“Yes, it was.”
We’d been over this already, and the mere thought of rehashing it made me want to die. I knocked my head on the back of the couch. “Whatever. My point is that however you think you feel about me, I’m not fucking worth it.”
“However I think I feel about you.” Sam’s tone was deadpan but dangerous. “Look, I’m not going to argue with you about that, cos I know I’ll never win while you see yourself the way you do. Just know that I really am sorry, okay? For everything that’s happened over the last few weeks. I should’ve had a better handle on things, and I didn’t.”
Frustration boiled up inside me. My heart was screaming at me to tell him that everything coming out of my dumb-fuck mouth was a world away from how I really felt. That I’d been enchanted by him from the moment we’d met. But the words wouldn’t come. It was like I had an iron curtain between my brain and my soul, and the ache in my heart was my trapped emotions trying to escape. “It’s not your fault.”
“How’s your leg?”
“What?”
“Your leg.” Sam sat up. “You never told me if it was better.”
“It’s fine.”
“Really?”
I shrugged. “Mostly. It still feels a bit... weird, but it doesn’t hurt any more than it usually does. It cramped so bad because I was tired and dehydrated. I shouldn’t have swum so hard.”
“You should’ve skipped the pool and come home for your breakfast, huh?”
“Yup. See? My fault, not yours.”
Sam snorted. The fatigue in his face told me he was as tired of this conversation as I was, but there was humour too—the dry, self-deprecating wit that had drawn me to him in the first place. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. Do you want to go back to bed?”
With you? Yes. By myself, no thanks.I shook my head. “I’m up now.”
“Up for walking?”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
* * *
I stood at the sea wall, huddled in my coat with the hood up. “It’s cold.”
Sam laughed and pulled me closer to the edge, so the waves sprayed my face. It wasn’t the same as getting wet, more like a ghost from the sea had walked across my skin. I liked it, but it was still fucking cold.
I turned away from the angry water and focussed on Sam. He seemed lighter now we were out of the house and away from the weight of our latest loaded conversation. Like the Sam I’d always known. His eyes were soft, his hair screwed up by the wind. He looked like I’d fucked him seven ways from Saturday, if we lived in the world that existed behind that damn curtain.
We started walking again, this time back inland, leaving the raging ocean behind. I missed it already. “I’ve never been that close to the sea before.”
Sam cast me a sideways glance. “Seriously? But you’ve been all over the world playing football.”
“On planes, coaches, and on the pitch. I never went exploring.”
“What about when you were a kid? Holidays and stuff.”
“Never went. My dad worked seven days a week and my mum was hooked on Valium, so she never left the house.”
“You’ve never told me that.”
“Which bit?”
“Any of it. You never talk about your family.”
“I don’t think they talk about me either.”
