Chapter 22

Samantha:

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. I love everything about it: the food, the weather, being with family. Every year, my whole family gathers at my aunt Justine’s house—Robby’s mom. Everyone brings a dish, or wine. So much wine. And she pushes three card tables together end-to-end in the middle of her living room to fit everyone.

My mom and Dean are always the first one’s there, and I usually ride with. So I get to chat with all the family members I haven’t seen since the last major holiday as they arrive. I’m like the unofficial welcoming committee, since Aunt Justine is usually busy rushing around the kitchen, and my mom is always busy helping. Dean and my Uncle Tom usually spend the first half of the afternoon out in the backyard, debating the best way to deep fry “the old girl”—that’s what they call the turkey. And the younger cousins play on the tire swing over the dry creek bed at the back of the property, while the older cousins hide behind the workshop nursing their angst and the beers they pilfer from Uncle Tom’s beer fridge in the garage.

Today, though, I have no Thanksgiving spirit. Should I be thankful that the guy I was falling head over heels for turned out to be the kind of guy who would let my professor think I’d seduced him to get a good grade? Or maybe I should be thankful that just a few weeks after having been asked to move out, I had to go crawling back to Maggie and beg her and Michael to let me stay with them again.

Neither one of them had had the heart to say no to me—and Poofie. Probably because I’d been sobbing unconsolably when I arrived on their doorstep and it took me almost an hour between the crying and wiping tears and snot from my face to relay the details of what had happened. Like a good boyfriend, Michael had cracked open a bottle of merlot, left it on the coffee table with two of Maggie’s biggest wine glasses and backed away like I was a bomb he was worried was seconds away from catastrophic explosion.

I can’t blame him, though. He’d never been good with displays of emotion. Oh, he tolerated them like a champ, for sure, but he always looked so uncomfortable, like a fish out of water. Or a skydiver who’s just realized he has no parachute.

Now, here I was, sitting in Aunt Justine’s living room, waiting for other family members to arrive, trying to pretend everything was normal, when, really, I was on the verge of tears. It didn’t help that Justine had kicked things off on the wrong foot by immediately asking me if I was dating anyone new the second that I followed Mom and Dean through the front door.

I’m almost certain she’d been about to recommend a love match for me—she’s been trying to hook me up with eligible sons of her friends for years—but no sooner did she ask the question than I teared up. She recognized something was going on with me immediately and had the good sense to clamp her mouth shut and offer me some wine.

I’m most of the way through my second glass when Robby strolls into the house. I knew he would be here. It is, after all, his mother’s house. His childhood home. But I wasn’t prepared for the fact that he might bring Gavin with him. I hadn’t even considered it.

Clearly, I should have. Because there stands Gavin, two steps inside the front door with his hands shoved deep in his pants pockets and his shoulders hunched in discomfort. Our gazes connect and I’m struck by the amount of shame and remorse I see in his expression. But all it does is make me angry. Angry because it makes me want to forgive him. Angry because even after what he did, my body still remembers him and is, even now, reacting to his presence in ways I don’t want it to.

Angry because he doesn’t say a damn word to me. Not that I would have listened to him if he’d tried.

I practically jump up off the couch, sloshing my wine over the rim of my glass and onto my hand in the process. Then I glare at Robby because what’s a girl to do in a situation like this except take her anger out on exactly the wrong person? “Why did you bring him?” I challenge. The venom in my tone is a surprise even to me, and Gavin and Robby both reel backward like I’ve just hurled steaming dung at them.

Robby holds up both hands defensively and takes slow steps backward in the direction of the dining room. He’s trying to escape, to leave me alone with Gavin. And being alone with Gavin is the thing I want least—and most—in this world right now.

“Robby Dunn, don’t you dare leave this room!” I command. The instant the words are out of my mouth, Robby spins on his heel and jogs away, through the dining room and out the sliding doors to where Dean and Uncle Tom can offer him some protection.

“Can we talk? Please?” Gavin asks in a quiet voice once we’re alone.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” I refuse to look him in the eye. I drain my wine glass and look into it, wishing for a refill. But the wine is in the kitchen, on the other side of the dining room. To get there, I’d have to get way too close to Gavin. I feel the pull of him even now. Like he’s a black hole and if I get to close, I’ll be sucked into the event horizon and ripped to shreds at the atomic level.

No, the safest thing for me to do right now is escape this room through the hallway behind me. But the only were to go from there is the bedrooms or the guest bathroom. Maybe I could just lock myself in the bathroom and pretend to have an upset stomach. No one will expect me at the Thanksgiving table if they think I have violent diarrhea.

I latch onto that idea like a drowning man clings to a life preserver. It becomes my salvation. I fly from the room, fueled by hurt and anger and no small amount of self-preservation instinct. Because if I stay in this room with Gavin, it will destroy me.

I hear his heavy footsteps crossing the living room and entering the hall just as I slam the bathroom door and lock it behind me. A moment late, there’s the softest of thuds on the outside of the door, like something pressing against it.

“Sam please,” Gavin calls through the door, and I realize then that the thud was him pressing his forehead to the door. To his credit, he sounds genuine, but I don’t let him in. Instead, I lean my back against the bathroom door and slide down to the floor, collapsing into tears.

An hour later, pretty much every family member in attendance tonight has been by to knock on this damn door. Maybe locking myself in the bathroom wasn’t the smartest way to get some peace and alone time. I ignore the fiftieth—or the five hundredth, I lost count a while ago—knock on the door when it comes. I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t already been by, already asked if I’m sick. And I’ve confirmed to each and every one of them that yes, I’m horribly sick, that I have the vilest upset stomach and they would all do well to just leave me alone.

Clearly, they aren’t listening.

I’ve stopped crying, at least, and have been keeping busy by reading the labels on every soap, shampoo, and cleaning product I can find in Aunt Justine’s guest bath. Because I ran away without my phone, like a dumbass. Who commits to a standoff without a distraction to keep their mind off the thing they’re standing off against?

Me, apparently. And I have no intentions of moving. I’m just about to take an uncomfortable nap on the cold tile floor when the knocking sounds again. And again. Whoever it is isn’t leaving. “Go away,” I call. And for a moment, I think whoever is out there obeyed my command, but then the knocking comes again, softer, but still there. With a frustrated sigh, I heave myself off of the floor and shuffle toward the door, open it. And immediately slam it again.

“Sam, please.” Gavin’s muffled voice calls through the door.

“Go away.” I don’t want to hear anything he has to say. If I did, I would have read all the texts he’s sent me over the last week instead of deleting them.

“I’m sorry,” he tries again.

I roll my eyes. “Don’t care,” I call back.

“I told Peterson it was my fault.”

That gets my attention. “You talked to Peterson?”

“Robby and I just left his place before coming here, actually.”

He went to Dr. Peterson’s house? On Thanksgiving?

“Sam, please open the door.”

I hesitate for a long time. I’m not sure I’m ready to face him, not sure my heart can handle seeing him. Not to mention the fact that I’ve been rolling around on a bathroom floor for almost an hour and could definitely use a hairbrush. I mentally kick myself. Why should I be worried about impressing Gavin? I shouldn’t. That’s why.

I open the door and eye him squarely as I step aside for him to come in, then move all the way to the far end of the small room so there’s plenty of distance between us. Well, maybe not plenty but as much as I can get in a sixty-square-foot room.

Gavin steps in and shuts the door behind him, waiting to be invited further. I motion in an exaggerated sweep gesture with my whole arm for him make himself comfortable.

“Welcome to my humble commode.” Why the hell am I making jokes right now? Shoot me.

Gavin leans his butt against the counter and rests his palms on the countertop to lift himself onto it. He sits at one end, and I’m careful to sit all the way at the opposite end of the room… on the closed toilet lid. Because how else would I make this situation more awkward? Then I grab the package of spare toilet paper from under the counter and stack four rolls on the counter like a wall between us for good measure. He eyes them but doesn’t comment.

“I was an asshole—”

“True,” I interrupt. I’m not about to make this easy on him, whatever this is.

Gavin sighs and starts again. “I should have stood up for you when Peterson was saying all that stuff.”

Also, true. “Yes, you should have.”

He nods in agreement and continues, “I know it’s probably too late for us, but I want you to know that I talked to Peterson. I told him everything I should have told him that day.”

I square my shoulders, unwilling to soften my heart just because he had a crisis of conscience. Too little too late, buddy. “Such as?”

“Well, for starters, I told him that you deserved to pass the class and that your work proves as much. I also told him that what happened between us was my fault, that I’m the one who took things to the next level.”

Okay, that was a good start at least. “And…?”

“I told him everything, Sam. How it’s more complicated than you just being a student in the class. I explained about Rob and our living arrangement, and how we tried to fight the attraction between us, and that I was the one who made the first move. Not you. And then I asked him to consider reading your final paper. I told him it would prove the truth of what I was telling him.”

“You think my paper was good?” I shake away the tiny spark of happiness that thought causes and remind myself that I don’t care what Gavin thinks about anything. Or, I shouldn’t care anyway.

“I think it was the best one I read from any student.”

Nope. I’m not going to let that soften me. But my resolve to hate him is quickly faltering. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Peterson thought the same thing,” Gavin reassures me.

“That it didn’t matter?” Way to rip the band-aid off.

He laughs softly. “No, he agreed that it was quality work. Not the work of someone who needed to sleep their way to an A.”

I stare at his lips in shock, waiting for a punchline to come out. But he’s serious. “Peterson liked my paper?”

Gavin nods. “Yep. He said it was one of the best he’s read. And not just this semester. Ever, Sam.”

I chuckle bitterly. “He probably thought I plagiarized it.”

“Not after I told him about how hard you worked on it. You deserve an A on that paper and to pass that class.” His tone and expression are serious, adamant even.

“Deserve to and doing are not the same thing.”

Gavin scoots closer to me, knocking one of the rolls of toilet paper to the floor with the movement. “Sam, listen to me. Peterson decided to pass you. He’s giving you a B, not because of anything I said. Because you earned it.”

Okay, maybe I’m softening toward him just a little. Dr. Peterson definitely was not going to give me a B before. “You did that for me?”

“You did that yourself. I just helped him see it. And I told him that if he was going to fail you, he was going to have to formally bring me before an ethics committee because you’re my girlfriend whether he likes it or not.”

“Your girlfriend?” The words catch me off guard. “Well, that’s a little presumptuous.”

Gavin’s attitude shifts from determined to uncertain in the time it takes me to utter the words. “If you’ll have me, that is,” he answers.

I bite back a smile. He really is adorable when he’s apologizing. “What’s in it for me?”

A long moment passes between us. I don’t know if he can tell that I’m teasing him until he slides off the counter and onto his knees. He shuffles over to me.

“Holy shit, you’re not proposing are you?”

Gavin laughs lightly. “No, but I’m willing to grovel if that’s what it takes.” His voice is earnest, but there’s a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“Hmm… I do like the idea of you on your knees worshipping me.” I put emphasis on the word worshipping, hoping he catches my real meaning.

His expression brightens, and then his gaze darkens, zeroing in on my lips. He leans up toward me, only stopping when our mouths are a mere breath apart. “I want nothing more than to worship you.”

His mouth lands on mine in a fevered kiss that sweeps away any lingering doubts I might have had. And worship me, he does.