nana watched him go, but I focused on my mostly empty plate. His mood very well might have had something to do with Luther, but he’d been worried about Luther this entire trip and hadn’t ever been cold to me because of it.
The only thing that changed from yesterday was that he told me he loved me.
“Well, he doesn’t seem like himself.” She picked up her fork. “But then again, Luther’s been looking pretty gray lately. Wonder if that has Sam in a mood.”
Sam returned with his usual loaded plate and proceeded to shovel food in his mouth.
“Sam,” I said quietly, as soon as Nana stood to get some fruit.
He looked up at me, chewing, unspeaking, with his brows raised.
“You sure you’re okay?”
We held eye contact for ten bewildering seconds before he swallowed and looked down to spear another forkful of eggs. “Not really.”
He didn’t look back at me, so we finished breakfast together in silence broken only by the scrape of silverware on porcelain.
I couldn’t talk to him in the elevator ride back up to our rooms because Nana was there. And when I knocked at his door while Nana was using the restroom, no one answered.
He and Luther were nowhere to be seen when we were ready to head out for the day.