I start to get up to check the window, but Sam shakes his head. “Not enough to stick. I hear it might happen later this week, though.”
That makes me slightly sad, even though snow is incredibly inconvenient. Something about it reminds me of home. I sit back down, and Sam nods his head toward my phone.
“Is that your family?”
I look down and see the paused screen, a smile forming at the tip of my lips. “Yeah. This is my older brother, Riley. He lives at home with all the others.”
“It looks like a big family.”
Although it seems crazy, I can’t help the smile that blooms. “There are six of us. Adam, the youngest, just started sixth grade this past year.”
His eyes widen. “Wow, that sounds chaotic.”
“It fucking was,” I say with a laugh. “Riley likes that chaos, but I like being somewhere quieter. It’s easier to think.”
Sam nods, looking deep in thought, before he shakes it away and asks, “What do your parents do?”
I never get to talk about my family, mainly because it feels weird to bring it up. As if my two lives are morphing into one temporarily. Stacia and Rory know the basics, but otherwise, my memories of my family are my own. Still, Sam’s green apple scent is so calming, so I find myself telling him everything I can. From my parents’ ordinary jobs, to what life was like growing up, to having a bunch of siblings. Our favorite places to eat, which park we spent most of our time at, to Riley’s and my favorite things to do together.
“It sounds like you’re all really close,” he comments, but despite his smile, there’s something sad in his tone.
“Maybe too close, to be honest. I like being away. Maybe that makes me a bad person.”
“No,” Sam immediately says. “You are a lot of things, Opal Morrissey, but a bad person is not one of them.”
“Oh.” I think I enjoyed hearing that from his lips just a little bit too much. “What am I, then?”
His eyes trail over to mine, green orbs that take my breath away a bit too easily. They peer into mine, then they look down. Is he looking at my chin?
“You’re not what I expected,” he finally says. The sentence lingers in the air between us. The more it lingers, the more my heart starts to thump harshly. When the intimacy of the moment begins to feel like too much, I turn and take a sip of my own coffee, trying to let the caffeine seep into the place where I’d like another type of heat to be.
“So,” I reply after swallowing my coffee. “What’s your family like?”
If it weren’t for my mornings with him, I may not have noticed the way his face pinches with unease. He quickly cools his features, though, and continues as if the question didn’t hit any kind of nerve.
“It’s just my grandmother, actually. She raised me,” he informs me.
“Oh,” I reply, trying to shift the conversation. “Do you talk to her often?”
He nods, his lip curving up slightly. “I try to call her as much as I can, but she really hates her new phone. She prefers to see me and hasn’t quite figured out how to use FaceTime.”
I crack a smile. “Where does she live?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“That’s cool. And not too far away. What made you choose Bensen?”
His lips flatten again, the question causing ourconversation to hit another bump in the road. I wish he could open up to me, but I don’t know why he would. I’m just an omega living in their spare bedroom. There’s no reason why he should spill his deepest secrets to me.
But the way his brow furrows, how the memory of something unspoken looks haunting behind his eyes, I wish we could throw all the logistics out the window. I’d like nothing more than to let him lay everything out in front of me, so that I can lovehimrather than just the thought of him.
I let him dismiss my question, but a sadness lingers. I go back to eating my sandwich, the silence suffocating in its wake.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a moment, his knuckles white from the grip he has on his mug.
“No, it’s okay,” I respond, cloaking my disappointment. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m just curious.”
He’s so incredibly still, his mind still locked on the thing he can’t voice. So, I give him some of my truth to cover up the sting of lost memories.
