“Yeah, I paid her off, Landon. I paid her in cash and a little piece of my soul every goddamn month for eighteen years. Kept at it even after she was gone - like I might atone somehow.”
“Cry me a fucking river, Sam.” I bark out a laugh, the sound brittle on my lips. “I used to want to be you, you know.”
“I know.”
“After Sarah, I wished I had what you had. Nothing holding you back, nothing to leave you hurt and shattered if it ever went away.”
Sam snorts, waving an IV drip connected hand. “You want this? Being alone, being broken and getting older with no one there to help or love you? Yeah, it’s a fucking cakewalk kid.” He narrows his eyes at me. “And you’ve got Emily, thank God.”
“Yeah, thank God, because I know that’s one way I’ll never be like you.”
Sam nods. “Good. Keep it that way.” His eyes drop to the hands in his lap. “Does she know?” he asks quietly as he glances back up at me.
I nod.
“I was supposed to die, you know. That was my get out of jail free card. Wouldn’t have to ever face her, just leave her the team and fade away.”
I shake my head disgustedly at him.
“I wrote a letter, too,” he shrugs. “It was shit.”
“Well, there’s no team, either.”
“What!?” The heart monitor next to him beeps a warning light before calming back down.
“Don’s convinced them they need to sell.”
“Cocksuckers! They can’t!”
“They can, Sam. With Don’s vote, that swings the board. You’re still technically incapacitated, and Serena and I only hold a combined forty-nine percent.”
I look away.
“I tried, you know. We both did. We busted our asses to make this fucking thing work, for you.”
“Thank you,” Sam says quietly.
“Yeah well, it’s game over now.”
Sam looks down at his hands again. The consummate ladies’ man with the sharp clothes, the cool cars, and the command of every room he walked into is a shell version of that now. He looks empty, and it’s not just the neon hospital lights, the gown, and the fact that he’s just woken up from a three-week coma.
It’s something deeper than that eating him from the inside out.
It’s hard to feel sympathy. As a father myself, it’s hard for me to find a single fuck to give for this man and his remorse. I know Celia wanted him out of her life, but there’s no way I wouldn’t have fought tooth and nail for Emily, no matter the circumstances. This isn’t just Sam “trying to do what Celia wanted”, or “trying not to step where he shouldn’t.”
Fuck that. He stepped where he shouldn’t have when he slept with another man’s wife and got her pregnant.
No, Sam didn’t stay away from Serena because he didn’t want to intrude; he stayed away because he could. He stayed away because money afforded him an excuse, and he made the choice to have nothing to do with his daughter’s life.
He stayed away for him.
“I just wanted to leave her something, Landon.” He glances up at me, his face fallen. “You can understand that, can’t you? Wouldn’t you want Emily to have something if you were-”
“Stop, no,” I growl. I jab a finger at him as I shake my head in disgust. “Don’t make us the same, Sam, because we’re not. And you know what the difference is? I’d never leave Emily. Not ever, and not for any reason, which means I’d never have to try and buy her love and respect later.”
Sam looks away.
“And it didn’t work anyways, because the team’s gone now. So guess what? You’ve left her with nothing now, you selfish prick.”
Sam says nothing, looking quietly out the window on the far wall.
I look at him one more time, this hollowed version of the hero and the mentor I once knew before I shake my head, turn, and walk away.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Serena
The condo is still empty.
Except for a couch, a bed, a TV in the corner, and the bare minimum of cutlery, there’s nothing here. No food in the fridge, no books on the shelves, no posters or pictures on the wall.
Nothing to make this is a home.
In a way, that’s fitting. This whole experiment in something new couldn’t ever last, and I think somewhere inside I knew that. A city I don’t know, working for my rivals, and doing God knows what I thought I was doing with a man I never should have been doing them with.
And now the whole thing’s crashing down.
Shocking.
I look at the array of papers and documents spread out across the floor in front of me - lies proven to be bitter truths by the contents of Landon’s envelope. Each signature, every photo - all of them a vicious, slicing cut to my heart.