“L-LOVE HIM?” ALLIE STAMMERED. “That’s impossible.”
She thought of Sam’s final words to her, about luring men she barely knew into naked middle-of-the-night swims with her.
“And he doesn’t have feelings for me. Or at least not positive ones.”
But even as she told herself it was impossible, even as she told herself Sam did not have feelings for her, her heart was singing a different tune entirely. Kathy was smiling at her.
“I barely know him,” Allie said, and then realized she had parroted the hurtful words he had said to her last night.
“You know, the very first time I laid eyes on Bill, something in me sighed, and said, That’s him.”
“Well, I had that experience, too, only it wasn’t with Sam, and the guy I had it with definitely wasn’t him. I don’t believe in fairy tales.”
“Don’t you? Don’t you ever ask yourself what fairy tales are based on, and why they have survived the test of time? Other stories come and they go. But those ones—those stories of love winning out over all the obstacles put in its way—they stay, don’t they? Generation after generation, drawn to them, finding comfort in them.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Allie whispered.
“Of course you do,” Kathy said. “Your heart knows exactly what to do.”
And Allie realized Kathy was right.
On two counts. Allie had fallen in love with Sam. And she knew you did not love someone and allow them to carry that enormous burden of pain by themselves. She saw his hurtful words last night for what they were, an attempt to keep what was going on between them at bay, a fear of hope.
“I don’t even know where he lives,” she whispered.
“I do,” Kathy said. “I do.”
He lived a long way away. Far enough away that some of the confidence and certainty that Kathy had made her feel, that she had felt as she looked in the mirror at her freshly snipped hair, had abandoned her.
The confidence faded yet again when she parked in front of Sam Walker’s apartment building. The building reminded her what the past days had helped her forget. They were from totally different worlds.
She had known that from the beginning. She had told him that, for Pete’s sake. That they were an impossible match.
The building was gorgeous: stone and glass and steel. There was going to be a guard at the door, and he was not going to let her in.
But for some reason Kathy’s words gave her courage.
There was a reason fairy tales survived. Obstacles could be overcome. There could be happily ever after.
This, she reminded herself sternly, was not about her. It wasn’t just Kathy giving her courage. It was the legacy of Allie’s grandmother. Nobody had championed love more than her grandmother.
She had a sudden thought: all those beautiful weeks with Gram, after Ryan’s betrayal and the collapse of her dreams, before her grandmother had died. They had discussed the cottage going to Allie, but her grandmother had never once mentioned Sam’s contract or his family, even though they had obviously been a part of her life for a long time. Was it possible her Gram had hoped a chance meeting between Allie and Sam could bring this outcome? Love?
It made Allie feel both happy and strong to think of her grandmother sweetly, and a little sneakily, trying to engineer her happiness as her last gift to her.
Now she felt tuned in to love and she listened. Love told Allie not to make it about herself. It was about him. It was about going in after him, when he thought he knew what was best for everyone.
She got out of her car. It seemed like the wrong kind of car to be parked in front of a building like this.
The doorman seemed to think so, too. He actually frowned as he held open the door for her.
While she’d been on American Singing Star she’d been exposed to many places like this: oozing the wealth of people who had arrived. Water trickled down a stone wall behind the desk and into a pond. The lobby had two deep leather couches facing each other in front of a fireplace. One of them looked as if it could be worth quite a bit more than her car.
Being in this kind of place when she was on the show had always made her feel less than, always made her feel like an imposter. It made her feel as if it was just a matter of time before they discovered who she really was and tossed her out.
But she didn’t feel any of those things this time.
She found herself thinking: This beautiful glass box is where he thinks he belongs?
She could feel her resolve returning as she marched up to the desk. The security person looked intimidating, military bearing, probably a former Navy SEAL or something equally immovable. He was wearing a name tag that said Benson.
“I’m going up to see Sam Walker,” she said. “I don’t want to be announced.”
His jaw dropped. “Uh, that’s not exactly how it works.”
“It’s life-or-death,” she said firmly.
The guy cocked his head at her, skeptically, and then his brows lifted. “Hey, aren’t you Tempest?”
She waited for the look that followed, the judgment, the scorn.
It didn’t come. Instead, the man’s expression softened. “They sure threw you under the bus, didn’t they?”
She knew she had stumbled upon a true fan. She knew if she said she was Tempest, the door would be opened for her. But she didn’t want the door—especially not this door to Sam—opened for that reason.
Allie realized just a short time ago, she would have whole-heartedly agreed with him.
“Mr. Benson,” she said, and heard the strength in her words, “I am not Tempest, and I never was. I was not thrown under the bus, I walked in front of it, with my eyes wide open. It was extraordinarily painful, but if it took a few obstacles for me to arrive at the conclusion that each of my choices has led me to exactly where I am today, every one of those obstacles was worth it.”
His whole face opened up, a man who knew a few things—didn’t everyone in the human family?—about obstacles.
“I’m Allie,” she said. “Allie Cook. And I’m here to see Sam Walker on a matter of the heart.”
“Just Benson,” he said. “No Mister. I’ll take you up, you need an elevator key to open at his floor.”
His floor? Now was not the time to be weak. “Thank you,” she said. When Benson got up from behind his desk, she noticed he really did know a thing or two about obstacles. He only had one leg.
“He got what he deserved, anyway, our boy Ryan.”
“What do you mean?”
He squinted at her. “You don’t know?”
“I turned my back on all of it when it ended.” Turned her back wasn’t exactly accurate. She had dug a hole. And she would still be in it, if it weren’t for Sam.
“Smart to not look back. I saw it about Ryan in the tabloids. It wasn’t even a headline. That’s the thing about those talent shows, isn’t it? You never hear what happens to any of those people next. Even the winners seem to fade away like cheap ink on advertising flyers. His record deal fell through. He’s singing on cruise ships.”
Strangely, that was the exact moment Allie knew just how much she had come to love Sam Walker.
Because a heart that held love could have no room for any malice toward another human being.
She didn’t know she had been hanging on to anything, until that moment before the elevator doors whispered open, and she forgave Ryan.
And it made her feel strong, and absolutely ready for what she had to do next.
The feeling of strength lasted two seconds. The absolute opulence of the apartment beyond the opened elevator door hit her like a brick.
She considered telling Benson to close the door and take her back down. But he was looking at her, like a man who knew a thing or two about courage, and as if he had an expectation of her.
And then Allie realized that this was the perfect moment she had always longed for. It was the moment love called her, and asked her to be bigger than herself, and more courageous than she had ever been. Hadn’t she started to recognize what love required that day she had come down from the hills to be with Sam, instead of hiding?
In this moment, she recognized exactly what love did. It was a kind of suspension of self, that asked not what do I need? but what does he need?
She stepped out of the elevator, and the door whispered shut behind her, taking away her escape route.
The far wall of the apartment was probably all windows, though you couldn’t tell that at the moment, because the curtains were all drawn and it had the ambience of a cave.
She heard a growl.
And a bear’s cave at that.
“Sam?” Her eyes adjusted to the dark. He was sitting up on a sofa, glaring at her, but he was rumpled looking, and she knew he had slept there.
In the course of just a few hours, he had changed completely. His hair was sticking up all over the place, his face was shadowed with whiskers, his T-shirt had a stain on the front. He was in boxer shorts. He looked haggard. And he looked tormented.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
“I want to know why you left.”
He snorted. “I think that’s obvious.”
“It’s not to me. You’ll have to explain it.”
She held her breath. He looked like he was in a dangerous and foul mood, the kind of mood that told nosy people to get lost, to leave him alone.
But, instead of telling her to get lost, to go away, Sam took a shaky breath, and Allie felt herself start breathing again.
“I’m a failure, Allie. Do you get that?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Looking around it seems as if you are the furthest thing from a failure.”
He snorted. “You, of all people, know that none of this matters.”
“That’s true.”
“What matters is being there for people when they need you. Knowing the right thing to do. Cody needs a family, not some bumbling uncle. That’s why he finally talked. You know it is. Because they knew how to make him happy. And I didn’t.”
“You never asked what he said,” she told him softly. “When he spoke.”
“It doesn’t matter. He spoke. He spoke when he was with them and he never did it for me.”
“The words he said were Need Unca.”
Sam went very still. He rubbed his eyes. She thought she saw a tremble in his shoulders.
“A three-year-old doesn’t know what he needs. I just had a video chat with him. He was fine. Happy. Learning to make blueberry pancakes. Not that he chatted. Nope. Silence for me. I’ve failed him. I told you about my first wife, I failed her, too.
“This is the part you don’t know, Allie, that you really, really need to know. I failed Adam and Sue. After my parents died, I promised myself I would look after her, that I would never let anything bad happen to her again.”
The pain was quivering in the air around him. His voice was a croak of pure, unadulterated feeling.
“I was supposed to be with them that night. I begged off. You know why? Because some woman, named Bambi or Bobbi or Barbie, called and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. It was more important to me than them.
“If I had gone with them, maybe I would have been driving. Maybe we would have taken a different route, or left at a different time. Maybe it could have been me, instead of them.”
He put his head in his hands.
Allie could not bear to not be with him. She went and sank on the couch beside him and put her hands on his shoulders.
She could feel the strength he could not feel.
She could see the bravery he was blind to.
She could sense the torment that he was carrying alone, that he could not control the fates of those he loved, and she could not let him be alone with it anymore.
“At the very least, I could have had those moments with them,” Sam said hoarsely. “One last night. To cherish them. To hold on to. Maybe I could have told Sue I loved her. I never said that to her. Thought it was sappy. Unmanly. Even after Mom and Dad died, I never said it. I never said it to him, either. I never told Adam I loved him like he was my brother.
“Love,” he snorted. “I don’t know anything about love. It’s a relief that Cody is going to go with them, with Bill and Kathy. I have a life. I need my life back. My old life. Parties. Good times. Racking up successes like billiard balls before the break.”
“Liar,” she said, oh, so tenderly, just as he had called her a liar when she had claimed her independence and strength and resilience.
Now she could see the lie he was telling himself.
“The lie you are telling yourself,” she said softly, “is that you are terrified of failure.”
“That’s not a lie.”
“What you’re really terrified of is love. You’re so afraid of it wounding you again. So afraid that all your strength will not be enough. Not just to save yourself. I don’t even think you care about yourself. You’re afraid all your strength won’t be enough to save others.”
He was silent, so silent.
“You are,” she said softly, “sacrificing your own happiness to do what you think is right. For me. For Cody. For Bill. For Kathy. Ironically, isn’t that love itself? The ability to put the needs of others ahead of your own?”
Silent.
“I need you,” she whispered.
“No! You are better off without me. Don’t you get it? Both of you. Cody and you—”
She stopped him with a raised hand. “Unfortunately for you, Sam, you’ve hit me at a point in my life where I’m not letting anyone else decide for me what I need. I need you. And you need me. Desperately.”
“I don’t need you,” he said scornfully, “especially not desperately.”
She smiled at him. She touched his cheek. She looked deep into his eyes. “Especially desperately,” she told him.
And then, tenderly, she claimed his lips, and kissed him.
Desperately.
And he answered her with equal desperation.
A long time later, Sam broke away from her kiss. How was it that something rooted in complete desperation could make him feel as if he had been pulled back from the brink?
He was aware that everything he had learned as a lifeguard was wrong. Completely and totally wrong.
Because he was not pulling her down with him.
She had the lifesaving ring. It was called love.
And it was strong enough to hold them both. It was strong enough to save them both.