“You have never let one of us boys stay with a girl in their room, Dad.” Though he wanted to spend the night with her, he wasn’t sure she would be comfortable with that at his parents’ house. When they were there.
“But this one is the one, Sam,” his dad assured him.
“So was Isla, and Seth still had to sleep on the couch two summers at the cabin, even after they were engaged. You two are getting crazy in your old age.” Sam laughed and dropped his suitcase on the bed.
“Isla wasn’t going anywhere, Sam. Natalie… You need to work at not losing her. Your mom wants more grandbabies.”
Stiffening, he looked at his dad. “There won’t be grandbabies with this one, Dad.”
“Grandbabies come in many forms, Sam.” His dad surprised him with his answer. His parents had never said anything about adoption, not once in his life.
“I know,” he agreed. It hadn’t taken him long to get used to the idea of adoption, not when he was adopting with Natalie.
“Do you love her?” His dad leaned against the door jam.
“Yes. But she’s a little hesitant about it.”
“Well, she almost got married last week, that takes time. You have to remember you have had feelings for her for years—she hasn’t had that.” His dad wasn’t done with his little lecture, it seemed, because he wasn’t moving.
“I haven’t had feelings for years,” Sam protested.
“Really? I think you were half in love with her when she almost died in your arms. You talked about her before, and I thought she was special to you then as well. That was why the accident affected you so much. The ones who died you didn’t talk about, but you always talked about her.”
“She was the one I tried to help. The only one alive,” Sam argued. He had been there, not his dad. If he could have saved them all, he would have. They were all important to him; they were all someone worth saving. That the survivor had been Natalie and that he had fallen for her had been a coincidence.
Or had it? He couldn’t see himself thinking about sharing a bedroom with Hanna May. No matter how many years it had been, Hanna was still a student in his mind. And it wasn’t because she died, because he always thought of her sister Hazel as a student also. Natalie had been different from the beginning.
Steven had been watching him and said, “She’s the one you couldn’t let go of. She was important to you then too.”
He couldn’t find a response as Steve nodded his head as he turned and walked away, leaving Sam confused about his feelings or when they had started. Sam slumped on the bed between the suitcases, forgetting about saving Natalie from his parents downstairs. Had he liked her back then? If he was being truthful, he did. He remembered waiting for senior history all day. Remembered his eyes would always find her in the hallway between classes. Going to volleyball games just to see her play. He would even sit by Patrick to watch, and at one, Patrick had let him record the game.
Sighing, he realized he should have been fired for lusting after a student. But no other woman or girl had ever affected him like that. Just Natalie Beckett. Holding her dying body had just complicated everything, but maybe that made it deeper than it would have been if the accident had not happened. What if this wasn’t love like he thought? Maybe it was just some odd attraction from his past coming to the surface.
Natalie suddenly rushed into the room, closed the door behind her, and leaned on it. “Your mom is making pancakes for breakfast. And I think she’s going to start talking about wedding colors. She hinted about it. I think your parents are moving too fast for me. The pressure is suffocating.”
Pushing his thoughts away, he faked a smile and said, “I know they’re moving too fast. Because they wanted us married a week ago.”
“Oh, I can tell.” She stood straight again and walked over to him. Taking his face in her hands, she asked, “What’s the matter? You’re sad.”
He loved and hated how she could read him. “Just thinking about the past.”
“The accident?”
He hated that she knew he was haunted by it also. “Kind of. Dad said he thinks I liked you before the accident. Inappropriately.” He watched her green eyes for shock. None came.
Smiling, she kissed his lips lightly. “I liked you inappropriately from the first day I saw you.”
“Natalie, I’m serious. I was your teacher.” Sometimes he hated how flippant she could be.
“Sam, Sam, Sam. I had the biggest crush on you in high school. It was the reason I teased you all the time. It was the reason I got in trouble all the time, just to get your attention. It was the reason I couldn’t go all the way with Henry. And it was the reason I called you sexy Sam all the time—because you were so damn sexy. But nothing, absolutely nothing you did was inappropriate. It was all me.” Still holding his face in her hands, she kissed his cheek.
“I was your teacher. It would have been the end of my career,” he whispered as she kissed across his nose and to his other cheek.
“Except nothing happened, Sam. You would have never let anything happen. I think the accident was good for us. It separated us until we were old enough to do it right. Now we’re going to do it right.” She kissed his mouth and didn’t let him talk for a long time.
CHAPTER18
Natalie glancedat the clock on the dash as they pulled into Landstad late Sunday afternoon, far later than she had planned. She had hoped to talk to her dad today, but she was already almost late for book club. After book club, she couldn’t talk to him since she would probably be drunk. It was always a bad idea to have a heart-to-heart while drunk—way too much heart showed up.