If she had anything to say, she didn’t offer it. Anger was the furthest thing from his mind, but hedidwant to understand her. When he’d first seen her, he thought of her as a crossword puzzle. Now, he thought she was more like the Enigma code.
“I just don’t understand why you’re so hell-bent on convincing me you don’t have a heart.”
That caught her. With a rueful shake of her head, she patted his shoulder and moved for the door. “Oh, Daniel.”
“What?”
She hesitated in the shadows. “You’re the only thing convincing me that Idohave one.”
Chapter Sixteen
When she and Daniel were alone, it was entirely possible for Sam to completely forget this house and everything it represented. She could kiss him without thinking about her father’s disapproval. She could rescue one of his friends without worrying it would come back to haunt her family name. When she was with him, when her hand was firmly in his and his smile was cutting through her every tightly held defense, she could forget what was coming. She could ignore the guilt snowballing inside of her. Shedidignore the guilt inside of her. She could wipe her mind and pretend, for a moment, she was in a real relationship with a real man who really liked her. But as soon as she walked through that door and entered the yawning wings of the mansion, she hurtled back down to reality. This was what life with Daniel was like, too-short stretching hours of joy intercut with too-long increments of absolute misery.
The reality of her life was that she was going to have to give him up. And that reality haunted her no matter where she went.
Daniel had called her a cynic more than once, always jokingly and always with the firm resolve he would change her mind. He was right. On both counts. Shewasa cynic. A cynic whose heart was softening every time he doused her in the sunshine of his stupid, crooked smile, every time he complained about her refusal to wear socks, every time he opened his mouth to sing or asked her about the past she kept so tightly hidden away.
For every cynical blood cell powering her body, shoving her toward bad decisions and worse attitudes, he had an antidote of optimism. For every time she said, “It looks like rain,” he said, “But look at the sun shining through the clouds. Isn’t it beautiful?”
Today, it wasn’t the quiet, empty halls of her house, the silence of her father and the disappointed frown of her brother she had to contend with. It was more than the poisoning loneliness burning up her insides whenever her father passed her in the hall without looking in her direction. It wasn’t lying awake thinking about his love of “Danny Boy” or giggling her way through their backlog of texts.
Leaving Daniel tonight meant one less night with him. One day of pure, unbridled living was gone, bringing her one step closer to losing it forever, only to be replaced by a life with men like Captain. They were one day closer to her betrayal and his heartbreak. Back to slamming the vault door on her real self. Back to friendlessness. Full-time loneliness. Endless days of heartlessness.
So when Daniel went to kiss her good night, she turned her cheek and threw herself into his arms instead.
“Hey! Where’s the fire? I’m not going off to war or anything.”
Sam didn’t respond. She clung to him, tightening her arms around him until she lost all feeling in them. He held her just as tight.
“You don’t have to hold on so tight,” he said, without loosening his own grip on her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With her face nestled in the folds of his overcoat, Sam breathed him deep and imagined a million impossible futures. Spearmint toothpaste mornings and bookshop afternoons and dancehall nights. Oh, God, and how they would laugh. Not laughing like the men in blue she spent her drinking hours with. Laughter that left no one out, laughter so contagious and genuine passersby would be compelled to join in. The only thing missing from her visions was her family. Her father and Thomas were absent in every single one of them, and she didn’t want to live a life without a family.
So, she stepped back, regretfully reaching for the front doorknob.
“Yeah.” She chuckled, the sound brittle as the cold British air. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Please kiss me.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. Ducking down, he found her lips with his own, exploring her and welcoming her into his embrace as though she’d always belonged there. She melted into his softness, threading her fingers through his hair. She tried not to kiss him like she was memorizing the taste of him, the fireplace roar of his hands on her waist, because she wanted to conceal the truth. She’d spent the night with him trying to fight injustice, all while knowing she would be dealing out the biggest injustice of all. And then, she’d lose him.
“Do you want me to come upstairs?”
His voice was a breath against her lips, little louder than a faint, distant wind. The question was benign enough, but the implications were clear, written in the grip of his fingers at her back and the heat in his eyes.
“What?”
“I just…” Pulling away from her, clearly startled by her lack of enthusiastic agreement, he ran a nervous hand through his hair, suddenly looking anywherebuther. “I’m sorry, I just thought—”
God, this was awkward. Not because she didn’t want to say yes. She did. She just knew she couldn’t. Not when she was lying to him, not when he would end all of this with a broken heart.
“No, it’s fine. Iwould. It’s just…”
“Don’t worry about it.” Daniel slapped on that self-deprecating smile of his and waved her apologies away, cracking a joke to lighten the mood. “Never imagined losing my virginity in a mansion, anyway.”
“You’re a virgin?” she choked out before she could keep the question at bay.
