Young Revelations (Young Series) (10 page)

The sun is about to rise, so I should probably wrap this up so you can have it when you leave. As angry and hurt as I am with you right now, nothing will change how desperately I love you and need you. In case I can’t say it before you leave, I will miss you more than words can say while you’re away.

I love you and I will do whatever it takes to make us work. But I need your help. Please.

I’ll see you soon.

Always yours,

Samantha

––––-o––––-

I lower the letter with shaking hands, barely aware of the tears streaming down my face. All I can think about is getting somewhere so I can call Samantha and beg for her forgiveness. For so long, I knew there were things unspoken between us. I never needed her to explain how she felt about me; it was always written clearly and plainly in her eyes when she looked at me. I was aware of her insecurities about herself and our relationship, and I always tried to ease those insecurities however I could. But this… I’ve hurt her in ways no other person in the world could ever manage. I’ve made her doubt her and me and everything around us. I humiliated and betrayed her.

And for some reason, through all that, she still loves me. This woman who is my life could have so quickly walked away from me to avoid any further hurt from me, but she’s still here, apparently willing to give me a chance to fix what I’ve broken so thoroughly. I reread the letter several times and every time, I become more determined to prove myself to her. Whatever happened in our past is long beyond relevant and only now am I realizing how much hurt and resentment I’m apparently holding onto. Was I flaunting my former relationship with Natalie in her face? Certainly not intentionally, but I can see how she would feel that way.

It’s nearly an hour before I can think clearly and get my emotions in check. Somehow I’m going to prove I love her just as much as she loves me.

––––-o––––-

In the hours following Matthew’s departure, I’m in a complete daze. I operate mechanically to get Tyler ready for school, I barely recall my drive from the house to his school, then to the bookstore. Every time I’ve glanced at my watch, I’ve wondered where Matthew is right now, whether he’s read my letter, and what he’s thinking if he has read it. I very nearly didn’t give it to him this morning. When he woke me, it had taken me several moments to realize where I was and why, and all I had wanted to do pull him onto the couch with me just to have him hold me again.

Part of me regrets being so cold to him right before he left. But I said everything in my letter and before we talk about it, I need him to read it. I can still feel his arms around me when he asked me for a hug. The warmth and the strength of his body. The feeling of his lips and tongue against mine. The rawness of his voice when he told me he loves me. I very nearly broke at his words and if Leo hadn’t reminded him they were on a schedule, Matthew probably would have missed his flight altogether when I dragged him back into the house and demanded he make love to me until neither of us could function.

The fear in his eyes when I handed him my letter will stay with me for the foreseeable future. Knowing the contents of the letter, it took me a while to figure out why he was reacting in that way, but I quickly understood he was under the impression that the letter meant goodbye. I wanted to reassure him that this was not the case, but I kept quiet with the knowledge that he would understand once he red it. Or at least I hope he’ll understand.

It’s not until mid-afternoon that I get any communication from Matthew, and even then, it’s only a text message:

Just landed. Read your letter. We have a lot to discuss. I will call you from the hotel. I love you.

I don’t respond to the message, knowing he’s probably not expecting me to. I try to read between the lines of the short text he’s sent me until I realize there are no lines to read between. There is no indication of how he feels about my letter, good or bad, and I’m suddenly nervous.

An hour later, the store phone rings and I answer it mechanically, assuming it’s probably Bonnie checking in on me. I’m met with a brief silence on the other end of the line before the caller speaks.

“Hi,” Matthew says softly.

My heart jumps into my throat. “Hi,” I whisper back. “I take it you’re at the hotel?”

“Yes,” he responds. We’re both silent for a few moments while I wait for him to say something, anything, to set me at ease again.

When he doesn’t, I tentatively speak. “How was your flight?”

He sighs heavily on the other line and lets out a puff of humorless laughter at the end. “Longest flight of my life,” he says wryly.

“Oh.”

“I mean, the flight itself was fine, but I’ve never wanted a plane to land so badly in my life. I spent most of it in tears after reading your letter and I’ve been desperate to get somewhere we could actually talk without interruption.”

My eyebrows shoot up at his words. To my knowledge, Matthew has only ever cried one other time in my memory: the day Tyler opened his eyes and looked at us for the first time. I immediately feel guilty for making him cry again from my letter. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“Please don’t apologize, Sam,” he begs. “I’m the one who should be saying I’m sorry. You have done nothing wrong and I cannot tell you how shitty I feel for making you hurt like this. I have no idea why you put up with me day in and day out. I don’t deserve you or your love, and I wish there was a way I could show you exactly what it means that you’ve given me both. I’ve been thinking for hours what to say to you and I still can’t find enough words. All I know is that I’m in Germany about to face charges of homicide that, even if I’m found innocent, could cause me to lose my company and everything I’ve worked for in my adult life, and as frightening as that prospect is, it’s nothing compared to the thought that I could lose you as well. I’m an idiot, Samantha, and the way I’ve treated you this weekend is abysmal.”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and I think I hear a sound like rustling papers. “You asked me to be honest with you about my feelings towards Natalie. And you mentioned that you love Tom for being there for you when you needed someone, but that he couldn’t replace me. Well, that’s how I feel about Natalie. Yes, I care for her as a friend, but that’s the extent of it. I don’t know whether she harbors deeper feelings for me, but it wouldn’t matter if she did: I’m marrying you, Sam. Not her. Not anybody else. You and Tyler and our baby are my life. I’m nothing without any of you. And I’m going to prove that to you somehow.”

I have tears streaming down my face now, but I’m smiling. “That’s all I want,” I tell him. “I’m not giving up on you now or ever, Matt. I hope you know that.”

“I do know,” he assures me. “I know now. Listen, I have to meet my legal team right now, but I wanted to talk to you first. I’ll call you again before you go to bed. In the meantime, I love you more than I can even comprehend. And I have every intention of coming home to you as soon as possible.”

“Damn right you do,” I say, choking out a laugh. He chuckles softly. “And I love you too. Go to your meeting. I’ll talk to you later.”

After another minute or so of telling each other I love you, we finally hang up and I go about the rest of my afternoon with a much lighter heart than the one I woke with. At three o’clock, my replacement Sarah arrives to take over and I leave to pick up Tyler. Our evening is pleasant, even though I wonder how things are going with Matthew. I’m waiting eagerly for his call even as I put Tyler to bed. I don’t know how late it is in Germany, but I know it won’t matter; he has a habit of staying awake most of the night just so he can talk to me before bed. And given our current situation, I fully expect that’s what he’s doing.

In order to distract myself, I head into his office and check my email. I have a couple from my sister telling me that she’ll be at the wedding, but our older brother Jimmy is absolutely refusing to attend. That hurts, though given the last encounter between Jimmy and Matthew, I can’t say I’m honestly surprised. There’s one from Bonnie reminding me of a shipment to the store on Friday morning. And there’s one from an email address I don’t recognize. With a raised eyebrow, I open the message that has no subject line or body, only a video attachment. I debate for a minute or two about whether I should open it—for all I know, it’s some sort of virus that will destroy everything on Matthew’s computer. I run it through his anti-virus software and it comes up clean, so I open it. And I immediately wish I hadn’t. I watch the entire video all the way through, feeling more ill with every second that ticks on. Faintly, I hear Matthew’s desk phone ringing, but I’m frozen in place unable to do anything but watch and feel my world falling apart again.

My first day in Germany was about what I expected: Locked in a room with a table surrounded by lawyers, plane crash specialists, federal agents, including Marcus West, and endless questions. For the most part, I think it went pretty well and my legal team is convinced this will end soon. The best thing I’d done the day of the crash was to not investigate the reason for the mismatched screws on the engine panel. If I had and saw something actually wrong with the plane, then took off running like I did, I’d be in jail already. I know they’re suspicious of my gut feeling that something wasn’t right, and how I left without warning anybody. A warning would have saved six lives that day, but I don’t know what sequence of events that would have triggered. The person who sabotaged the engine could have found me later and shot me in the head. They could have arranged for Samantha and Tyler to have been hurt or killed. That wasn’t a chance I was willing to take.

Between my contacts with the CIA and FBI, my witnesses of my innocence are beyond credible. These are people who have no reason to lie, no matter how much they like me, and if they believed me guilty of knowing the plane would crash, they wouldn’t hesitate to turn on me. That’s what they’re trained to do, act without emotion, and it’s probably something I should start implementing in my own life.

Today we learned the panel in question had been located after the crash. The photos show it burned almost beyond recognition, but you can clearly see the difference in the screws. And there was a fingerprint in the lower left hand corner believed to belong to one of the persons who damaged the engine. It’s only a partial and will take a team of scientists to analyze, but it could give us our biggest clue as to who is behind this mess. I offer my own fingerprints at the urging of my legal team to rule me out as a suspect, and I think that alone did a lot to convince the opposing legal team of my innocence.

At the end of the day, I’m stumbling back to my hotel room wanting nothing more than dinner, several drinks, and a conversation with Samantha. I wasn’t able to reach her last night before she went to bed; I assume she was exhausted and crashed early. This morning before I left for my questioning, I sent her an email that she hasn’t yet responded to. I’m trying not to think too much about this—normally she’ll answer my emails immediately—since I know we’re on our way back to where we need to be in our relationship. I can’t deny it’s making me a little uneasy, though; after today, the one thing I need is to hear her voice, even if she doesn’t really have much to say.

Before I even take off my shoes, I order room service and a large bottle of bourbon for the evening, then sit at the table with my laptop to check emails. I read a few, delete several, and respond to a couple. My dinner arrives and I jump up to accept it. Halfway to the door, I hear my email program ding and I glance back, grinning when I see Samantha’s email address. I knew she wouldn’t leave me hanging; she’s probably just had a long day. With my dinner, I sit back down, pour myself a drink, take a couple bites of my steak dinner, and turn back to my email. The first thing I notice is that there is some sort of attachment in Sam’s email—that doesn’t make me blink an eye. There was a time when Samantha would send me photos while I was away on business. The first time I received one of these, I nearly choked on my beer and had the immediate desire to book the first flight home in order to take advantage of the barely dressed woman on my computer screen. A lot of the pictures were innocent, particularly after Tyler was born. Samantha never wanted me to miss a moment of his life.

I don’t miss the irony of that, but I’m trying not to focus on it anymore. I’m getting a second chance with our daughter and I have no intention of making any of the same mistakes from before.

The thing that throws up the red flag about Samantha’s email is the subject line. I read it several times before considering whether I’ve already had too much bourbon. After reading it once more, I pour another glass for good measure, wondering what this could possibly mean and whether I want to know at all. “Just friends, huh?”

“Oh, this can’t be good,” I mutter to myself, draining my glass and pouring another before opening the message. There’s no text in the body of the email, just an attached video, and I very reluctantly open it. Within the first couple seconds I’ve spat out my bourbon, staring in horror at what I’m seeing on my screen. It’s unmistakably me and Natalie. I’m sitting behind my desk at my office and she’s in my lap, her fingers twisting in my hair as I kiss her neck while my hands roam to places that are incredibly inappropriate for the workplace. Nearly half an hour long, I skip ahead, knowing what I’ll see, and find myself pressing my body into hers, her dress somewhere around her midsection, my pants and boxers at my ankles.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whisper, quickly exiting the email program. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Samantha has seen this video and possibly believes it to be very recent, judging by her subject line. And that couldn’t be any further from the truth, despite what she thinks about my current relationship with Natalie; I haven’t touched her like that in nearly two years, as I told Samantha after the disaster that was our engagement party.

Forgetting all about my dinner, I snatch my cell phone and dial my home number, begging for Samantha to pick up. On the fifth or sixth ring, just as I’m plotting a way to get home to convince Samantha of the truth, someone picks up, though not who I expected.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Claire growls.

I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose. “Let me talk to her, Claire. I’m not in the mood for this shit right now.”

“Well, that’s too fucking bad, isn’t it?” she snaps.

Fighting not to throw my cell across the room at the wall, I take a couple deep breaths. Obviously my sister has gone into overprotective mama bear mode with Samantha and will refuse to give into what I want until she’s been placated somehow. “Claire,” I say much more calmly, having no doubt that she’s well aware of the video and its contents, “that video isn’t what it looks like.”

She scoffs loudly. “So it’s not you and Natalie fucking like rabbits in your office?” she whispers harshly. I wonder if she’s moved out of earshot of Samantha.

I sigh. “Okay, that part is what it looks like,” I concede. “But that video is at least a year and a half old. Natalie and I haven’t had that kind of relationship since we broke up.”

“Just save it, Matt,” Claire says exasperatedly. “We both saw the entire thing. The new baby’s sonogram is right there on your desk, staring at the two of you dry humping on your chair.”

I fist my free hand in my hair and pull, then register what my sister is saying. Immediately I return to the laptop and rewind to confirm her statement. “How the fuck…” I whisper, locating the apparently incriminating evidence. “Claire, I swear on everything I never cheated on Samantha. I know it looks bad, but…”

She sighs heavily. “Bad isn’t exactly the word I’d use…”

“Please let me talk to Sam,” I beg into the phone. “Let me explain to her.”

“She’s asleep, Matt,” she tells me tiredly. “Cried herself into unconsciousness not long after I got here.”

“Tell me you believe I would never do this to her.”

Swallowing heavily, I can almost hear the cogs in Claire’s head turning in thought. “I never believed you would do this to her,” she finally says. I don’t miss the rearrangement of my words and I know the video has her fooled as well. “She’s absolutely heart broken right now, Matt. And I don’t know what she’s going to do once she wakes.”

Panic and terror fill my body. “What do you mean, what she’s going to do?” I breathe, my heart racing.

“Well, if Danny and I were in this situation, I’d pack up my kids and leave in a second,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m not going to encourage her either way, since it’s not my place to do that, but I’d start preparing yourself for that to happen.”

I feel a dry sob push out of my throat. “Claire, please,” I beg. “Don’t let her leave. I’ll figure this out, but I’m not going to lose her in the process.”

There’s silence on the other line for several seconds and I begin to wonder if Claire has hung up on me. “I’ll talk to her when she wakes up,” Claire says quietly. “But I’m not making any promises.”

With that, she does hang up on me and I’m left staring at my computer screen feeling as though my entire life is shattering at my feet.

––––-o––––-

I’ve been waking up every hour or so since Claire arrived. Whether it’s the nightmares or my overwhelming sadness or just that I’m not tired, I’m not certain. This time it’s because the phone rang somewhere in the house. I could hear Claire out in the hallway talking to somebody, occasionally very harshly, though I couldn’t make out the words. It doesn’t take much to surmise she’s talking to Matthew. When that thought flitted through my mind, I wanted to get out of bed and take the phone from Claire to demand an explanation from him. I tried, but my head is pounding and I’m dizzy, and I’d really rather not fall from my attempt.

It’s not long before she returns to the bedroom looking pissed. She sees I’m awake and her fury abates slightly, replaced by concern and sympathy. “How are you feeling?” she asks, sitting beside me on the bed.

“I’m fine,” I murmur. “Was that Matt?”

Her eyes widen in surprise. “Yes,” she says shortly. “He wanted to talk to you, but I convinced him to hold off.” She pauses, hesitating. “He’s claiming the video is old, at least a year and a half.”

“Did you tell him we saw the sonogram?” I croak, my throat raw from crying.

She nods. “He seemed surprised about that.”

“So what, he’s trying to convince you it’s a fake or something?” I ask. “He can’t think I’d believe that?”

Claire holds her hands up defensively. “I’m just telling you what the man said, Sam,” she says consolingly. “I can only hold him off for so long; at some point you’ll need to speak with him. And he’s probably going to say the same things to you.”

“Why would he do this to me, Claire?” I ask despairingly. “What did I do wrong?”

Claire slides towards me on the bed and pulls me into a hug. “Sweetie, you did nothing wrong,” she tells me. “This is all him.”

“I just don’t get it,” I whisper. “I thought we were happy and about to start this whole new life. New marriage. New baby… And then this. Claire, I should have gouged her eyes out at that fucking party.” I wince at the sudden headache that erupts behind my eyes and my vision begins swimming.

“Sam?” Claire says concernedly. Her voice suddenly seems very far off. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

My heart is racing, my breathing is becoming labored, and I hear myself cry out at the sudden jolt of electricity that passes through my abdomen and chest. “I don’t know,” I say weakly. “I don’t feel well…”

I suddenly feel myself slipping into unconsciousness and as I do, I can hear Claire speaking urgently, though I’m not sure to whom she’s speaking. Trying to keep my eyes open, I realize Claire is on the phone and I think she might be calling for an ambulance. I want to ask her who the ambulance is for, but I can’t find my voice.

“You’re going to be fine, Sam,” Claire suddenly says to me, sitting beside me. “Try to stay awake.”

Easier said than done, Claire… Just before I pass out, I hear thuds and voices outside the bedroom.

––––-o––––-

I have no idea what time it is. To be honest, I couldn’t care less. All I need to know is that I’m nearly 4,000 miles away from Samantha and she believes I’ve cheated on her with Natalie and there is a chance she’ll leave me before I even get the opportunity to try and explain things to her. After Claire hung up on me, I ignored the glass of bourbon I’d poured myself and drank straight from the bottle until Marcus and Leo came to brief me about tomorrow’s meeting. I have a vague recollection of one of them trying to take the nearly empty bottle away from me and that I put up a fight. Of course in my condition there wasn’t much of a fight for them to wrestle me to my bed.

Marcus was cursing me out about my drunkenness while Leo tried to help me into my pajamas. At some point one of them asked me what had happened to start this off and I think I might have broken into hysterical giggling as I explained that Samantha was going to leave me. I directed Leo to my laptop where the video of Natalie and me was still up and paused around the halfway point. The time between then and now is completely blacked out in my mind.

My head is pounding in a way I haven’t experienced since the first time Samantha left me when I decided the best way to cope was to drink my way though my entire liquor cabinet. I manage to roll out of bed and stand up, wavering a bit as I try to figure out whether I need to make a mad dash to the bathroom. The world stops spinning and I head out to the main room where I think I see Leo crashed out on the couch, probably to keep an eye on me and occasionally turn me in case I choke on my own vomit. He really is a good friend and he puts up with so much of my shit. I’m sure he will have a few things to say about my behavior tonight, especially when I’m facing such a serious problem here in Germany.

I grab a couple bottles of water from the mini fridge and my cell phone, and head back to my bedroom. As I lie down and open my first water, I check my phone messages, immediately noting I’ve got several missed calls, voicemails, and text messages from my sister. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so sober so quickly in my life as I read the texts. None of them give details, but merely tell me in varying temperaments to call her immediately. The last one she sent was about an hour ago.