Page 144 of Stay With Me

Kelly smiled as she dropped the cube back into the glass, which she removed from Samantha’s grip.

“How do you know he’s no longer interested?”

“Because I can just tell.”

“Did you actually ask him about it and he told you no?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know?”

Samantha collapsed onto Kelly’s lap. “I just do.”

Kelly stroked Samantha’s hair for a while, and all the events since August seemed to replay in her mind.

How she was unbelievably smitten after first meeting him, then unbelievably terrified after his fall. The horrifying eighteen hours in the desert, the week in the hospital with him, and all the weeks she’d spent caring for him while he was healing and recuperating. The awful fight and how disappointed and hurt she was after he’d told her the whole truth. How she’d hesitated before leaving that day, wondering if it was the right decision. The weeks spent working with him after that, during which she continued to second guess that same decision until this very night when she finally realized she’d been wrong, but also that it was now too late to do anything about it.

She sniffled a few times and then began to cry.

“Talk to me, honey,” Kelly said in a soothing tone. “It’ll help.”

Samantha shrugged. “I don’t know what to talk about. I think I made the wrong choice and now I can’t do anything about it.”

“You can always do something about it,” Kelly reasoned.

Samantha huffed as she rubbed her eyes with her fists. “What am I supposed to do? Walk into work and be like, ‘Good morning, Nick. Guess what? I love you, too. Oh, what’s that you say? You don’t love me anymore because I threw your feelings back at you in a most heinously callous fashion? Totally understandable. Let’s go ahead and have that meeting now.’ Yeah, Mommy. That sounds like the best idea ever.”

Kelly bent over to kiss Samantha’s forehead before standing from the couch.

“That’s a start. Now get up. I’m putting you to bed.”

“Mmm-kaaay…” Samantha mumbled as she followed her mom toward a guest room.

She lay staring at the ceiling for a while, but still couldn’t quite sleep yet. She flipped on the TV, but that didn’t seem to help either.

Eventually, and even though she knew it was probably the worst idea imaginable, she pulled out her phone and stared at Nick’s contact information.

She stared at it for a long time until her fingers seemed to act on their own behalf.

Chapter Thirty

Nick

“All-riiight!” Chase bellowed, part drunken exuberance, part necessity to be heard above the roar of the club at one thirty a.m. He shoved a fourth bourbon on the rocks into Nick’s hand. “Give it to me, boss man. What’s it gonna be?”

Nick wagged his head slightly. “I don’t know exactly yet.”

“Same as last year or more?”

“I don’t know exactly yet.”

“Gimme a ballpark.”

“Chase, seriously.” Nick paused to laugh. “I have to run all the numbers. I can tell you next week.”

Chase squinted. “You can’t even guesstimate?”

Nick ran a basic calculation in his head. “It’ll be more.”