“It is different,” he said, “because you’re you. Samantha, you haven’t left the damned house in twenty years.”
“I have! I’ve been on plenty of vacations. You’ve…” She stopped herself. She had to stop herself. “I’ve left my house, you condescending dick.”
“With Will. With the kids. With protection. You haven’t been out on your own, and I feel like you need the same damned primer on safety that my nineteen-year-old does.”
She took a step back, fury making her inarticulate. “I… I am not nineteen. I am not a kid. I am a grown woman, and I know what happens out here in the big bad world. I am not naive enough to believe a man in a restaurant in Flagstaff, Arizona, is my soulmate because he bought me three margaritas and some chicken nachos.”
He let out a short, one-note laugh. “Well, good to know.”
They stopped in front of the car, in front of the passenger’s door, and he reached out and opened it. “Get in.”
She replayed the words that she’d just said out loud back in her head. “Well, and I have a soulmate, so even if he bought me a whole tequila factory, he wouldn’t be my soulmate. So we’re clear.”
He just stared at her for a long moment, the competing light from the full moon, white and ambient, clashing with the pink neon coming from the restaurant, chiseling sharp angles in his already sculpted face.
“Get in the car, Sam.”
She could fight him, but why?
He was mad at her, but why?
She was a lot madder at him than she should have been.
So she got in the car and let him drive the two minutes back to the motel without making commentary on anything.
“Knock when you’re up,” he said, pulling up to the front of her room.
“No set time?”
“No.”
She got out of the car. “See you tomorrow.”
Then she walked to her room, used the key card to get inside, and closed the door behind her, the relative silence pressing in on her. She could still hear road noise. The sound of the pipes. What she hoped was a TV in the room next door.
She focused on those things, on those sounds, as she got ready for bed.
Anything except focusing on what had happened tonight.
On the truth that was just beneath the surface of it all, waiting for her to unearth it.
Instead, she got into bed and pulled the covers over her head.
ELEVEN
US Highway 101
One SUV, one 1973 Pontiac Firebird
Family vacation—six years ago
She couldn’t sleep, so she was up at dawn yet again, putting her tennis shoes on and getting ready to go for a walk. She was glad that they’d gone away for the vacation, but her mom’s cancer diagnosis felt heavy today.
It had felt heavy when they’d first found out six months ago, but she’d finished her chemo treatments the previous month, and her blood tests afterward had been good for one month. Following that, the numbers on her CA-125 had started to climb, indicating the ovarian cancer was back.
There was no genetic link. That was supposed to make her feel safe, and it didn’t. It made her feel guilty, worrying about herself at all.
But she did.
