True North Book 3 - Finding Now Kate and Sam (26 page)

What had he been wanting to tell me?

“Logan got us into KeyArena on the same ticket as Nickelback, Three Days Grace and Trapt.”

Well, that had been misplaced fear. Why had he been concerned about that? “Sam, that’s great! When is the show?”

He looked up at me slowly, seriously, deliberately.

“You don’t … seem … excited.” I didn’t get it.

“You knew Logan wanted to force my hand,” he said, watching my eyes … but for what?

“Yeah.” I was listening intently.

“It’s not just a concert, Kate.” He swallowed hard. “It’s the kickoff of a three hundred city tour with the other bands.”

My stomach dropped. “When?”

“Two weeks from now. That Thursday is KeyArena, and Friday we hop a bus through Celebrity Tour Lines in Seattle and head to California.”

I felt like I was in that semi-conscious state between being awake and asleep. The room around me became still and out of focus, ethereal. Why did it feel as if a grenade had just exploded? My heart was pounding in my ears. Was it horrible that at that moment all I could think was,
What about me?
What was going to happen to me when he was gone? It felt like a painful punch connected with my gut as I realized that this was the end of our most beautiful now.

Come on, Kate! You knew this wasn’t forever,
I scolded myself.
Poker face.

“You’ll be amazing. Chasing North will be amazing,” I said, stumbling to get the words out.

An awkward, painful silence gathered in the air between us. He didn’t look like a guy that had just gotten handed his golden ring. “Why aren’t you happy, Sam?”

His eyes shifted to me. The expression that had settled over his face was intense.

“What is it?” I felt like my guts had been turned inside out, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him see it! “This is your big break. You’ve wanted this, I know you have.”

His eyebrows met as his forehead wrinkled in deep thought. “Come with me, Kate.”

“Come with you? Where?” My voice cracked.

“On the tour. I’m the front man, I have special perks. You can stay on the tour bus and we’d have the back bedroom. I can even get you signed on as a co-writer! You’ll earn your own royalties.”

Who was he trying to convince? Me or himself?

“Sam, I can’t leave here. I just started! If I did that I’d ruin any chance I had—anywhere—of being a professor,” I reasoned. “But it was beautiful of you to ask me.”

So, that was it. The song had simply been a song, heavy, commitment-laden lyrics and all. But in the end, that’s all it was, ink on wood pulp. I had to be realistic. The words had meant nothing.

“I don’t want to do it without you, Kate. I’m serious. Come with me.” His dark eyes stared into mine, searching for an answer that would make all of this copasetic.

“You’re … serious?”

“Hell yeah, I’m serious!” He placed his hands on the sides of my face. “We could do this together.”

Quit teaching, leave Seattle, travel the country on a bus with six or seven guys, and write songs with Sam ...  until of course he got bored with me. Then what would happen? The pieces of my existence would be shattered, again, and I’d have no way to land on solid ground.

“It’s been an incredible seven weeks, Sam, but I think we both knew where this was going to end up.”

“No! Don’t you say that! Don’t you say that to me!” He burst up from the couch and paced the room in long, nearly frantic strides.

“It’s okay. I understand.”

“No you don’t! You don’t understand.”

“It’s time to let me go.”

“Let you go? Fuck that! I’m not letting you go. You have to come!”

“Reasonably, rationally, how would I do that?”

“Pat Benatar and her guitarist husband have done it their entire relationship, fucking thirty years later, they’re still doing it!”

“Sam …” I shook my head.

“Don’t Sam me!” I had never seen him so upset. “Look, if you really hate the idea of tour bus living, we can keep it long-distance and know it’s just for a time. Other couples do it, so could we.”

“Sam, you’re going to have girls throwing themselves at you every night, and in every possible way, how are you going to handle that?”

“I’ll handle it with my hand, while having phone sex with you every night.”

Somewhere during the discussion I had gotten to my feet. Sam and I stood eye to eye, both of us fighting the inevitable pain of the obvious. Sam lived in the
now
—he couldn’t see how it would all fall apart. He didn’t want to.

“It’s not going to work. I’d be so unraveled, I wouldn’t be able to put back the pieces again when everything shattered.” Someone had to do it, be the adult and make the tough decision. “Samuel Colton North. I love you with everything I am.” I let my fingers glide over the curve of his jaw as the muscle there clenched. I remembered when I’d first touched him. We were at Kells and I was saying goodbye. The hurt was starting to cause tears to well into my eyes. “I love you so much. And I can let you go, to be happy and live your dream.”

He grabbed me by my upper arms and pulled me into him. “You’re part of that dream now, Kate. It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

“I can’t go after that dream, Sam.”

“Why not?” he growled.

“Because I worked very hard to honor my brother, I can’t quit that!”

“By being a professor?”

“Yes.”

“You hate being a professor!” he shouted incredulously.

“That has nothing to do with it!”

“Ethan would want you to live out your own life!”

“This
is
my life! This is how I survive and how I keep him alive!”

“You love music, Kate, and you love my music! It’s now morphed into our music. You keep him alive by doing what
you
love, not what
he
loved.”

I calmed myself and my voice. I was resolute. “When you’re through with me, which at some point, you will inevitably be, I’ll have no ability to pick myself back up again. I’ll be a wreck and I’ll have given up everything.” I shook my head and dropped my eyes to the floor. “You saved me you know. You brought me back to life. I never thought I’d breathe again.”

“Kate, stop …”

“It’s been the most glorious seven weeks of my life, spending them with you.”

“Catherine, we can work through this …”

“No, we can’t. You need to do this. You need to follow this path. And I need to let you go.”

I pulled away from his grip and yanked the closet door open, reaching for my coat.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sam’s voice cracked.

“Giving you what you need.” I snatched up my briefcase.

“What I need is you!” He watched me, dumbfounded.

“You’ll get over me.”

“Are you fucking crazy? I’m not letting you leave, Kate!”

“Are you going to kidnap me?”

“Yeah, if that’s what it takes,” he said, dead serious.

I matched his intensity. “I will not hold you back!”

“You don’t hold me back, you make me better.”

I ignored his plea. “I don’t know everything that goes into getting ready for a tour like this, but I have to be at a meeting Monday morning.”

“I’m not letting you leave,” he warned.

I lied. “Look, we’ll be up all night talking about this if I don’t go to my own place. Let’s sleep on it and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

He cursed and blocked the door. “What if I gave it up?”

“No way, I can’t let that happen. Please don’t make this harder than it already is.” My voice choked and my resolve started to crack. I had to leave now or I’d give in to him and we’d both be sorry for it later. “Please, for God’s sake, Sam, let me leave!” The sob building in the back of my throat started to rip out of my mouth.

At that moment Sam moaned and I saw that he was crying too. “We won’t talk tomorrow, you’re breaking up with me. And you’re going to do this no matter what I say or choose, so I’ll let you go anyway.”

“You always were an A student.” I stood on tip toes and kissed his lips one last time, tasting tears like I had the first time I’d kissed him. “Goodbye, Sam.”

I raced out the door, down the hall, and out of Sam’s life.

Sam

I had known what her answer would be before we’d even started the conversation. Knew she was going to say no. And I knew when she walked out of my apartment, it would be for good.

I sat on the sofa and buried my head in my hands.

How the fuck could I fix this?

What if I gave the music up for her? Just kept on in school … what would she do? No, she still wouldn’t come back to me, she’d think she was holding me back and it would cause her nothing but pain.

“Goddamn it! I shouldn’t have told her!” I yelled at myself.

I’d thought maybe I could talk her into saying yes … even maybe.

Fuck! Everything I ever fucking wanted and never knew I needed just walked out of my life!

I had to convince her, there had to be some way.

“She won’t answer any of my calls or texts or respond to any of my letters!” I cried into the phone. “What the hell can I do?”

“Sam, I know you don’t want to hear it, but maybe the relationship was only for a time. Sometimes we’re supposed to move on,” Jake reminded me.

“Right,” I challenged. “And Livie? Time really moved you on from her.”

“I think our circumstances were different, Sam.”

“Then you’re wrong, because Kate is my Livie. I don’t want to do this without her.”

“You didn’t want to do it without Will either, are you sure you’re not just transferring feelings?”

“Fuck you! That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said,” I quipped. “Yeah, I believed Will was in it for the long haul, but the emotions I feel for my brother aren’t misplaced onto my girlfriend. I know what I feel and I know what I want. And I know what I’d do for her now.”

“Would you give up the music? I mean, really? Something you’ve wanted for so long and worked so hard for?”

“Jake, I don’t want to give up my music! Can’t you understand that she became a part of it? She wouldn’t come back to me anyway, even if I did stay.”

“How do you know that? She might once she saw you were serious.”

I barked out a painful laugh. “She wouldn’t. I could stay for a year and she still wouldn’t give in. She’d say I was young enough to chase the dream, and she’d think that if she just stayed away long enough, I’d do it. She has that kind of resolve … I’ve seen it at work.”
The only reason I got her to go out with me is because she puked on me and then I brought the date to her.

“Then, by your own admittance, it’s impossible no matter what you do,” Jake concluded.

“Yeah, I know how I sound! That’s why I’m talking to you!” I snarled.

“Okay, when I thought Livie would never speak to me again, I wrote out song lyrics and gave them to her.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, shut up! It was a good way to express how I was feeling.”

“Hey, I get it. It’s just … romantic.” I smiled in spite of my busted heart.

“What music would speak to her the most?”

I took in a deep breath. She was tricky when it came to music.

“And, Sammy, maybe if you did leave, go on tour …”

“No, Jake, it’s not even an option anymore!”

“Just hear me out. If you went, she’d see that you were seriously pursuing it, which is what she wants you to do, right? Stay in touch with her, keep writing, keep calling—if she stayed single for this long, she’s not going to go jumping back into a relationship to get over you. She’ll close herself off. And if you stay in her heart, after a time, you’ll both know with certainty that you really want each other. If you still feel the same way, you go back to her. If she still feels the same way about you, she’ll at least agree to the long-distance relationship.”

“That might have merit. She’d understand I don’t want any other woman,” I mused, trying to put together a workable strategy.

And if it didn’t work, but she still hated teaching … how long could she keep it up? Years?

To punish herself, yeah, she could.

I’d settled all of my affairs at school and dropped out of my classes. I had stayed in all week to finish projects and take mid-term exams so I wouldn’t have to redo a semester if I returned to school. Kate wouldn’t even look at me, let alone talk to me. She was never alone now, she always made sure to be walking or eating with someone on the staff. Every day after school I went to the bus stop, but she never showed up. Each evening I’d swing by Kells and wait for her. She never came. And to make it all worse, she wasn’t staying at her apartment. She had expected I’d go there too. I still had her key and let myself in to see if she’d gotten my letters, but found that someone (probably the doorman) had put them on her table along with her other mail, where they stacked up, unopened.