Chapter 37
E.J. shuffled toward the door along with Sami in his arms so that he could lean against the locked door and block it should anyone try to break it down. The two of them could hear everything the voices in the stairway were saying.
Listening so intently to the conversation, E.J. lost concentration for a moment and his hand slipped off Sami's mouth. Sami was also listening intently, so much so she didn't notice.
"Lucas, I really think we've done about all we can do today," Tony said. "I think it's time to head back to Salem."
"No, Tony, I'm not giving up until I've searched every single inch of this place," Lucas said. "And that includes whatever it is that's behind this door."
"Oh please," Sami heard a familiar woman's voice say. "It's time to give up this charade."
It was Kate!
"Just my luck," Sami whispered. "I get captured by the Dimeras and Kate Roberts is on my Salem rescue squad."
"Shhhhhhhh," E.J. whispered covering her mouth again gently.
"What charade, mom?" Lucas asked. "How is it a charade that I happen to care so deeply about my wife that I am willing to turn over every nook and cranny in this place just find one little sliver of a clue where the hell she is?
Sami smiled beneath E.J.'s hand.
"It's a charade because not an hour after she disappeared and you got that note for her you were on the phone with me telling me how it was over between the two of you for good this time," Kate said.
Sami's smile evaporated while one began to take shape on Tony's face on the other side of the door.
"You were going on and on 'How can she do this to me? How can she do this to Will? Again? Guess I shouldn't have expected anything else from Sami Brady'" Kate reminded him. "She threw it all away for that limey bastard."
E.J. didn't know what to make of the "limey bastard" comment, but for a reason he didn't understand felt offended. Lucas said nothing but just glared at the truth while Kate continued.
"You know as well as I do that we wouldn't even be here if Roman hadn't talked you into looking for Sami," Kate said. "I mean what does that say about the two of you together that her father believed she'd never run away on her honeymoon and abandon her wedding vows so carelessly but her husband would."
Sami's devastation tugged at her like an anchor and her body started to slide toward the floor. E.J. caught her and pulled her back up. Filled with sympathy he guided her away from the door so the two of them could no longer hear the conversation outside the room and he enveloped Sami in a huge bear hug. Sami's tears filled the front of his shirt.
Meanwhile, Kate continued her scathing critique in the stairway.
"I tried to warn you, Lucas," Kate said. "I tried to tell you that Sami and E.J. were together the night you were trapped in that cabin. Tried to get you help the night Sami DRUGGED you to run off and be with E.J. The night he said he was supposed to marry Brandy Mathas. Remember?"
Kate paused for a minute clenching her teeth in frustration at all the time she saw her favorite son waste on a woman who would only bring him misery.
"And yet you still married her," Kate said attempting to hold back tears." And yet you went on this honeymoon with her here after she admitted it all. Even that the baby she is carrying could be another man's."
Lucas just pouted.
"Face it, Lucas," Kate said. "This isn't about Sami. This is about you trying to be some tough guy hero you're not. It's about you trying to... to... finally earn some man badge you feel like you never got because of your drinking or because of Nicole or because Carrie or because of something..."
"ENOUGH!" Lucas raged. "You've made your point. Let's just get the hell out of here."
"Yes, let's," Tony said nodding as the two of them began their descent down the staircase and out of Maison Blanche.
As they headed out the front door, Tony looked back on the house and smiled at how beautifully all his plans were working.
Chapter 38
Marlena ran through the hospital with Roman trailing behind her where they stopped at the hallway outside John's room. There they found Belle not crying, but devastated just the same.
"How's your father?" Marlena asked out of breath from the rush of getting there.
"Oh Mom," Belle said hugging her mother. "It doesn't look good."
Marlena gently patted the back of Belle's head.
"We're going to get through this," Marlena told her. "No matter what."
Then she turned to Roman.
"I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming back with me so I didn't have to be alone," she said. "Now if you two don't mind, I think I need to see John for myself."
Belle nodded and left to get them all cups of coffee.
Marlena opened the door and walked into the room to find John surrounded by a team of doctors and nurses.
"How is he?" she asked a nurse entering data from some tests she had performed into a computerized chart.
The nurse just shook her head as if to say no while she attended to her work.
In a panic, Marlena rushed over to get a closer look at her husband and was saddened to see the tubes running through his nose and mouth while wires were attached all over his body. Still, she felt a slight comfort in the ba-bump she heard beeping from the heart rate monitor.
Until the monitor flat lined.
"What's going on?" Marlena cried.
Marlena watched in horror as the machines attached to her husband pulsated with a cacophony of distress signals and the doctors and nurses chaotically moved about John's bed in attending to him.
Hearing the commotion, Roman walked toward the room and leaned up to get a look at things through the small square window of the door.
"Ma'am you need to get out of here," A nurse told her putting her hands on Marlena's shoulders and pushing her back.
But Marlena would not be pushed around and she shoved the nurse out of the way to creep down to her husband's bedside holding his hand.
"John," Marlena said smiling through tears and grasping his hand tightly while the doctors worked around her crouched kneeling at his bedside. "I just want you to know I'm here. Marlena is here for you. And I will always be here for you no matter what. Now if you're in there and you can hear me... if you're ready... John please, why don't you come back to me? I need you so much."
Suddenly John's heart monitor started beeping again slowly but steadily.
"What?" Marlena asked. "What's going on?"
"It's a miracle," one of the doctors told her.
Marlena's tears of fear and sorrow soon began flooding her face with joy as she held his hand with her right hand and ran her fingers across his scalp with her other hand.
First, John's hands started wiggling. And then his eyes fluttered.
"I understand you had a bit of a rough day today. I'm sorry I had to leave you," Marlena told him. "I'm sorry I had to go to New Orleans without you. I promise I'll never do that again. I promise I'll never leave you again."
With that promise John's eyes opened wide and he smiled a giant blissful, if groggy smile at the sight of her face. Marlena delighted at the expression of devotion he showed while Roman seeing everything unfold through the window turned away from the door deciding he'd seen enough and knew how this story would end.
"Marlena," John said sighing. "You're safe. Stefano didn't get you."
Marlena didn't understand the meaning of John's words and just chalked them up to a strange comatose dream he must've had about their past battles with the Dimera patriarch. She was too happy to have her husband alive and awake in that moment to worry what the future would hold for them.
Chapter 39
"Oh please," Sami heard a familiar woman's voice on the other side of the attic door say. "It's time to give up this charade."
It was Kate!
"Just my luck," Sami whispered. "I get captured by the Dimeras and Kate Roberts is on my Salem rescue squad."
"Shhhhhhhh," E.J. whispered covering her mouth again gently.
"What charade, mom?" Lucas asked. "How is it a charade that I happen to care so deeply about my wife that I am willing to turn over every nook and cranny in this place just to find one little sliver of a clue where the hell she is?
Sami smiled beneath E.J.'s hand.
"It's a charade because not an hour after she disappeared and you got that note from her you were on the phone with me telling me how it was over between the two of you for good this time," Kate said.
Sami's smile evaporated while one began to take shape on Tony's face on the other side of the door.
"You were going on and on: 'How can she do this to me? How can she do this to Will? Again? Guess I shouldn't have expected anything else from Sami Brady'" Kate reminded him. "She threw it all away for that limey bastard."
E.J. didn't know what to make of the "limey bastard" comment, but for a reason he didn't understand felt offended. Lucas said nothing but just glared at the truth while Kate continued.
"You know as well as I do that we wouldn't even be here if Roman hadn't talked you into looking for Sami," Kate said. "I mean what does that say about the two of you together that her father believed she'd never run away on her honeymoon and abandon her wedding vows so carelessly but her husband would."
Sami's devastation tugged at her like an anchor and her body started to slide toward the floor. E.J. caught her and pulled her back up. Filled with sympathy he guided her away from the door so the two of them could no longer hear the conversation outside the room and he enveloped Sami in a huge bear hug. Sami's tears filled the front of his shirt.
E.J. caressed the back of Sami's head whispering "It'll be all right, darling" and other sweet reassurances while she heaved with sobs in his arms for several minutes. Finally, her face flushed and with no tears left to cry she looked up at him.
"E.J., I... I don't know what I'll do without Lucas. Without EVER having a real family with him," Sami said sniffling. "I... I... I don't think I can go on living."
With those words Sami fainted in his arms. E.J. carried her over to the bed to lay her down and sat down next to her.
"Samantha... Samantha... wake up... Samantha," E.J. said gently patting her cheek.
Sami finally came to but when she opened her eyes and saw it was E.J. who was there to greet her she was no longer the placid, melodramatic Southern belle in need of her smelling salts.
"YOU!" Sami accused.
"Me?" E.J. asked, confused.
"It's YOUR fault this happened," Sami claimed hopping angrily out of the bed and pointing her finger in his face. "If you... if you had never come to Salem I would be married to Lucas right now and we'd be a real family."
But after saying those words she realized she needed to clarify.
"Well OK... actually I'd be married to Austin if you never came to Salem," Sami said. "But... but... if you had never developed this SICK obsession with me trying to make me fall in love with you and being around me all the time... if you had never tried so hard to come between me and Lucas... if you and your screwed up family had never tried to... plant the Dimera seed in me... then Lucas and I would be happily married together."
"You really think that?" E.J. asked.
"Yes I really think that," Sami said folding her arms across her chest. "I know you don't believe me because you don't have any memory of what happened. But I know it. It's true. Lucas and I would be happy if it wasn't for you."
"Now Samantha, setting aside all this... plant the Dimera seed business...," E.J. said wincing at the phrase. "Why on earth would you think your husband would be justified in thinking that you would run away on your honeymoon with another man if you didn't cheat on him? Have you told him what you think happened when this baby was conceived?"
"Yes, E.J.," Sami informed him. "After the wedding I told Lucas that you RAPED me."
"AFTER the wedding?" E.J. said, perplexed.
"Yes!" Sami said exasperated at trying to explain the situation. "After the wedding I told him everything, well most of everything anyway, and he believed me. For the first time in our relationship, he truly believed ME, not his mom, ME. And he promised to stand by ME and that we would work all this out."
"O.K..." E.J. said. "He promised to stand by you... until you disappeared the first night of your honeymoon together and he said, 'Forget it, that's her problem.'"
"It's complicated, E.J.," Sami said frowning and looking at the floor.
"Indeed," E.J. said taking his thumb and index finger to lift her chin upright to look at him. "You know they say most things of any value are."
Chapter 40
"It's complicated, E.J.," Sami said frowning and looking at the floor.
"Indeed," E.J. said taking his thumb and index finger to lift her chin upright to look at him. "You know they say most things of any value are."
Sami's frown changed to a grin as she looked away from E.J. thinking about how different he was since his memory was gone, yet how much he was the same.
"It's just, E.J., I thought this time would be different," Sami said. "I finally got married. After TEN tries I finally got married..."
E.J. slapped his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh at the phrase prompting a glare from Sami who continued.
"I thought this would be the time I got my happily ever after, you know," Sami whined. "I thought I had finally gotten my fairytale ending with the handsome prince standing by my side after all the obstacles that had kept us apart. Now I find out I'm going to be stuck. Alone. Forever. Just me and the frog."
E.J. put his hand on Sami's shoulder.
"I know you probably don't want to hear it from me, I just wish you could see how amazing you are, how lucky any man would be to have you in his life, Samantha. Just the drama and chaos and that surrounds you could provide enough excitement to last a man ten lifetimes," E.J. declared. "Not to mention, the beauty and the charm you possess. I mean you are the quite possibly the most bewitching woman I've ever met."
"Bewitching, is it?" Sami snarked. "Well I certainly know a few men who would agree with at least one of those syllables."
"I'm serious, Samantha," E.J. said. "You know, I'm not necessarily proud of this, but I have to admit I've gotten to know quite a few women in my day but none of them, not one of them, stirred my heart the way you do. I mean if I had a woman like you in my life and someone tried to take her away from me..."
E.J. paused as he tried to choose the right words to convey his convictions.
"If someone took her away from me, I would never give up on her... Know that, Samantha. If someone took her away from me, I would never stop looking for her..." E.J. said emphatically. "I would never stop fighting for the chance to hold her in my arms again."
Though E.J. had told her similar things many times, in that moment as she finally and truly looked at the handsome man who was saying them and contemplated the passion and sincerity behind them her resistance finally melted. She had tried to play by Salem's rules so many times for so many years and all it had done was leave her heartbroken and alone. Here was a beautiful, charming man -- albeit a STRANGE, beautiful, charming man with A LOT of baggage -- but one who loved her deeply and unconditionally, even without a single memory to tell him why.
With that thought, it was as if a veil had been lifted from Sami's heart and mind.
"I would die before..." E.J. continued in his flowery speech before Sami interrupted.
"Oh, just stop it already," Sami said rolling her eyes. "I get it."
"Do you?" E.J. asked.
"Yeah, E.J.," Sami said biting her lip. "For the first time... I think I do."
To E.J.'s surprise, Sami began to move toward him and placed her hands on his chest sliding them slowly upward until they rested on each side of his face.
"For the first time, E.J.," Sami said. "I finally understand."
E.J. closed his eyes and smiled as Sami stood on her tiptoes to lightly peck at his neck for several seconds before he turned his head so that his lips could find hers and they could share an intensely passionate kiss.
The two of them continued kissing as if the other's lips was their only source of oxygen, as if their lives depended on the two of them loving each other and expressing that love.
Clawing frantically at E.J.'s chest while kissing him, in one swift motion Sami ripped the shirt from E.J.'s body sending a few buttons flying across the room.
"Wait, hold on," E.J. said pushing her back and allowing the two of them to come up for air.
"What is it?" Sami asked out of breath. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, darling," E.J. said caressing her face with his large right hand and lightly brushing her hair out of her face. "I just don't want to rush this. I want to take our time to make sure we savor every single second of this, Samantha."
With that E.J. put both his hands around her face and gave her a long, soft kiss that made Sami's toes curl. He tenderly slid his hands downward along her neck and to her shoulders, where he gingerly slid his hands beneath her robe and helped guide gravity in removing it from her body.
Next he scooped her up in his arms and carried her onto the four poster bed where beneath the wine-colored drapes the two of them made love for hours.
Finally they stopped when the pleasure receptors in their brains could no longer handle the euphoria the two of them being together created. The two of them just laid in the bed facing one another silently for several minutes, staring at each other in total contentment, until finally Sami spoke.
"Oh, E.J. that was... amazing," Sami said cooing.
"Yeah?" E.J. asked, smiling with his ego swelling so big it filled the entire room, if not the whole house. "Tell me more. How do you feel?"
"E.J., I feel... I don't know how to describe it... it's like... like floating on a sea of endorphins," Sami said while E.J.'s head turned as he tried to place where he'd heard that phrase before. "I mean, even if a lightning bolt fell from the sky right now, you know... I would just die with the biggest smile upon my face."
Sami sighed after saying the words while E.J. involuntarily winced as he contemplated them.
He clutched at his face with his right hand as his mind was flooded with a grainy, incomplete memory of the last time he heard those words. Strangely, they were in his own voice, he thought. He was in a car. A car with... with Samantha, he remembered. And they were talking and Sami was mad at him. Because they had just...
"Oh God, what have I done?" E.J. said after he put the last piece of his puzzling recollection together.
But Sami was too caught up in the afterglow of their lovemaking to hear or acknowledge his words.
"Hey you, come here," Sami said pulling E.J. in for a long slow kiss and then wrapping her arm around his shirtless torso and putting her head down on his glistening chest with a smile spread across her face.
E.J. was motionless as he laid there staring into space holding her and consumed with total anguish and shame with the knowledge of what he'd done. He decided he would let Sami savor this moment of peace without the burden of knowing that he was starting to get his memory back. That he now knew she was telling truth about his memory being erased even if not all his memories had yet returned.
In fact, he wondered if he should tell her at all that he remembered as he ran his fingers through her hair then kissed the crown of her head. He wondered if she would ever let him touch her again once she knew that he knew what had happened. He decided he couldn't take that risk. Not yet.
END OF PART ONE