Goddess Rising (58 page)

Too much, too soon.

“I have a question for you,” Wes said, meeting her eyes. “I need you to be honest with me. Even if you think it’ll hurt.”

Not the answer she’d been expecting. “Ask me then,” she said cautiously, her heart in her throat.

Wes looked at her, his expression uncertain and unusually vulnerable. “Why are you with me, Sammy?”

She blinked. “You know I love you.”

“Yes, but I need to know why,” he clarified, painstakingly. “I need to know
why
you’re with me.”

“I don’t understand.” Confusion washed over her. What the hell did he want from her?
What wasn’t she giving him?
“Wes, where is this coming from?” she asked, bewildered.

“You’re right, Sammy.” He blew out a deep breath, meeting her eyes like he’d come to a decision. “I have been avoiding you since our weekend at the ranch,” he admitted. “Because I’ve been going round and round trying to figure this thing out. And the only thing I can come up with is that I represent everything your daddy doesn’t want for you. And there’s nothing you want more than his attention, Sammy, even if you couldn’t give a damn about his approval.”

Confusion morphed into shock, but that shock hardened into anger just as fast.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded tersely. “I resent the
shit
out of that statement for several reasons, but most of all because you think I’d
use you
like that.” Sam stopped abruptly, struggling to get a handle on her emotions. They stared at each other across the table, a short distance that was beginning to feel like a ravine.

“Do you think I lied to you when I told you I loved you? You think I give you my heart lightly?” she asked, her voice rough with emotion. “Do you honestly believe I’d have slept with just anybody for my first time—?”

“I know you think you love me, Sam,” Wes replied immediately. “I just think it isn’t beyond reason that you’ve chosen me subconsciously because you know I’m not the right guy for you. Not by anybody’s standards. I mean
look
at you—”

“Look at
what?”

“You’re smart, rich, beautiful, and so goddamn determined, Sammy,” he answered. “Yet you hook up with
me?
Any way you cut it, the only thing I have going for me is that I drive your dad bat-shit crazy. He wants you with a guy exactly like Travis. He wants you to fall in line with his plans. Isn’t that exactly why you chose a guy like me instead?”

“I don’t make decisions based on what my father wants,” she replied, feeling like she’d wandered into some kind of awful alternate universe. Sam couldn’t believe things were coming to a head like this. She knew Wes had been withdrawing, and now she just couldn’t stomach knowing why.
Didn’t he know her at all?

“You make most of your decisions based on what you think your dad wants, whether you want to admit it or not,” Wes challenged. “Look at your choices, for chrissakes! He wants you to go Ivy League, and you come here instead. He wants you to join the Navy, so you start pushing for the Army,” he pointed out, ticking off his fingers. “He wants you to run Wyatt Petroleum, so you major in linguistics—”

“I’m trying to figure out what I want, Wes,” she argued, angry and hurt. “I’m entitled to make up my own mind—”

“That’s exactly my point, Sammy!” he batted back, shoving his hand through his hair. “You’re making contrary decisions just because you can! What makes your taking up with
me
any different?” he sucked in a tight breath. “You pointed out when we first met—I’m a womanizing bartender with more potential than class—”

“I
never
said that!”

“You didn’t
need
to!” he shouted, flinging his hands out. “I know what I am! I know where I’m headed—and I was
fine
with it until you came along!” Wes spread his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Travis wasn’t wrong when he said we were on different paths. So what are we doing here, Sammy? You’ve got to help me out here, because any way I look at it, the story ends the same—you eventually come to your senses.
And then what?”

They stared each other down, facing off like boxers, each breathing heavily. There was so much going on between them, Sam honestly didn’t know what to address first. And everything hurt. From the knife blade of his implications to the battered, aching soreness of her body. Sam wondered surreally how they’d gotten from the ranch to here, facing off in separate corners. This whole conversation made her feel sideswiped, like being t-boned by a Mack truck. She knew it was bad, but she just couldn’t possibly comprehend or predict how bad it was until it was over—and it wasn’t over… Not for her. Not like
this
. Sam made to move around the table, but Wes was the one to shy away this time, his expression shuttered.

“I know you think you love me, Sam,” he said with a certain weary finality. “But I won’t be some point you make to yourself or to your father about what an independent woman you are.”

“Wes, that’s
not
fair. It’s not true—”

“None of this is fair, Sammy,” he answered, already moving toward the door. “I never thought I’d fall for anyone, much less a girl like you. But I’m not going to follow you around until you wake up and realize I’m not the one for you, darlin’.” He paused, hand on the door. “And I’m definitely not going to be the guy you use to sharpen the ax you’ve got to grind with your daddy.”

Sam stood, stunned and speechless, as Wes opened the door and walked out.

October—Three Days Later

Sam’s Apartment, Texas A&M

S A M A N T H A

“S
am! Open up!”

The sound of pounding on Sam’s door registered on some level, but it was too far away, like listening to a drumbeat underwater.

“
Open up!
I know you’re in there!”

She rolled over and pulled the covers over her head, swaddled in cotton and exhaustion. She’d been sleeping for what felt like days, her body healing but her heart a mess. For the first time ever, Sam had lied about being sick, missing class and ROTC while she either stared into space, listless or slept, dreamless.

She’d awoken in shock the first day, disbelief at what had happened between her and Wes rendering her numb. She’d gone through the motions, getting ready for her day, dressing, and braiding her hair back, ignoring the telltale tremor of suppressed emotion as she struggled with a rubber band. Like every morning, Sam planned out the day in her mind—the classes she had to attend, the meetings she needed to make, the remaining to-do list items with unchecked boxes. Then her mind turned to Wes, and how she had to track him down and set him straight. Because he was wrong about her. So incredibly wrong.

But shouldn’t he know that?
Shouldn’t he realize all these conclusions he’d reached were so off base that they were verging on ridiculous? She’d cracked herself open for him. She’d been honest and vulnerable with him—intimate in ways she’d never allowed herself to be with anyone else.
Shouldn’t he already realize how completely and utterly wrong he was?

The anger and indignation hit her like a wave as she stood in the kitchen. Sam had thrown the water glass she was drinking from so hard, it tore a hole through the dry wall. But that was before the hurt overwhelmed her, before she felt like her heart was ripping in half. Because she’d given Wes everything, and he’d run out on her anyway. And that was what hurt the worst—the fact that he’d abandoned her, left her after he’d gotten what he wanted.

For the first time in years—since she was a little girl really—Samantha couldn’t control her grief. She couldn’t tamp down the crushing anguish that came with the realization that’d she’d been left alone by the first and only guy she’d ever let herself fall for.

The crying jag started harsh and ugly before it became uncontrollable. Sam had slid down onto the cool kitchen floor, her sobs wracking her, wrenched from deep down in an accumulated lament of sorrow, misery and anger. Each painful wave of grief that tore out of her felt more futile and hopeless than the last, until she’d felt dull and listless and empty, unaware of how much time had passed. She’d eventually dragged herself back to her room, stripped of her armor, humiliated and hurt, seeking a meager comfort in donning Wes’s shirt as she slipped back into bed.

The hours became a day, and then another, passing by her like the long, indistinguishable shadows she tracked across her walls. Sam became the girl she’d always shunned and secretly loathed—the girl who wept over the boy who’d left her, obsessing over where it’d all gone wrong, then fraught over how to fix it, staring at the phone, waiting for him to call and tell her it had been a mistake. Finally, she’d succumbed to the despondency and the painful realization that Wes didn’t want her enough to fight for her, and that no matter what she did, he wouldn’t reciprocate the intensity of emotion she felt for him. Because he didn’t want to or he couldn’t—

And maybe she didn’t want him to…because some secret, distraught part of her began to understand that Wes might have been a little bit right. Maybe not about her relationship and feelings for him, but certainly in the way she’d defied her father repeatedly, deliberately turning right whenever he said left. Sam had been working so hard not to be Robert Wyatt’s daughter, that predicting what he thought or how he’d react had become its own obsession. Her father’s opinion had become the litmus test that guided her decisions, the way she’d begun to inadvertently define herself—which was the exact opposite of what she’d been trying to achieve all along. And that mortifying self-realization only leveled her further.

But Wes had never been a point to prove. Not to her. If anything, he’d made her feel alive and heady and a little irreverent. Her time with Wes felt careless and wonderful and wild. For a girl who’d been buttoned up most of her life, each foot placed in front of the other with care and precision, Wes had been like a delicious and intoxicating encounter with the other side of life. He did things for the hell of it, because he felt like it, or because they were exciting or experimental or fun. He took each day as it came and embraced the possibilities, naïve or happy-go-lucky enough to go with the flow.

Until her.

Because she’d suddenly become a risk too perilous for even the daredevil in him to take. It wasn’t fun anymore, or it wasn’t worth it, or he’d already gotten what he wanted and now it was just easier to move on to the next one. Maybe Sam could have handled one or the other all right, but the combined one-two punch of Wes and her personal revelations left her reeling.

And for a girl who’d been taught all her life that self-reliance was best, Sam did what she learned how to do from a young age—she folded inward. Only this time, she didn’t have a toddler to care for. She just had her life to hide from until she felt ready to face the world again… she closed her eyes, pressing her face into the pillow.

Until the goddamn knocking continued for what felt like minutes.

Sam pulled the covers over her head.
Go away.

“Sammy—Honey, you need to open the door…”

Then the phone began ringing and ringing. Sam listened to it distantly, disinterested. She’d finally fallen back to sleep, like being dragged underwater; depression its own kind of abyss.

Sometime later, she heard scrapes and low murmurings—figured she was dreaming.

“Thank God you know how to pick locks, you delinquent.”

Why was Rita in her dream?

“Did you want my help or not?” a guy answered.

Sam burrowed deeper under the covers.

“Let me go in first, okay?”

A quiet murmur and a shuffle.

“Sammy—?” There was a creak of movement at her door, then the sound of someone walking across the floor.

Wes?
Sam opened her eyes.

Rita was staring down at her, dark eyes worried, her expression a little stunned as she looked her over.

“
Jaina
, what’s happened to you?”

God, I wanted so badly for it to be Wes
. Sam squeezed her eyes shut, the sudden onslaught of tears embarrassing. Rita sat down beside her on the bed, caressed her hair with a gentle hand.

“I heard from Chris about you and Wes. We’re both worried about you,
mija
. No one’s seen you for days.”

“Is she okay?” Alejandro asked, pushing the door open to her bedroom.

Sam stiffened at the sound of his voice.
Oh, Christ, just kill me now
… Her mortification was complete. If she could have dug through her mattress to hide from Alejandro, she would have. Sam made a distressed sound, pressing her face in the pillow.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from lack of use. “I just need a little time—”

“It’s been three days, Sam,” Rita argued gently. “Have you even eaten?”

“I’ll go see if she has food in the fridge,” Alejandro murmured, backing out of the room.

“Please just go…” Sam begged her, her shame compounded. She was a mess, and she had a right to be—but she never wanted anyone to see her at her lowest. Certainly not Alejo.