Chapter Two

Sami walked into the Brady pub, intent on collecting her children. She'd spent the afternoon with EJ and his son and then told him he was coming over to spend the rest of the evening with his children. Sami hadn't asked EJ, she'd just told him. She knew it was what he needed and they were going to go a long way in soothing his broken heart. Rafe was leaning on the bar and straightened up when she walked in. EJ's grief was still clinging to her as Sami finally let her emotions about Rafe's part in all of this truly register. The pub only had a few patrons, three of which where her parents and John, apparently having dinner together but Sami didn't even look at them.

Rafe gave her a concerned look. "You were gone so long I was beginning to worry." He looked her over. "Are you alright, Sami? Where have you been?"

"Where do you think I've been?" asked Sami coldly. "I've been with EJ."

Rafe's lips thinned. "Do you think that was a good idea?"

Sami just stared at him. "I think it was the best idea I've had in a long time. EJ needed me."

Rafe looked annoyed. "You know he is going to use this to play you again, you get that right, Sami? That guy is all about playing the angles."

EJ's grief had been such a tangible thing and what the two of them had shared in that little room was so deeply intimate, it galled Sami no end that Rafe could be so dismissive of what had happened when for one thing, he didn't know what had happened and for another, he wasn't a parent. "I'd guess you'd know all about that," said Sami caustically.

Rafe's face was serious. "We need to talk."

"Is there anything to talk about?" asked Sami bitterly.

Marlena was on her feet, walking over to the two of them. "Sami, give Rafe a chance to explain."

Sami fixed her attention on her mother, blue eyes flashing fire. "So, were you in on this little betrayal as well, Mom?" She looked at her father and John. "Were you all in on it?"

The other two men stood up and came to stand by her mother. The four of them created a disapproving semi-circle around Sami. Her mother's tone was soft and cajoling. "Of course we didn't know. Rafe has just told us now. But you have to realise that Rafe was only trying to do the right thing here, Sami. Nicole was in fear of her child's life, he had to do something to protect them both. Surely you understand that."

"You asked me what I was doing this afternoon," said Sami tightly, face hard as she addressed Rafe. "I told you I was with EJ and I was. I was watching a man break down and mourn the loss of a child he was never allowed to know in anyway. EJ's heart is broken and you're standing there making out like he's kind of sub-human that would want to hurt his own child." Sami glared at them all. "You all make me sick!"

"Now come on, Sami," her father chastised her, "you yourself have hidden a baby from EJ."

"And I know how wrong I was," said Sami unhappily. "EJ loves his children and would do anything for them. I had no right to try and keep Sydney and Johnny from enjoying their father's love. It was wrong of me but I was so convinced that they were going to be somehow indoctrinated into the DiMera way of life, just by being around EJ, I panicked and did a bad thing."

"Then you have to understand why Nicole did what she did," John argued.

"Nicole was stealing babies to give to EJ to raise," Sami snapped. "She wasn't afraid of them growing up as DiMera's, she wanted it that way. She only stopped wanting it when EJ and I slept together. I was keeping Grace from EJ out of a misguided sense of fear, Nicole was doing it out of revenge!"

"That isn't true, Sami," her father argued. "Nicole had a lot of reason to fear EJ. He's done a lot of bad things. He doesn't deserve to be a father."

Sami folded her arms in front of herself, seething inside. "What has EJ done that I haven't done, Dad? Does that mean I don't deserve to be a parent either?"

Roman scowled. "That isn't what I'm saying, Sami, you know that."

"Then what are you saying, explain it to me, Dad?"

"Your father is just trying to protect you," interjected Rafe. "That's all any of us are trying to do Sami."

"And your way of protecting me was to lie to me?" asked Sami incredulously.

"I had a good reason for lying," Rafe protested. "You know that."

"You thought you had a good reason to lie to EJ," Sami shot back. "What was your reason for lying to me, Rafe? I did everything I could think of to make you trust me again and you just wouldn't, would you?" Her lips twisted into a sneer. "You know I called you pathologically honest to EJ, can you imagine? I couldn't comprehend that you'd lie, Rafe, because you were too good a man for that and you certainly wouldn't lie to me, not after all that we'd been through. You looked me in the eyes and swore you were the father of Nicole's baby and you did it again and again, without flinching."

"Rafe's lie was for a good cause," Marlena defended him. "It was necessary, Sami."

"You taught me a lie is a lie and they're all wrong, but what you really meant was that it depends on who is doing the lying," said Sami bitterly. "If it's someone in this family that is considered good, then they can pretty much write their own ticket, now can't they, Mom?" Sami's face tightened in rage. "I mean, Carrie has thrown herself on her back for just about any guy, as long as it isn't her husband and you're all fine with that, because Carrie's the good child. Unlike me, who's the bad child, so by definition, everything I do is wrong." Sami glared at her mother. "Come on, Mom, when Carrie came to you and told her she was lusting after my husband, what did you say to her, be honest?"

Marlena's lips thinned and she looked unhappy to be put on the spot.

"Did you tell her to go home to her husband and work things out?" Sami asked sweetly. "Did you tell her to respect her sister's marriage and do the right thing?"

Marlena's head came up. "I told her to follow her heart," she said unapologetically.

"Oh right, great advice, Doc," she sneered. "Why is it alright for you and Carrie to follow your heart and it isn't for me? Why is it alright for you and Carrie to cheat on your husbands and throw away your marriages because you were following your hearts and we should all be applauding you and yet when I tell you EJ is in my heart, all you can do is jump all over me?"

"That was completely different," said Marlena stiffly. "John is a good man."

"John is a brain washed hit man who's done a lot of bad things," Sami threw back at him. "He was Stefano's puppet for how many years? Explain to me your version of good and evil, Mom? How come John gets to be good and EJ is evil? Explain to me how this sliding scale of right and wrong is worked out by this family? Do all the good Brady's get together and take a vote? Is that what happens? And then they can come out in judgment of anyone who falls short of their lofty standards, standards they don't see fit to living up to themselves!" Sami was breathing heavily after her rant. It was all so clear to her now, she couldn't believe she hadn't seen it before. "I've turned myself inside out to try and get you people to approve of me." She looked at Rafe. "All of you, and my best was never good enough, was it?"

"Sami, you need to calm down," Rafe advised her. "You're getting hysterical and this isn't the place to talk about these things."

"Why are you worried, Rafe?" she bit out. "Nothing can ever touch your halo. Lust after my married sister, my family want to pin a medal on your chest. Lie through your teeth to keep a father away from his child and they want to erect a statue in your honour. I swear, you could become a mass murderer and they'd want to organise a parade to proclaim you King of Salem." Sami's face was red as she spat words of vitriol at him.

Rafe's expression barely changed. "You don't know what you're saying, Sami. You just need to calm down. Let's go somewhere and talk."

"What is there left to say, Rafe?" she asked resentfully. "You asked for one thing when we got back together and it was honestly. Well, I was honest with you, but you couldn't bring yourself to be honest with me, could you? Because what I did was so heinous, that I was never going to be allowed to be on an equal footing in our marriage, was I? You were going to hold what happened with EJ against me for the rest of our lives, no matter how hard and long I grovelled at your feet." Sami gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "And you just let me grovel and beg for a second chance and didn't blink. You let me belittle myself endlessly even though you knew you were lying to me the whole time."

"I wanted to tell you about the baby, Sami," Rafe protested. "So many times."

"But you didn't," Sami ground out. "Even when I gave you a complete free pass over it, you couldn't tell me the truth because you don't trust me."

"Can you blame me?" Rafe threw back at her. "You know your history with men, Sami. How did I know you wouldn't go running back to EJ with the information?"

"My history with men," Sami repeated tersely. "I've been thinking about that for awhile now. For the longest time I couldn't work out why I always end up screwing up all of my relationships with men and today, when EJ walked into my apartment with the truth about your lies, suddenly everything was painfully clear to me."

"What do you mean, Sami?" asked John.

"I mean, John," she returned harshly, "that I've spent my entire life trying to conform to this family's opinion on what constitutes a good person that I've always gone after a man who I thought could give me that. Austin, Lucas, Rafe – they were all men that were meant to rescue me from myself." Sami gave a humourless laugh. "I figured they were all better than me, and I was going to be better by being loved by them but then today I realised, none of them were better than me." Sami fixed Rafe with a hard stare. "You're not better than me, Rafe. You lie and scheme and manipulate when it suits you but you just call it by another name when you do it."

"Rafe is a good and honourable man, Sami," her father defended him.

"No, he's not, Dad," said Sami simply. "Rafe is as flawed as everyone else in the world, including you." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I can't believe I bought into this for so long, I can't believe I let you all make me feel like I wasn't enough, just as I was."

"Sami," gasped Marlena in horror, "that was never our intent. We love you, just as you are."

Sami opened her eyes and glared at her mother. "No," she said fiercely, "you love the woman you think I should be and you're disappointed with me every time I can't be that person. Well, you know what, I'm disappointed in you all as well. You've let me down over the years, you're not perfect but how come when I do it, it's some kind of inherent character flaw and when you do it, it's all justifiable?" Sami swung her attention back to Rafe, eyes blazing. "You asked me once why I went to EJ and not you when I thought Johnny was dead and I told you I didn't know," she bit out. "Well, now I do know. Thanks to all the revelations of today, I know exactly why I did it."

"Because you love him?" offered up Rafe acrimoniously. "Is that what you're going to say, Sami?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she threw back at him. "So you could run off and play the hard done by victim hurt by the stupid, selfish Sami who doesn't know her own mind. You'd get to walk away from this with your hands clean if that was the case, wouldn't you? Ain't no cure for stupid, after all."

"That wasn't what I meant," said Rafe shortly. "But EJ has always had a hold over you and you don't see clearly when he's around."

"You know, up until today, I completely bought into that version of mine and EJ's relationship," said Sami tightly. "That somehow EJ warped everything around him, me included and nothing he said or did could ever possibly be true or right." Sami's head came up as she defiantly held Rafe's gaze. "I went to be with EJ that day for one reason and one reason only. I was dying inside, I couldn't hold myself together. I thought my son had just died and I didn't have the strength to be anything other than who I really was and I knew instinctively the only person who could deal with that Sami was EJ. He is the only one who doesn't flinch when I'm being truly me, the only one who doesn't judge my ugliness or tell me my shortcomings. He just accepts that is who I am and amazingly, loves me anyway."

"Sami, EJ doesn't love you," said Roman urgently. "The man is a DiMera and incapable of love."

Sami could feel her face getting more and more flushed as she fought with them but she wasn't backing down. "And what are you basing this on, Dad?" she asked angrily. "You don't know EJ, you never did."

"I know him plenty," said Roman darkly. "Ask John about knowing him, EJ shot him. DiMera's have no soul."

"I guess Lexie must be in hell then?" snapped Sami.

"Sami!" said her mother in horror. "That is a terrible thing to say. How could you?"

"I'm just trying to follow your own logic, Mom," Sami shot back at her. "All DiMera's are evil, so Lexie must be in hell along with Benji and I guess Sydney and Johnny are going to end up there as well seeing as they're DiMera's. You can't have it both ways – either all DiMera's are soulless bastards or they're not. You try and tell me things are black and white and I wanted to believe you for the longest time, in fact I lived my life by that notion but you know what, it's just not true. There is no absolute good or evil, there are just all the shades of gray in between."

"All this back and forth is just you trying to justify yourself when you go running back to EJ," Rafe spat out. "You want us to give you our blessing or at least absolve you of any guilt, well, that's not going to happen. EJ can have you, but don't think you're not going to end up needing to be rescued from the guy one day."

"You know what?" Sami ground out. "I'll ask for your opinion on me and EJ when your opinion actually means something to me, Rafe, which it doesn't and frankly, never will again. You're a liar and a manipulator and that's fine, I could live with that, everyone lies, everyone manipulates but what I can't live with is you not being honest about who you really are. You're not an honest man, you're not a good man, you're just a man, with faults and flaws like everyone else. You're not better than me." Sami drew in a shaky breath and looked at them all. "None of you are better than me," she admonished them. "Your version of love is just as imperfect as mine is. None of you have the answers to a happy life and it's about time I came to terms with that and stopped trying to have your kind of life and think about what kind of life I want to have. I don't have to be like any of you to be happy." Sami stopped and blinked, her own words sinking in. "I don't have to be like any of you to be happy," she repeated in amazement.

It was like the heavens had parted and Sami was standing in a pool of light suddenly.

Sami gave an uneven laugh. "Oh my God, why has it taken me so long to figure that out?" Her head snapped up, a triumphant glee in her eyes. Sami felt like she'd just been reborn, a fire burning in her stomach. "And I don't need rescuing, Rafe, not from EJ, not from myself, I never did. I'm a fierce, manipulative bitch who can do anything if she puts her mind to it and I'm a dedicated mother who loves her children. I can be generous, kind, thoughtful, mean, thoughtless and heroic. I'm all of those things, sometimes all at the same time because I'm complicated, I'm not black or white, I'm all the shades of grey in between and if you all can't deal with that, then that is your problem, not mine!" Sami finished her rant and felt like she was eight feet tall and bullet proof while Rafe and the rest of her family was looking at her in various degrees of horror and disbelief. "Now I'm getting my children and taking them home to their father," she said fiercely. "And if any of you have a problem with that, I don't give a crap." Sami squared her shoulders and brushed past them all. On the way to out the back of the pub, Sami passed by a couple with the menus held up to their faces, obviously embarrassed to be caught in the middle of this family feud. Sami had some advice for them. "Don't bother with the Clam Chowder special of the day," she warned them. "Just like everything else to do with this family, it's overrated."

And with that final dig delivered, Sami swept out of the room and went to collect her children.