Aware of Scott’s gaze, Sam cleared her throat, desperate to end this encounter before she set off a new and interesting clusterfuck hand-grenade in her life. “So, you came, you saw, you almost apprehended a thief. Are you headed off somewhere?”
“I was hoping to have a word with your father.”
Of course, why would he have come to see her? All the happy memories? “You can’t.”
“Okay…should I come back later?”
“No, I mean you literally can’t. He’s gone. I own this place now.”
He stared at her with a horror that would have been insulting had she not made a complete arse of running the business. “I…I had something to discuss with him. When will he be back?”
It was a question with an easy answer, ‘I don’t know,’ but as Sam opened her mouth to say that…something happened. The past eight weeks concentrated into a hot ball in her chest—the stress, the celibacy, the eating instant noodles to save money, the endless bills and the sudden iron-clad realisation that shedidn’tknow when her dad would be back. If he would be coming back at all. It was all real in a way that she had never felt it before. She missed her dad. She missed her sisters. She was so sick of trying to make this work and so embarrassed that she couldn’t. She turned away, pressing her hands to her eyes.
“Samantha?” Scott’s voice was gentle. “Is everything okay?”
She lost it, then. There was no rhyme, no reason. The same manic energy that had driven her to tackle Frank had hot tears running through her fingers. She tried to rein in her misery but that only had her sobbing harder. “Oh my God. What am I doing?”
A cool hand cupped her shoulder. “Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”
Typical boy, always hoping tears were tied to physical pain. “No, I’ve just…I’m going through some stuff. Sorry, I’mneverlike this. You know I’m never like this. I can’t remember the last time someone saw me cry.”
Sam knew she was personifying a lot of crazy-lady clichés and waited for Scott to make some excuse and run for his life. That didn’t happen. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her like it was the easiest thing in the world. As though they’d been close all their lives. Sam’s first instinct was to pull away, to retreat or lash out, but the bliss of physical contact, theproofshe wasn’t alone was just so…lovely.
She wound her arms inside his suit jacket and around his back, bringing herself closer to his warm skin. The feel of another human body against hers was a release she hadn’t known she needed and she cried even harder because it felt like every trouble she had was draining out of her body. She slumped, and Scott’s arms clenched tight around her, keeping her on her feet. His head bent low, and she felt his sandy hair brush her cheek.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I promise everything will be okay. Everythingisokay, really.”
It was something her dad would have said. Sam sobbed as she hugged her ex-neighbor tightly. “You have no idea. Dad’s gone and my sisters are gone, the business is dying and I’m…I can’t…”
She broke off, pressing her face into his shoulder, embarrassed but still unable tostop. “You should let go of me.”
The arms around her grew tighter still. “I won’t.”
“We don’t evenknoweach other.”
“We did once. We knew each other well. No other girl has ever burned my underwear.”
Sam remembered that winter morning when she and Tabby had cooked seven pairs of Scott Sanderson’s Bonds briefs over a barrel fire in revenge for him smearing honey over the inside of their mailbox. Sam couldn’t help it, she laughed. It felt even better than crying, especially when Scott laughed, too. His back shook beneath her fingers and she felt swells of muscle shift and tense. As a tattooist, she’d felt more than her fair share of the male form and she was sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that her ex-neighbor had a gorgeous body beneath his fussy clothes. He smelled good, too, like that smoky fire on the winter morning—only without the smell of burning underpants.
Fuck…
Her skin tingled all over, as though she were lighting up from within. She glanced away, waiting for the blush of arousal to fade, but it stayed humming under her skin. Her nipples tightened and her pussy—so long ignored—closed in on itself in anticipation of more. This stupid arousal, it was all her fault. Why had she neglected her body so thoroughly these past weeks? She didn’t think she’d even scrubbed herself intimately, her mind had been so detached from her body. Well it wasn’t, now.
“Are you okay? Do you want me to let go?”
Her tears had stopped, but Sam shook her head. She wasn’t ready to give this up. She snuggled even closer and felt Scott swallow. “That’s fine. Take as long as you need.”
God, it was too easy to imagine him saying that as she sat on top of him, riding his posh, inexplicably hard body to orgasm after orgasm—it’s fine. Take what you need.
A shiver went through her, raising goosebumps across her scalp. She was rapidly forgetting what she’d been upset about, her consciousness honing in on how Scott felt, the firm ridges of his back, the dip of his spine, the warmth of his skin through his shirt. She shifted against him for reasons that had nothing to do with comfort. There was a low ache in her belly and her skin was prickling. No, not prickling.Tingling.
“Samantha.” Scott’s voice was low. Strained. “Samantha, I…”
She waited for more, but there was no more. Instead, Scott’s hands tightened around her shoulders. She could hear him breathing, she could feel her own chest rising and falling. It was daylight and they were hugging on the street, but it felt more sexual than sex. It didn’t make any sense. Hugs weren’t sexual. Hugs, when you were crying into your former enemy’s shoulder like a nutcase, wereespeciallynot sexual. The fact they were standing in front of her failing tattoo studio should have made this particular hug the least sexual thing on earth. But it was. It was, it was, it was.
“Grab her arse!”
Sam pulled herself away from Scott to see a gang of school boys swaggering toward them. They looked in their mid-teens and were wearing the Brunswick Secondary School uniform, her old uniform. Sam put a hand on her hip and gave them a death stare. “Can I help you?”