No Twists, No Turns, Just Love by Tressie Lockwood

Author:Tressie Lockwood [Lockwood, Tressie]
Language: eng
Format: epub

10

Night kicked himself for giving into weakness. He’d said he would stay away from Leila for a while. Instead, he’d gone and told her how much her baking a cake for him meant. He was a stupid wuss to get so worked up over it in the first place.

His mom had never baked for him, and the food she cooked, well, one couldn’t have called it efforts of love. However, he didn’t mean to tell anyone else that. The problem was, Leila undid him. She showed up and hugged him when he was feeling weak. He spoke the truth when he told her even getting a tire fixed had felt like too much. That morning when he woke, Sam was on his mind nonstop. He could no longer avoid the emotions that flowed through him at his loss.

“Do you want a sandwich?” Leila called from the kitchen.

He had dropped onto her couch in the living room and zoned out, forgetting about lunch, forgetting that she must be exhausted after that hike in the cemetery. “Come in here, and sit down. I’ll get it in a minute.”

She didn’t answer.

He started to get up, but he couldn’t. His knees gave, and he hit the floor. Embarrassment froze him to the spot. His shoulders heaved. He thought that tearing up at the gravesite was it. Not by a long shot. Pain ripped through his gut. To his shame, the tears fell, and they kept falling. He drove a hard fist into his mouth, but the guttural cry couldn’t be completely choked out.

“Damn it!”

Leila was suddenly there with her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek to his. “It’s okay, Night. Let it out.”

“No, I can’t…”

“You can. You have to.”

He let her rock him a little and shut his eyes. His entire being shook, and his gut clenched in pain like someone had kicked him in it. “Sam,” he whispered. “He was all I had, Leila. No one else cared about me. No one.”

“Yes, baby. I know, but you’re not alone now. You’ve got me.”

All of a sudden he knew why he had worked so hard to keep Leila from knowing the truth about what happened and about her relationship with Sam. Because losing Sam took him apart.

She let him sit there, falling apart, but she held on. Her arms, the scent of her, the softness of her body, and the sound of her voice kept him from disappearing. It took a while before he could speak, but when he did, he opened his heart a little.

“Once we went joy-riding when we were twelve. I was driving. And I hit a Stop Sign. Somebody called the cops, but by the time they caught up with us, we had ditched the car and gone home.”

She listened intently as he laid his head on her chest and spoke.

“I don’t know how they knew it was us. Maybe someone saw us speed by. The cops came by my house with Sam already with them. My dad answered the door.

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