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Chapter 37 - #4 - A Ring of Truth
It was so incredibly awkward with her standing there, back to him, sniffling loudly. She didn't move just stood, arms around herself, probably still crying. Sam wasn't sure, he couldn't see her face. He wanted to leave, but his wheelchair was out of his arm's reach and he didn't dare speak to her. Not yet, not when he had pushed her into shambles.
He hadn't meant to be so rough, when he shoved her away. It must have seemed to her that he was repulsed. It wasn't that at all, he just needed to be free of her, she was getting too close, invading spaces that she wasn't allowed. She probably thought it was just about Quinn, and his desire to be with her, but that wasn't entirely true. He was disturbed that the wrong woman was in his arms, again, it always seemed to be Mercedes, never Quinn. He wanted it to be Quinn, he needed it to be. Mercedes kept breaking through somehow. She had this tendency to catch him off guard with her bright smiles and sad eyes.
It shouldn't be this hard. She wasn't who he wanted, he didn't remember her, simple as that. However, it was anything but simple when she seemed to have this power to make his mind hazy and focused on the wrong things. Like her mouth, he had no business kissing her, he didn't even want to kiss her, not really. It was Quinn he longed to be with. Yet somehow his hands had traveled down her thighs, and his lips all over her.
Sympathy - that was it. He knew what it was like to be the unwanted one, the heart on the outside, and he wanted to fix that for her in some way, even though he was the one causing her pain. He felt compelled to make her feel better, to ease her pain.
She was trying to slip away, sneak out of the room while he was lost in his thoughts, she almost succeeded until a floorboard creaked under her bare feet. She turned, eyes wide, knowing she'd been caught.
"Mercedes, wait. Please don't go." He wasn't even sure why he wanted her to stay. He'd done enough damage for one night.
She shook her head, pivoting where she stood but not moving closer. "Sam I need to get some rest. Beth still doesn't like to sleep through the night. She could be up soon."
"How are we going to figure things out if you keep running from me?"
"I'm not running. You're pushing me away. Besides, I think you have things figured out already."
"I really don't. I've never been more confused in my life," Sam admitted.
"Not confused about Quinn."
He detected a hint of anger in her words and immediately his guard went up in anticipation of an impending assault.
"We have a baby." Beth changed everything. Mercedes had to understand that. He couldn't think with his lower regions anymore, he had to be responsible.
"And we have a marriage, but that doesn't seem to matter to you. All you want to do is be with Quinn." Her face cheeks puffed out, as she exhaled sharply, glaring at him.
"She's my last memory, I feel really close to her. I just need to see her. Can't you understand that?"
"I do actually, and I think you should go see her. Maybe it will help you sort things out."
"You want me to go see Quinn?" he asked her skeptically. Sam could tell Mercedes hated Quinn. This didn't seem like a real response. She had to be playing him.
"I think it's what you need to do." Mercedes moved closer to him again, as if she finally decided to stay in the room. She rolled his wheelchair next to him, holding it steady as he got into it.
"Are you really this understanding or are you putting on an act?" He was suspicious. A few minutes ago she was in tears, now she was supporting him going to see Quinn.
"I just want what's best for you, whatever that may be."
Sam didn't believe her. Mercedes had to have an ulterior motive.
"I'm going to see Quinn next week. I made plans to visit her upstate," he said quickly glancing in her direction, to gauge her reaction.
She blanched slightly, but recovered quickly. "Were you even going to tell me?"
"Honestly, no. I figured it would just make things worse between us. I never expected you to be like this."
"Be like what?" she asked from the bed where she was picking up his pajamas, a gray tank top and blue bottoms.
"So reasonable." He wheeled over to her, taking the tank top from her hands. "I thought you would react more emotionally."
"Cry and scream at you?" She laughed half heartedly, but her air of sadness remained.
"Something like that." Sam lifted his t-shirt over his head, not bothering to ask her to leave the room. She'd seen it all and more anyway.
"I don't have the energy anymore. You're getting better, you're out of the hospital. That's all I ever wanted. I can't complain because every little thing didn't turn out as I had hoped. The main thing is you're getting your life back."
She took the t-shirt from his lap as he yanked the top over his head. The shirt was loose against his chest and he wondered what she must think of him now that he was so much thinner than he had been. She never acted as if she noticed his thinness or even his deformed lower leg for that matter. She treated him like he had a normal body.
"That's pretty mature of you."
"Beiste says I'm an old soul."
Now the pants, they would be tricky. He didn't want to expose himself to her tonight, although he knew she had seen his leg many times before. They were practically naked with each other that night at the hospital, when she took patient care to a whole new level of excellence. Sam hoped she wasn't giving her other patients that particular thrill, that better be a perk she saved just for him. Sam chided himself for that bit of possessiveness that crept into his mind. It wasn't fair for him to think like that when he wanted to be with another woman.
As if she read his mind, she stood in front of his chair, turning her back to him. She tapped her shoulder, indicating he should hold on to her there. Sam stood up shakily, balancing himself on her back as he removed his sweats. She handed his pajama bottoms to him over her shoulder, so he could put them on.
When he was done he leaned into her, wrapping his arms around her waist, placing his chin on her shoulder. He felt her inhale deeply as he touched her, holding her breath. She had become so tense around him, a dramatic change from just an hour before when she was in his lap kissing him. He knew it was his rejection that had done it, that had put this wall, for lack of a better word, between them.
"Thank you, Little Nurse. I'm all set," he said giving her a slight squeeze before releasing her and sitting back in his wheelchair.
"Good," she said with a nod, not turning around.
"I'm sort of impressed by you," he said when she finally turned to face him. She took a seat on the edge of his bed. "I'm not sure I would be handling this situation as well as you. If my wife woke up and didn't remember me and was talking about another man, I would probably end up yelling and breaking stuff. I'm not known for my level headedness."
Unbelievably painful it would be for him if he were the forgotten one. Sam knew he would be doing everything in his power to get his spouse to remember if he were in her shoes. She had far more patience than he did. Holding back her emotions for his benefit was quite noble. She had a strength that didn't seem to match her stature and her outwardly emotional demeanor. Her adeptness at masking her pain made him think she must have had years of practice, blocking out her real feelings.
"Actually you do pretty well in a crisis. The emotional stuff not so much. Drinking and casual sex is more your M.O."
"You're talking about me sleeping with Quinn, aren't you? What happened between us Mercedes that I took things there?"
"I was a fool, and you were an even bigger one." He sensed guilt intermingled with her sadness.
"There was another man wasn't there?"
Mercedes smoothed down the front of her hair. "You thought there was, but there really wasn't."
"Why the riddles? Just tell me the truth."
"Later. Can we talk about this later?" she asked stepping into the doorway of the bathroom, tossing his clothes into the hamper. "It's too painful to go to bed on."
"How do you think I feel? Night after night knowing that I cheated on my wife, something I never imagined myself doing, and I have no clue as to why it happened. I know what it is like to be cheated on. I wouldn't do that."
"But you did." She turned around suddenly. "You ran off and jumped into bed with Quinn before I could make things right."
"What did you need to make right? You cheated on me first didn't you?"
"I did something horrible."
He rolled closer to her, trapping her between the wall and his wheelchair. If she tried to push past him he planned to grab her. No way was she getting out of this conversation.
"Tell me."
"I almost left you on our wedding day," she said avoiding his eyes, staring out into the empty room.
"What?" Sam felt like the wind had been knocked out of him, he sunk back in his chair, stunned.
"I left a voicemail for another man before our wedding and told him I would leave you for him, but he didn't get the message."
"So you went ahead and married stupid, rich me?" he asked bitterly.
Apparently once a sucker, always a sucker. He had managed to yet again marry a woman that didn't want him.
Mercedes finally looked at him, flushed and teary. "It wasn't like that Sam. I loved you. I was just confused, too young, overwhelmed. I don't know, but once I said my vows it all started to fall into place, the fears started melting away. There's no other man in the world I want to be married to."
She reached out to him and he pushed away. He didn't want her anywhere near him.
"And here I actually believed you when you said you loved me and only me. I keep falling for your lies."
She was good. In the few weeks he had known her she had beguiled him and betrayed him repeatedly, and for some reason he kept letting her do it.
She slid down the wall to the floor. "It's the truth. I did love only you. I still do."
"Trying to ditch me at our wedding really supports that claim," he snapped.
"I'm ashamed of what I did. Not a day goes by when I don't wish I could take it back. It kills me to know how badly I hurt you, that I broke your heart."
She was crying, wiping at the tears with the hem of her shirt, her stomach exposed.
"I think Quinn made me feel a whole lot better, so don't beat yourself up. I ended up a winner in all of this." Mercedes's head shot up, slack jawed and shocked. Sam knew his words would sting, that was his intention.
"You son of a bitch." She almost yelled, sitting up on her knees. "Our whole life together is gone, completely over, and you're making jokes."
"I'm not joking. Your little message led me to Quinn and Beth, a chance at having a life I always dreamed about." He smiled, but didn't really feel it, not that he wanted her to know that. He wanted her to choke on the idea that she soon would be replaced.
"You already had that life. With me."
"That's such bullshit!" He started to shake with anger. "You had some other guy, I slept with Quinn, we don't even have any kids."
"Not yet. We had planned to have children. A house full."
"Looks like Quinn beat you to the punch."
She slumped back to a sitting position, staring down at the floor. "I deserve this. I know I do. Payback for how I hurt you, how I destroyed all of our lives."
"As if you give a damn. Was Finn the one you were leaving me for?
"No." Mercedes buried her face in her hands.
He could hear her sobs, but Sam wasn't falling for her act again. "Enough with the tears. Who was the other the guy, Mercedes?"
"It doesn't matter. He was just a safe place anyway. We really were never more than friends."
Again with the safe bit, Quinn had said something similar about Puck. What was it about him that scared women off?
"I think it matters a whole lot. Apparently I torpedoed my life because of that guy."
"It was my fault. I left the message and tried to lie about it."
"But I found out."
"Yes, but I didn't know you did. You never told me you knew, even after I finally confessed it all to you."
"When did you confess?"
"The night you slept with Quinn," she said slowly. "The other guy came over and tried to convince me to leave you for him, and I wouldn't. He grabbed me and kissed me, and I did kiss him back, and you saw us, but I didn't know you were there."
"And I just left? I didn't come in and punch the guy?"
That didn't sound like him at all. If that guy walked in the room right now he'd probably try to hurt him, so for him to just walk away back then, during the heat of the moment, didn't make much sense. Maybe he just didn't care about Mercedes as much as everyone claimed he did.
"No."
"I just went and got drunk and slept with Quinn?"
"I really hurt you. See there was this thing between us, this link, this trust, we always seemed to have. No matter what, you were sure of my feelings for you, never doubted my love, and why should you have? I followed you around like a lost puppy for a year."
Sam could actually believe that. She had lied many times to him in the past few weeks and still he kept letting himself trust her.
"And you blindsided me with all this letter, other man stuff?"
"Yeah. I still can't believe I did all of that."
"Well you were a kid, and I am an idiot. I should've known better than to marry someone so young."
It had to have been about sex. What else could he have been thinking? How would he have let himself fall for someone like her, so young, and clearly so untrustworthy? She would have had him on guard and he would have pushed her away. Had to have been hormones in the driver's seat, that's all there was to it.
"Right you should've stayed married to Brittany who was in love with another man, or married Rachel who wanted to change you into someone safe and boring that she could control, or even still you should have gone for the true prize, your beloved Quinn. Didn't matter that she hurt you more than anyone else ever had, she was worth it right?" Her eyes narrowed in anger. She was trying to cut him like he had done to her.
"A little petty throwing my history at me, you have no defense so you try to hurl insults. You fight dirty, did you know that?"
She was scrappy and she liked to go right for the pain, never pulling punches. Reminded Sam of himself a little.
"So do you. My age doesn't bother you. It didn't then, and it doesn't now. You are just trying to cover up how much you want me. You don't like that I get to you."
They stared each other down. Her jaw set and her body tense, she wasn't going to relent before he did.
"Conceited much?" he asked never dropping her gaze.
"I'm not conceited at all. I know a girl like me should never have landed someone like you. Wealthy, powerful, handsome, you can have any woman you want, but for some reason you never intimidated me. I can see right through you Sam. I always could, and I still can." Mercedes crossed her arms over her chest.
"What do you see?" he asked finally looking away. For a moment it felt like she was actually seeing through him as she claimed and it unnerved him.
"A liar." She jumped up and approached him, squeezing a space between his knees, forcing his legs to part, so she could stand close to him.
"That's rich coming from you. I'm not lying to you. I told you how I feel about everything."
"There's something between us. I don't know if it is memories breaking through or just that attraction we always had, but I know you feel it Sam," she said grasping his chin and tilting his head up to look at her.
"You want me to feel it. There's a difference," he said pulling his face away from her hand. She didn't try to touch him again, but she didn't move away either, remaining perched over him.
"Right I'm just in this on my own. And that little kiss you gave me earlier, was all me? It meant nothing to you right? What if I kissed you now, would you respond?" She leaned in closer as if she might kiss him, licking her lips slightly as her nose brushed his.
"That kiss shouldn't have happened, and I'm not going to let you kiss me again," he said harshly, his voice barely above a whisper, not flinching away from her very close proximity.
Mercedes put her hands on the sides of his face, her eyes shifting to focus on his mouth. Sam sucked in his breath, holding his position, testing if she would really be so bold with him.
"Because you're afraid you'll kiss me back and your little cover here will be blown."
"I'm interested in Quinn, not you," he said slowly and deliberately. Her eyes shot up to meet his, hurt and anger, darkening the usually sparkly brown.
"Got that. Loud and clear." She stood up abruptly. "Shall I help you into bed Sam?"
"You're upset with me." He needed to punch himself. What the hell did he care if she was hurt? After all this, she deserved to be.
"I'm not. I just want to get you settled." She put her arm under him to support his weight as he stood up from the wheelchair on wobbly legs.
"I think I can manage myself. I'm getting stronger you know."
"I know." Mercedes dropped her arm and let him go. Sam carefully maneuvered himself over to his bed and climbed in, the short trip took far more effort than he liked.
"I'm all good now," he said curtly.
She pulled the covers up over his chest, leaning across his body as she smoothed out the wrinkles in the blanket. The chain around her neck moved with her body as she tucked him in. He could see the impression of a pendant of some sort through her thin top.
"Do you want the light off?" she asked as she reached under his head to fluff his pillows. She was so close he could smell that sweet flowery fragrance she always wore.
"Leave it," he said clearing his throat.
She just nodded and stood up, lingering by the bed as if she were going to say something else. She finally turned to go and he grabbed her hand, stopping her.
Dumb, weak, and completely hopeless, he couldn't resist his curiosity, his need to discover just what it was about her that got him to this place, then and now. Something didn't let him back away.
"Tell me something about us."
"You don't really want to know Sam," she said pulling her hand away from his. "Why are you pretending like you do?"
"I'm sorry okay," he said running his hands through his hair in frustration. "This is hard. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know how to handle this. I'm just trying to find my connection to you."
"We don't have one anymore. You've made that more than clear."
"You don't believe that. What about all that stuff we were feeling in the hospital?" As much as he tried to force himself to forget he couldn't, at the hospital they had found something with each other.
"You tell me Sam. You're the one that suddenly stopped feeling it." Mercedes had shut down on him, their last exchange about Quinn must have pushed her to the end of her patience.
"I don't know what to think anymore. My whole family is telling me I had this good thing going with you, that I was happy. Then you tell me you were going to leave me for another man."
She sighed. "I wasn't."
"Mercedes you left him a voicemail. What would you have done if he had gotten it and came charging to the wedding? Are you going to stand there and tell me you wouldn't have run off with him?"
This was bothering him probably more than it should have, but he had been painted this picture of a loving happy marriage and the truth was far different. His father actually wanted him to stay married to a person that could do this to him. Nothing Quinn had done in high school topped this.
She sat in his wheelchair, rolling slowly back and forth with her feet. "I've thought about this so many times after I found out you cheated on me, wondering what if, wondering if I would have been better off with the other guy."
"Maybe I would have been better off if I had been married to a woman that actually wanted to be with me," he said angrily. "Did you ever think about how all of this must have made me feel?"
"Every day. The biggest mistake of my life was leaving that message and then not telling you about it. After all that happened and we finally talked it out, and you forgave me, we made a pact to always be honest with each other, never to keep secrets, even if it would hurt. Little did I know you were already keeping a big secret from me about Quinn, but with everything else we were completely honest from then on."
"Too little, too late. How did I even trust you after that?" he asked coldly. Honesty pacts were meaningless with pathological liars.
"How am I trusting you now? You've hurt me just as much Sam."
"What are we doing here then? It seems like all we had was a mess together." Cheating, lies, tons of pain and they hadn't even been married a year at the time.
"We are a mess. Two messed up people trying to build a life with no clue how to do it. We both made mistakes, but we were getting past them, starting again."
"Did you ever think that all those mistakes were just a sign we didn't belong together?" Too much seemed wrong to even try to find a right. Their marriage was totally built on lies and deceptions.
"No," she wiped at the tears that ran down her cheeks. "I woke up the morning of our wedding so anxious. I just knew I couldn't marry you when I still had unresolved feelings for another man. It wouldn't have been right. Then you came to see me, you sensed my doubts, and you tried to reassure me. You made me feel so loved Sam. The way you looked at me, the way you touched me. No one has ever made me feel like you do."
That look so incredible, unexpected, and seemingly so real, there was love in her eyes, he could see it so clearly, just as he had at the hospital.
"Why wasn't I enough for you? Why didn't you want to be with me?" He had to ask. Her eyes didn't match her story.
"I did want to be with you."
"It just doesn't add up. There was this other guy just waiting in the wings." He couldn't let himself fall for it, she was holding back something. Real love couldn't amount to this.
"You broke my heart. You rejected me so much in the past, you chose another woman over me. I was so scared to give my heart to you completely. I didn't think I could survive any more pain from you."
Sam knew the feeling, when love seemed more painful than it was worth, when self preservation began to trump anything the heart wanted. He had been there, more than once.
Sam bowed his head. "Why did you say yes? Why did you accept my proposal?"
"How could I say no?" she asked attempting to laugh lightly through her tears. "It was you."
He couldn't pull himself away from her eyes. She was telling him things he had wanted to hear for so long, to be loved like that, was only possible in dreams. But the wrong person was saying it and that made it all seem so bitter, a touch of sour ruining something so sweet.
"Mercedes, how am I supposed to believe you?"
"You could have died on our wedding day."
Sam sat up straighter in his bed. "What?"
"We didn't even get to attend our reception. If we hadn't got you to the hospital that night the infection might have taken over your whole body. You were sick and you didn't tell anyone. You just went on with our wedding plans like everything was fine."
He didn't know how to respond, he was completely stunned. "You're being so casual about it."
"I'm not really. I sometimes still get chills thinking about it, but worse things have happened since."
"Worse than a rampant infection?" Sam could not imagine what she would consider worse than being hospitalized on your wedding day.
"Yes. I lost you," she said her voice cracking.
"Mercedes I…" Sam fumbled, searching for the words to console her, but there were none.
"When you first were admitted to the hospital they wouldn't let me see you. You were intensive care and they were working to stabilize you. I must have fallen asleep in the waiting area because I had this dream and in it you died. You just went through those double doors and never came back out. I woke up disoriented and upset and eventually I figured out it was just a nightmare but the idea of that, of you being dead." She shook her head, trying to stop herself from crying. "Well let's just say, I knew I made the right decision marrying you."
"I have found that moments where life hangs in the balance, are the times when things are the most clear." In Afghanistan, during the limo crash, even now he had found that to be true, and each time it had all come back to Quinn. Could it really have been different this time around with Mercedes?
"After that I knew I wanted to be with you, being afraid of risking my heart wasn't enough to keep me from loving you. Life was too short. Then all the stuff with Quinn came out and I was all set to divorce you, papers and all. We were through. But the accident happened, and you were hurt so badly, then you left me here so alone, retreated into yourself, into that damn coma, for nine months. It was like a twisted joke. The universe proved its point I guess you could say. I knew I couldn't divorce you after that, you're worth all the pain."
"You know how crazy all of this sounds?" His voice was hoarse, his emotions getting the better of him, as he imagined the roller coaster she was describing. Seemed like they had been through so much, and he didn't even know the half of it.
"I probably should have been long gone, ages ago."
There was something so familiar about the way she claimed to feel about him, almost like she didn't have a choice, she couldn't help herself despite her better judgment. He had been in her place. Loving Quinn used to feel like that.
"Why didn't you leave? There were other women, sounds like I treated you badly, hurt you, what are you still doing here?"
She shrugged. "One day you'll remember the answer to that and you'll understand why."
"I can't promise my memory will even come back. What if I never remember?
"I don't know. Even if things don't work out between us, and we end up with other people, I know I will keep hoping. A part of me will always be waiting for you."
He reached over and took her hand in his own, letting his palm grip the rough edges of her rings, holding it there until it stung from the pressure. Sam willed his mind to find her, to at least pull up some recollection. She was too young to be stuck in this miserable spot, especially with him. He wouldn't be able to make things better for her, to give her back what she wanted.
"Where is my ring?" he asked. "Why aren't I wearing it?"
"I had to take it off you. Your fingers used to swell around it. I was scared it would get stuck, so I took it off. You didn't seem to like that much, the first time you ever moved while you were in a coma. The doctors said it was just a reflex, but I never believed that. I think you wanted to keep your ring."
"Can I have it back?" he asked staring at the rings on her finger, so large and sparkling with diamonds.
"Why?"
"It's mine."
She pulled the chain out of her top and started playing with it absently as she spoke. "You don't want to be married to me. Why would you want the ring?"
If things didn't work out with the judge, if he couldn't find another way to help Quinn, he would be forced to take his father up on his offer. Sam didn't relish the idea of pinning himself between two women, caught in the middle of the life he wanted and the life he would be forced to maintain. It wasn't fair to any of them, especially not to Mercedes, she would be the one left battered at the end of nine months.
He couldn't do that to her, not when she looked at him the way she did, like he was special, like he was so worth her time. He wanted to live up to that somehow, be the man she seemed to love so much, even if he wasn't that guy anymore, not truly. But what choice did he have? If things went wrong with the judge, he couldn't leave Quinn to rot away in a hospital upstate. Beth needed her mother in her life. There had to be a way to make this work, for all of them.
"I never said I didn't want to be married to you."
"It was in your actions."
He had been a bastard to her. Mercedes had this way of getting a rise out of him, she was driving him crazy with her half truths and the feeble excuses.
"Is that my ring?" He watched the thick platinum band sway back and forth against her chest, a thin chain suspending it around her neck.
Mercedes looked down almost seeming surprised. "I forgot I had it on. I don't wear it much anymore."
"What made you wear it today?"
"I'm not sure. I found it in my pocket tonight and I put it on. Missing you I guess."
"You didn't have to miss me you know. You could've come to see me," he said softly.
"I thought you hated me." She stared down at the ring on the end of her chain.
"I don't."
Mercedes looked up in surprise. "But all the things you said…"
"Will told me about what happened the night of the accident."
"I know. I've talked to him. I'm glad he was able to get that off of his chest. The guilt was eating him alive."
"He had no reason to feel guilty."
"Couldn't get him to believe that though. Hopefully you did."
"He saved my life. You saved my life." Sam understood that now. He knew how lucky he had been and that he wouldn't have made it without the two of them.
"You wouldn't have needed saving if it weren't for me," she said tearing up again.
"Come here." Sam eased over so she could take a seat beside him. "Thank you for not quitting on me that night." He kissed the back of her hand softly, his eyes still on her face.
"I couldn't let you go," she said dropping his hand to wipe her tears.
Sam slipped his forefinger partially into the band hanging from her neck. "Can I have this back?"
Before she could respond he lifted the chain upward attempting to take it over her head. She leaned forward and let him pull the chain off. He rested the ring in the palm of his hand, letting the chain cascade around it in a small pile. Staring at it for a few moments before taking a deep breath and slipping the chain over his head leaving the ring dangling in the center of his chest.
"We used to have breakfast together every morning," she said unexpectedly.
Sam scrunched his face in confusion at her strange statement. Then it dawned on him that she was doing what he asked earlier, she was telling him something about their life together.
"Did you cook?"
"No." She smiled. "You did."
That seemed right. He used to like cooking, did it for Brittany occasionally, but with a staff he never had much opportunity.
"Thank you for telling me that."
It wasn't much but it was a start. Just in case he had to find a way to last nine months. Maybe if he found some connection to her, he could do it. Again his thoughts went to the hospital, to their night, and then their morning. It was so much easier when she was just his nurse, a person he found attractive and wanted to get to know. He felt more freedom to explore feelings when the attachment wasn't forced to be permanent, when things weren't so binding.
Mercedes had been so pretty that morning, wrapped in his arms, her bare soft skin against his. Felt right being with her like that, as if the morning light was a time just for them. He wondered if there was a reason for that, if his thoughts about making love to her that morning were more than just his raging hormones. So he took a chance, and asked her.
"Did we ever make love while watching the sunrise?"
She looked at him, her lips upturned slightly. "Breakfast in bed was my favorite."
His gut twisted with a feeling he couldn't quite describe. Somehow he knew she would say that.
Sam looked down at the ring that hung against his chest, a prominent symbol of a life he used to have. It suddenly felt heavy around his neck, too much for him to carry. He wanted to take it off, give it back to her, to let her tuck it back away between her breasts.
He had found what he had been looking for all night, something real with Mercedes, something he could hold on to, that connection. It was in the sunrise, filling his head in a confusing mixture of memory and imagination. Softly glowing, faded yet still visible, he could see himself with her, stretched out on the floor, their bodies slashed by the morning light through the blinds. Her dark hair spread over his chest, a smile on his face, he was content.
He was happy.
He was hers.