A/n: Howdy! We are rounding the curve towards the end of Bite and Switch. 😠What in the hell am I gonna write next?! (Other than Night Shift. That's a given. But, dammit, I have to write two.) Oh well. TBA, I suppose.
Chapter 33
That night, she slept in Sam's bed while he took the couch. She tried to argue against it but he insisted, at least after she told him that, no, she wasn't ok with sharing.
The next morning, Sam tapped on the door and peeked his head through.
"You up and decent, Sookie?"
She snorted.
"Well, I'm awake. I suppose the decent part is debatable."
He walked inside and smiled at her.
"Chère, you are possibly the most decent person I know."
She rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, right."
"Did you sleep ok?"
She shrugged.
"I had really weird dreams. You didn't bring that stray dog with you, did you? The one that started hanging around by the dumpster at the bar a few months back? He was a collie, I think."
"Nope. Sure didn't. Why?"
"I dreamt that I woke up and he was on the bed with me. It seemed so real, but I guess not."
Sam changed the subject.
"I have to go and run an errand but I won't be long. We should take a drive to Bon Temps to pick up some things after. I'll be sure to get you back before dark. That's unless you just want to run around in your nightie forever…"
I sure wouldn't mind.
She heard that thought loud and clear. She tried not to notice Sam looking at her breasts again. She pulled the blanket up a little higher and he looked away, running his fingers through his hair.
"Anyhow, there's coffee made in the kitchen. Help yourself. I should be back in a half hour, forty-five minutes."
"Thanks, Sam. For everything."
"Cut it out, Sookie. You don't have to keep thanking me." He sighed. "But I guess you're gonna, anyway."
After he left, Sookie put Sam's sweats back on and followed her nose to the coffee pot in the kitchen. Bernie was sitting at the table.
"Help yourself to a cup and then come and sit with me for a minute or two."
She poured herself a mug full and took the chair across from Sam's mother. Sookie closed her eyes and breathed in the steam before taking a sip. After such a terrible sleep, she really needed the caffeine. Bernie smiled at her.
"I want to thank you for breaking up with my Sam. It pushed him to move home, where he belongs, and I'm grateful."
She patted Sookie's hand across the table and continued.
"I like you. I'm more than happy to help, in any way I can. But then you gotta go on home, back to Louisiana. He needs to settle down and have a family and he won't let you go if you keep leading him on. Angela is… more his type."
Sookie frowned. She was getting tired of saying this and there was an edge to her voice. She had been clear with Sam about her feelings a hundred times, at least. She tried to turn up the southern sweetness as much as she could to dull it enough so that it didn't quite cut.
"I really don't have any romantic feelings towards Sam. I have made that very clear to everyone, including him. We are just friends."
Bernie took another sip of coffee.
"You are welcome to stay. My husband and I will be out of town the next few nights."
Sookie started to object but Bernie cut her off, holding her hand up.
"We will be gone whether you leave or not. I wasn't lying when I said that I am grateful. Stay. Let Sam help. But remember, if something happens to him, it will break me. And I won't take being broken."
Bernie took another sip and then shrugged.
"Of course, if you did go back and something happened to you, it would break him, and that would break me, too."
Bernie got up and dumped the last two mouthfuls or coffee into the sink . She squeezed Sookie's shoulder gently as she paused on the way out of the room.
"But if something does happen to him…"
She let her voice tail off. She squeezed Sookie's shoulder again, grabbed her purse, and walked out the front door.
Sookie was still sitting at the table, her coffee forgotten beside her, when Sam got back.
"Hey! Ready to go?"
She didn't answer and he walked into the kitchen and frowned.
"Hey, what's the matter, Sook?"
She sort of shook herself off and looked up at him.
"It's nothing, Sam. Honest."
She stood up and poured out the tepid cup of coffee that was still almost full. She turned around and smiled. It wasn't a crazy one, but it was weak. Strained. He knew her well enough to know that she was lying through her teeth, but he let it go. She was going to be a captive audience all the way to Bon Temps and back.
"Come on, Chère. Let's head out. We need to be long gone from there well before dark."
They stopped for gas and Sam went in to get them both some coffee and a danish. Sookie was still in her sock feet and stayed put. After they got back on the road, they made small talk for a while but Sookie was pretty sure that the levity wasn't going to last. She was right.
"So, tell me about those three weeks again."
They had already gone over a lot of this and she was a little annoyed, especially by the skepticism in his voice, but she tried not to let it show. She needed him on her side. She didn't know if anyone else was.
"I was driving home from the bar after working New Year's Eve. He was running down Hummingbird Road, just wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. I pulled around him and he looked scared. Really scared. I couldn't not stop."
Sam hmphed but she pretended she didn't hear it over the road noise and the radio, which was tuned to a country station turned down low.
She continued, "He didn't know who he was or where he was, even though he did know what he was. He didn't attack me, even though he was really scared and had more than enough chances to do so. He didn't have anywhere to go or anyone to help him. Obviously something had happened to him and he didn't know who he could trust. I took him home and fixed up the attic so he wouldn't burn and he stayed with me until he got his memories back."
Sam's jaw was bunched.
"Of all the stupid—"
Sookie cut him off. She wanted to be diplomatic but she wasn't going to take being insulted.
"Just shut up, Sam. I don't want to hear it. I did it. It's done. And I would do it again."
Sam snorted.
"Just so long as whoever-he-was looked like Eric Northman, right?"
She was too angry to answer. Her eyes welled up and that pissed her off even more. She looked out the window and wiped the tears away as surreptitiously as she could. It hurt so much because she was afraid that he might be right.
After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Sam sighed.
"Look, I'm sorry, Sookie. I know that wasn't fair. You are generous to a fault and I worry about you."
They were both quiet for a while. Sookie looked through the passenger window while she got herself under control. She heard in Sam's head that he was about to reach for the volume knob and decided to forge ahead.
"We fell in love. Work was awful and I was hardly getting any shifts. We were together all the time. He was sweet and kind and treated me like gold. And his mind is silent. For the first time in my life, I could touch and be touched without being in someone else's head. I could kiss and cuddle and make love and didn't have to hear anything I didn't want to hear or have to work at trying to hold up my shields. I could just relax and be… normal. Even if it was with a vampire."
Sam swallowed hard, clenched his jaw, and kept his eyes on the road. Her voice was small.
"I'm sorry, Sam."
He didn't answer. They drove in silence for several minutes. Eventually, he took a deep breath that stuttered a bit in his chest. Sookie pretended not to notice.
"Ok, Chère. I know about those three weeks. I know about quitting the bar and your new job reading minds, although I can't believe you agreed to it. I know that he got his second set of memories back, that he claims to love you, and that he's had you locked up on an emotional roller coaster for weeks. And I know that you were nearly killed by a vampire and in a car crash and by your brother in the past, what? Less than a month? And that Eric might be responsible for that last one."
Sookie shook her head.
"No. It wasn't him, Sam. I know it. The more I think about it, the surer I am. He can hurt me — he's certainly done it before — but he would never kill me. Not for his own selfish reasons even if not just for my sake."
She neglected to mention the time, not so long ago, when he'd threatened to. Sam didn't argue but he wasn't convinced.
"So, what aren't you telling me, Sookie? I know you're holding out on me somewhere."
She kept looking out the side window. She really didn't want to answer. Eventually, she sighed but she didn't turn to look at him.
"I bit my tongue on New Year's Eve after he startled me and I fell down. He kissed me later that night and it was all better by morning. A couple of weeks later, I bit him during sex."
She finally turned to look at Sam.
"I'm not sure how much you know about vampires but it seems like a lot more than other people. The car accident was bad. Real bad. I nearly died. I would have. He pulled me from the wreck and cleaned my wounds and gave me some of his blood. He saved my life. It healed me up, good as new."
She took a shaky breath.
"But that means that me and Eric… Well, we've exchanged blood three times now. When that happens, it makes a permanent blood bond."
He didn't reply. She could see how hard he was gripping the steering wheel. His knuckles were turning white. She stayed out of his head as much as she could. They sat in silence for the last twenty miles of their drive to Bon Temps.
Sookie let Sam have the key and he went in the front door and looked through the house before he let her come in. He smelled nobody as soon as he walked inside but he made a show out of checking everywhere anyway. He wondered how long he would keep up the shifter charade. He didn't even know why he hadn't told her yet.
She got a shower and got dressed and gathered up clothes and toiletries and anything else she thought she might need. She went into the kitchen to get her purse and check the answering machine. She was more than a little disappointed when there were no messages waiting.
She tore yesterday's word off her word of the day calendar. She could hardly believe that it was only thirty-six hours or so ago that she'd torn off the day before's in the wee hours of the morning not too long before Jason had tried to kill her.
Purloin. She didn't even want to guess, but at least it wasn't extirpate or depredation or barbarous. She was about to leave the kitchen when she went ahead and threw the calendar in her bag. She considered peeking at tomorrow's word but she thought that it might be cheating, somehow. And that it might be bad luck.
She took one last look at her house before she left. She hadn't really faced the fact that she was still in danger. That, even staying with Sam in a whole other state, something bad could happen.
She sighed and locked the door behind her.
Sam was waiting in the truck with the radio playing loud enough to make conversation difficult. They hadn't really said much since she'd told him about the blood bond and he obviously didn't want to start. Once they were back on the interstate, she decided that it was her turn to get some answers. She turned the volume down.
"How do you know Eric, anyway?"
He didn't want to even think about Eric. And it wasn't the time to tell her about shifters and weres and the rest of the supernatural community. He wanted to give her his full attention for that conversation. Plus he was still too pissed off. And, frankly, disgusted.
"He owns a bar. I owned a bar."
"Oh."
She wondered why Eric had made it sound like it was something secret. Maybe even clandestine. She didn't really know which one was telling the truth. She certainly trusted Sam more, but Eric had seemed much more confident about what he'd said. Then again, all he'd really said was to ask Sam, and it could have easily been just to screw with them both.
Sam turned the music back up, effectively ending the conversation. They drove a while longer before she turned it down again.
"So, what's up with you and Angela?"
He shrugged with one shoulder.
"We've been seeing each other for a few weeks. It's nothing serious."
"She looked pretty upset yesterday."
He shrugged again and she thought that he wasn't going to answer. After a minute or two of silence, he did.
"She'll get over it."
Sookie frowned.
"I hope you didn't screw up a good thing for me, Sam. I'm not—"
He cut her off. "You're not interested. I get it. God knows you remind me enough."
He turned the music back up and they drove a little longer before she turned it back down again. He scowled. She pretended not to notice.
"Your mom seems to like Angela."
He looked at her before looking back at the road.
"What in the hell does that mean?"
"We just talked for a bit while you were gone this morning and she mentioned it."
After a minute or so, he sighed.
"What did she say?"
"Just that Angela's more your type."
He snorted.
"I'll bet. And?"
"And that I should go back to Bon Temps just as soon as it's safe to do so."
He rolled his eyes and muttered, "Fuck's sake," under his breath.
"I was going to anyway, Sam. You know that. Your mom just wants what's best for you."
"No. My mother wants what's best for her."
He turned the volume back up, a little louder this time, and set his jaw. It was clear that he didn't want to continue the conversation. She considered arguing. She even considered asking him to turn around and take her home. Instead, she looked out the window and didn't say anything.
Neither of them said a word for the rest of the drive. He pulled into the driveway and slammed the door of the truck and then the house after he'd unlocked it and stormed inside. She got out and reached into the truck bed to grab the bag of stuff she'd brought back from Bon Temps. She didn't hear the snarly thoughts behind her until it was too late. She felt a blinding pain on the back of her head and then nothing.