Sacrifice (12 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Natasha

Two weeks passed in a blur. Sam was a constant in my life, barely leaving my side we had become inseparable. He was there every night to hold me as I fell asleep. And he was there in the morning when I woke. Of course he didn’t always wake before me.

He hadn’t tried anything since that night. The night I pushed him away. A part of me wondered if maybe he was afraid to now. If he maybe thought I wasn’t ready for anything like that…

But I was just happy to have him there with me. He made life easier some how. As if by his mere presence that he eased the normal burdens that often tried to overwhelm me. And that wasn’t the only reason I was glad to have him in my life. Rachel was practically nowhere to be found. Ever since that night that Backward Sliding Domino had performed she and Adam had grown closer. I didn’t know if it was genuine. Rachel had a tendency to be over come by those in high places. She looked at celebrities like they were gods, not the normal human beings they in fact were. All I could hope for her was that Adam didn’t break her heart…

Rolling over in the bed, the room was still dark. I had no idea what time it was but something had woken me up. Sam sat watching me and for a moment I wondered if maybe he had heard something… Maybe there was a reason why we had both woken up.

“You sleep so peacefully when I’m here with you.”

I grinned at him in the dark and slapped his arm playfully. “Oooh you’re pretty full of yourself, aren’t you?” 

He caught my hand in his, easily holding it captive. Even though the room was dark, I could still make out the intense look in his eyes. The laughter died on my lips and I swallowed hard. I couldn’t help myself. There was times when I was with Sam that he made me feel so utterly helpless. As though he was the one in control of everything. That he had the power to turn my life on its head and I wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Of course that wasn’t strictly true, but I couldn’t stop the feeling from creeping up on me. But it didn’t frighten me. It should have. Society taught you to be your own boss. That women weren’t supposed to allow a man to hold that much power over them. That we shouldn’t let anyone in to hurt us… But wasn’t that what falling in love was all about?

Weren’t we supposed to fall in love? Take a chance, a risk on the person we were with, even if it meant us ending up with a broken heart. I wanted to take that chance with Sam. I wanted to know if he could break my heart or maybe heal it.

“What do you dream about? When we’re not together you have nightmares… And yet when I’m with you, when I hold you, you dream so peacefully.”

“Nightmares?” I propped myself up in the bed and stared at him in the darkened room. “I didn’t know I had nightmares. You never told me that before?”

Sam looked surprised, as though I had just told him that the easter bunny was real, that every myth he had ever encountered was a real thing.

“You don’t remember the nightmares?”

I shook my head, my hair dropping into my eyes and I brushed it away impatiently.

“I think they’re about your mom. You always call her name…”

My stomach dropped painfully and I swallowed hard. “I don’t remember.”

One lone tear trickled down my cheek as an image of her popped into my head. I didn’t want to think about her. It hurt too much to think about her. I was sure I hadn’t even really grieved for her. Never really had a chance. But it was better to pretend that I had. Better to have everyone believe that I was alright, that her death didn’t bother me anymore… But I couldn’t pretend like that with Sam. He’d see straight through it. Like he did with everything else in my life.

He pressed his lips against my forehead. More a gesture of support than anything else and for that I was grateful. He brushed his hands down over my cheek and sat up in the bed.

“I want to show you something.”

Intrigued I pushed the tears back down, burying them back down within me where they belonged.

“Show me something?”

Sam had already climbed out of the bed and was pulling his jeans on. I sat in the middle of the bed and stared at him as though he had lost his mind completely.

“Sam it’s the middle of the night, I’m sure whatever you want to show me can wait until the morning?”

He shook his head and grinned at me in the dark. “Nope, and that’s what makes it interesting. In the morning it’ll be gone and I won’t be able to show it to you anymore.”

With a sigh I climbed from the bed and began rummaging around for something to wear. Grabbing my own jeans and a top I dragged them on as quickly as I could. Flipping my hair up into a ponytail I pulled it back and secured it with a hair tie. He handed me a jumper and smiled.

“I think you’ll need this. It might be a little bit chilly.”

I was nervous and excited. Where was he taking me at this time of the night that it might be chilly? I grabbed my handbag and followed him as silently as I could from the apartment. We descended the stairs in near silence and he headed outside.

I hesitated at the front door. My eyes darting up and down the street. It seemed crazy. Not seemed, it was crazy. I was following him out into the night, with no idea about where we were off to… If that wasn’t crazy then I wasn’t sure what was anymore.

I dashed out the door after him as soon as I saw him opening the passenger door of his car. He watched me approach him, a look I couldn’t quite understand filling his eyes. But it was a look that gave me butterflies in my tummy. A warmth spread through me and suddenly it wasn’t that cold anymore.

I climbed into the car and closed the door. Sam had already made his way to the drivers side and slid in behind the wheel. He gunned the engine and I shivered a little as it roared to life. The moment the lights came on, the small clock on the dashboard was illuminated. 

02:45

It flashed at me, as though trying to get it through to me how bizarre this entire situation really was. Sam put his foot to the accelerator and the car shot forward, moving effortlessly through the traffic free streets.

It wasn’t long until we were out of the city, the tall buildings falling behind us as we disappeared out onto country roads. The radio hummed quietly inside the small car. I wanted to ask him where we were going. The curiosity was getting to me, making any sort of real concentration impossible.

“So are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

Sam shook his head, his eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead. “No. You’ll see when we get there.”

“Well is it far away?”

Sam smiled, “Stop trying to get clues out of me.”

I flopped back against the seat, closing my eyes. If he wasn’t going to tell me where we were going then there wasn’t much point in me missing out on sleep. I tried to force myself to breathe deeply, to allow the tiredness I felt to carry me off to sleep but it was pointless.

I was awake now and no amount of wishing I could be asleep would make it so. I let out a deep sigh and Sam began to laugh. I turned to him my frustration spilling out.

“What are you laughing at?”

“You.”

“What for?”

“Because you’re behaving like a spoilt little kid. All because I won’t tell you where we’re going.”

“And because you dragged me out of bed at half two in the morning… Forgive me if I’m not all sunshine and roses.”

“You didn’t have to come. You could have stayed in bed.”

His words nettled me and I crossed my arms across my chest. “You know full well I couldn’t let you wander off on your own in the middle of the night.”

Sam didn’t answer me, he just continued to chuckle to himself. At each signpost I squinted my eyes in an attempt to see where we might be heading. But in the dark it was almost impossible to figure it out. Focusing in on the signs did more for my exhaustion than relaxing had. And without even realising it I felt myself drifting away.

“Natasha, wake up, we’re here.” He shook my arm, pulling me from my dreamless state. Or in my mind anyway it was dreamless.

“Where are we?” I stuttered, stretching lazily and knocking my hand against the roof of the car. “Ouch.” I muttered clutching my arm back at my chest.

“Come with me and you’ll see.”

He climbed from the car and walked around to my side of the car. I couldn’t see anything. The entire place was cloaked in darkness and it was much darker than the city ever was. He pulled open the passenger door and the taste of salt tingled on my tongue. The air was clear, amazingly clear and I drank in a deep breath.

The roar of the sea filled my head the second I climbed from the car. The excited butterflies were back in my tummy and it took all of my ability not to skip past Sam. Instead I let him take my hand and lead me away from the car.

The sound of the waves crashing against the beach grew louder and within seconds the crunch of gravel gave way to sand. Without saying anything I let go of his hand and tugged my trainers off, revelling in the feel of the damp sand between my toes.

He grinned at me and followed suit before once more taking my hand in his. He dragged me down towards the water’s edge before stopping and dropping onto the ground. He tugged me down on top of him.

Giggling I let him, my hands wrapping around his shoulders as he cradled me in his arms on the beach.

“Look.” He pointed out over the water and I followed to where he was pointing. A faint red glow was beginning to appear over the horizon. Tendrils of fiery colour seemed to reach down to the sea itself, painting the ocean with its red hue.

“Sunrise…” The word slipped almost soundlessly from my lips but I knew Sam heard it.

All of my earlier whining was now completely and utterly proven pointless. I should have trusted him. Should have known that where he was taking me would be better than lying in bed.

The sun rose slowly at first. Each tendril that reached up towards the sky stretching ever closer to where we sat. The darkness that surrounded us lightening with each blush of colour that I could see. It was stunningly beautiful and I felt incredibly lucky that Sam had wanted to share this with me.

“I’ve never been here before. How did you find it?” I asked, my voice hushed in reverence for what we were witnessing. It felt appropriate to be quiet. Almost as though if I raised my voice too much everything would suddenly stop. Of course that was ridiculous but it was still a thought I couldn’t shake.

“My mom used to bring me and Jackson out here when we were kids. I love the water, couldn’t get enough of it. She used to call me her little water baby…” Sam’s voice trailed off.

I turned and looked at him and in the dawning light I could make out the faint blush of colour on his cheeks. 

“Wow, I’m not sure where that came from… I’ve never told anyone that and it seems a bit odd to be telling you the little nicknames my mom had for me when I was young.” He ducked his head and scrubbed his hand across the back of his neck.

Grabbing his face in my hands, I pulled his face upwards until he was forced to look at me, forced to meet my gaze.

“Your mom sounds amazing… And you shouldn’t feel bad for telling me, it’s good to have such beautiful memories of the people you love.” It was my turn to let my voice trail off.

When he looked at me, I felt needed, loved… And it was all I ever wanted and so much more.

Sam took my hands and pressed them a little tighter to his face before tugging them down to his lips. He kissed the palm of both of my hands, one after the other and then wrapped his body a little harder around mine.

I tucked my head in under his chin as he held me and we returned to watching the sunrise in silence. His scent surrounded me, making me feel utterly safe and at home. It was amazing how comforting a smell could be. I had a bottle of my mother’s perfume hidden away in the back of a drawer in the apartment. Whenever I was feeling particularly low I took it out and pressed it to my nose, drawing the scent in. Drawing her scent in. If I closed my eyes really tight it was like she had been in the room.

Maybe that was what death was. One minute you were in the room, everyone else around you… And the next. The next there was no one. No one to comfort you when you cried… No one to hear your rage, to recognise it. Just nothing. Alone.

“Tell me about your mom?” Sam’s voice cut through my morbid thoughts. I fidgeted on his lap, trying to think up the right thing to say. What could I say? Wasn’t there supposed to be some sort of social norm for all of this? I’m sure I’d heard somewhere that there were only certain things you could say out loud.

Like:
She was a wonderful woman. I miss her.
Or perhaps:
She was taken too soon, gone too young. Everyone who knew her loved her…

Of course all of these things were true. I could pick anyone of those scripted statements and they would be one hundred per cent accurate. But they weren’t personal. There weren’t thoughts that belonged to me. They weren’t real thoughts I had about the woman who had brought me into the world and who I lost. They didn’t even come close to expressing how I felt about her, or how I looked up to her and admired every single detail about her. Impersonal, cold.

“For some reason she always smelled of ripe summer strawberries and peaches… Dad used to joke it was because she was so sweet. And she had this infectious type of laugh. The minute she started to laugh everyone else around her couldn’t help but laugh too. That always amazed me. I never could figure out how she did it. When I was young I was certain she had some sort of magical power to help everyone else be happy…

“She used to take me to an orchard in the summer, it was only a couple of miles away from where we used to live. And we’d spend the day there, just picking fruit, eating most of it… Leaving almost nothing for when dad got back from work.

“She made the meanest apple pie. It was amazing…” The tears slid down my cheeks as I remembered her. It was always this way. Every time I tried to talk about her, tried to remember her I started to cry. And it was the one thing that had always held me back from wanting to discuss her.