Repressed (Deadly Secrets) (23 page)

Michael and Ethan exchanged looks and something darkened in Ethan’s eyes, but Sam didn’t have the strength to guess what he was thinking. She just wanted to finish.

“There was a girl there too. With Kenny and the others. Egging them on. I think it might have been Margaret, but I can’t be sure. The others, though . . . I didn’t get a clear look at them. I don’t know who they were.”

“It’s okay, Samantha.” Michael squeezed her arm reassuringly. “If they were kids, you might never know. Voices change. You were talking to someone there at the end, though. Can you tell me who that was?”

Yes, she knew. But she still couldn’t make her lips form his name no matter how much she wanted to, because his loss was like a knife to the heart, more painful now than it had ever been before.

She shook her head.

Michael eyed her for several long moments. Finally, he bent and pulled a small box from the bag at his feet. “Sleeping pills. These should help you tonight so long as you aren’t still taking any pain meds from the hospital.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want to talk more about it now in detail?”

Yes.
She wanted to tell Ethan about Seth, but the words still wouldn’t come. “Not tonight. I’m pretty tired.”

He nodded. “Details might come back to you as you process it all. If you want to talk more, just give me a call.”

Sam forced a smile she didn’t feel. “Thanks.”

He squeezed her arm once more, then let go and glanced toward Ethan near the doorway. “I should go tell your mother we’re done down here.”

“I’ll help you.”

Michael slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder. “Try to get some rest, Samantha.”

“I will. And thanks. I know this is probably more drama than you expected to deal with tonight.”

One corner of Michael’s lips tipped up. “This is nothing. In this family, we’re used to drama. You fit in well.”

A little of Sam’s anxiety eased. As awful as it could have been, she’d gotten through it, mostly because of Michael’s gentle nature, but also because she’d had Ethan by her side.

She glanced Ethan’s way as his father left, but instead of the gentle, warm eyes she expected to see, something hard hovered in their green depths. Something she didn’t know how to define.

“I’m going to see them out.” Ethan stepped toward the door. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He turned without another word. And alone, Sam fingered the box of medication as she stared after him and tried to ignore the shiver rushing down her spine. He was just worried about her, that was all. She hadn’t shocked him. She couldn’t have. Because right now she needed his strength and comfort more than she ever had.

Samantha at ten years old. October. Full moon. Eighteen years in the past.

Ethan closed the front door as the thoughts swirled in his mind. His dad had caught it. Michael hadn’t even needed to say the words, but Ethan knew his father was currently thinking the same damn thing Ethan was.

If Samantha’s memory was correct, the night Sandra Hollings had disappeared was the same night Ethan had been arrested.

His chest drew tight as a drum. Turning away from the door, he moved through the hallway, trying to piece together shapes that didn’t want to fit. If Saunders and Margaret Wilcox had been at the cabin that night, that meant Branson and Kellogg had probably been there as well. But how had they gotten to the waterfall? And who had Samantha been talking with there at the end? Ethan didn’t want to believe it was Branson, but his gut thought otherwise. She considered Branson a friend. If she’d seen his face in that cabin or heard his voice, would she admit it? Whoever it was had seemed to show up to the party late. If she thought Branson wasn’t involved in what the others had done, would she protect him?

Ethan hoped not. Because he knew Branson was not innocent. Branson and Kellogg had both been in the water that night at the falls.

“I like your parents,” Samantha said from a stool near the island when Ethan stepped into the room.

He looked her way and blinked, working hard to separate past from present. “What?”

“Your parents. They were nice.”

She was talking about meeting his parents. She wasn’t flipping out like he expected her to do. Like he was doing.

“Ethan?” Her brow lowered as she pushed off the stool and crossed to him. “Are you okay?”

No, he wasn’t okay. He was as far from okay as a person could get. “I want you to stay away from Will Branson and Jeff Kellogg.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re dangerous.”

She frowned. “Why would you think that? Will saved my life today.”

Branson had. Not Ethan. Ethan hadn’t been there when she’d needed him most. She trusted Branson more than anyone in Hidden Falls. Maybe even more than she trusted the man currently warming her bed. “He and Kellogg were friends with Kenneth Saunders.”

“That doesn’t make a person dangerous. Lots of people were friends with Kenny.”

“I saw them together at the Kelloggs’ party. There’s a freakin’ picture of them on the same basketball team up at the high school.”

“So what?” Sam’s eyes grew wide. “David was on the same team with them. Are you saying that makes him dangerous too?”

He opened his mouth to tell her exactly what he knew about Branson but closed it when he caught the disbelief in her eyes. She wouldn’t believe him. The knowledge was like a sucker punch to the gut. She’d known Branson since she was a kid, but she’d only known Ethan for a couple of weeks. It didn’t matter that they were sleeping together. It didn’t even matter that he loved her. When push came to shove, she’d believe someone she’d known all her life over someone who’d just shown up in town.

A deep ache filled his chest, but it was quickly replaced by a nicotine craving that hit hard and fast, making his mouth dry and his fingers itch for a cigarette. “There are things you don’t know about him, Samantha.”

“Like what? Ethan, you’re jumping to conclusions. Will was not one of the voices I heard at that cabin. He wasn’t involved in whatever Kenny was doing. I would have known. Look, I get that you’re worried about me, but Will is the last person you have to be concerned about.” She stepped toward him, closed her fingers around his, and squeezed his hand. “Let this go.”

He wanted to, but he couldn’t. Because something in his gut screamed that Will Branson was involved in ways neither of them understood. And he couldn’t stand the thought that Samantha might turn to the man for help, now or in the future.

The nicotine craving intensified. He pulled his hand from hers, stepped back, and rested his hands on his hips. He needed to get out of here, needed to think, needed to try to come up with a way to make her see reason. Because if he stayed, they were just going to argue, and after everything she’d been through today, she didn’t need that.

He turned for the front of the house. “I have to go out for a bit.”

“What?” Panic filled her voice. “Ethan, where are you going?”

He grabbed his coat from the closet and pulled the door open. “I’ll be back later.”

“Wait. Why . . . ” Her feet drew to a stop. “Ethan, please. Talk to me.”

He couldn’t. Because his thoughts and memories were so jumbled from what he’d seen today and heard tonight, he didn’t know what to say . . . or what to do, for that matter. All he knew was that he was too close to all of this to think rationally.

And he had no idea what that meant for their relationship in the long term.

A soft click echoed as the front door opened and closed, rousing Sam from her spot on the couch. She’d been lying there for the last hour, thinking about Ethan, thinking about what she’d seen in that hypnosis session, thinking about her memories of finding Seth lifeless in the pool beneath the falls.

It had all happened the same night. She couldn’t deny that any longer. The two events were related. She’d seen two people dragging Seth out of that cabin. Knew that the boy who’d drowned him had to have been one of them. Realized that he must have been involved in what they’d all done to Sandra Hollings.

She still didn’t understand why she’d remembered finding Seth in the falls but had repressed what had happened to Sandra Hollings in that cabin. Maybe it was because she’d seen Sandra Hollings’s murder but had only heard Seth’s. Was that possible?

She wanted to ask Ethan but didn’t know if she should. And since he’d run out on her and had yet to come home, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to.

Grimly pushed up from his spot near the fire and rambled down the hall. Sam blinked several times and lifted her head.

“Hey, big guy,” Ethan said from the entry. “You waiting up for me?”

Nerves churned in Sam’s stomach as she slowly sat up and blinked. Her heart urged her to jump and meet him, but after the way he’d left, she wasn’t sure that was a smart idea.

She brushed the hair back from her face. Was it all too much for him? He knew she had major baggage now. Seeing the things she’d seen, living with them as long as she had . . . was he asking himself if he should cut and run?

Her throat grew thick. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if the answer to either of those questions were yes. He’d made her fall in love with him even though she’d tried not to, and tonight of all nights she needed his arms around her.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, then stilled. And even though the lights were off and the fire was nothing but deep-red embers, she swiped at the stupid wetness on her cheeks so he couldn’t see.

A long silence stretched over the room. She knew he’d seen her. Her stomach tightened with fear, and she held her breath, afraid to turn and look, afraid to move in case he was about to say it was time to call things quits.

His tennis shoes sounded across the floor, then quieted as he stepped onto the carpet. And when he stopped in front of her and looked down, she finally mustered up the courage to meet his eyes.

These eyes weren’t the same hard, cold eyes she’d seen before he’d left, though. These eyes were a soft mottled green, and they were filled with so much regret, everything inside her broke. “Ethan . . . ”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Sinking to the floor, he wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned forward until his cheek pressed against her belly. “I’m so, so sorry. I shouldn’t have left like that.”

She still wasn’t sure why he had, but she closed her arms around him and pulled him in close as tears—tears of relief this time—spilled over her lashes.

“It was just . . . I should have been there,” he said against her. “It should have been me. I should have been with you today, only I wasn’t. I was playing basketball with my stupid brother when you were . . . ” His arms tightened around her. “And then hearing everything you saw in that session tonight, it just . . . It scared me, Samantha. There were other people involved besides Kenny. Others at the cabin that night, and we don’t know who they were. And after everything that’s happened lately, I can’t think about you going back to that town without panicking. I don’t know what I would do if I lost you. I can’t lose you like that.”

Her heart filled, and all those worries she’d stressed over after he’d walked out faded into the ether. As did every fear she’d ever had about opening her heart to someone else.

Cupping his face, she lifted so his gorgeous green eyes could meet hers. “Nothing’s going to happen to me, Ethan. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

“Samantha.” Pain etched his features, and his eyes slid closed. “There are things you don’t know. Things about me I haven’t told you. Things that—”

“They don’t matter.”

He looked up at her again and frowned. “You don’t—”

“Nothing matters except the way you make me feel, Ethan. I never would have agreed to that hypnosis without you. I couldn’t have gone through it alone and come out on the other side sane. And for the first time in a long time, that’s how I feel. Sane. Because of you. Just knowing you were there made me feel safe. You always make me feel safe. You’re the only one who ever has. I’ve been running from people since I was ten because of that night. Because I was too afraid to let them get close and see the real me. But with you, I don’t have to be afraid anymore. You’ve seen the real me, and you’re still here. And I love you for that, Ethan. I love you because you make me feel alive. I love you because—”