Concerto (North Security 2)

Red colors my vision, and my control snaps. I launch myself at my brother, throwing a punch that sends him careening into the wall. It leaves me open for a split second—a second that Elijah uses to land a fist in my gut. I absorb the blow with a quiet oomph, stepping back from the force. Samantha grabs my arm, which is raised to hit back.

“No,” she cries,

and the sound cuts through the haze of shame and fury.

“Christ,” I say, glaring at Josh. I want another go at him.

“Please,” she says, tear tracks glistening on her cheeks. “Don’t fight.”

“Why the fuck not?” Elijah says, muscles straining as Josh holds him back.

“Because I won’t be the reason you hurt each other,” Samantha says, her voice trembling. “If you want to punch each other, you’ll have to come up with another reason.”

She stands there with her chin held high, a sheet wrapped around her slender body. She weighs a hundred pounds of nothing, but she looks like she can stop a war. That’s what she’s doing, with nothing more than the force of her will.

If there was ever a piece of my heart held back, a part of me that wasn’t fully in love with her, it’s gone now. She’s a warrior. A goddess. I want to fall at her feet in supplication. Now I understand why knights would kneel before their queen and bow their heads. It’s the only position that makes sense for a man in the presence of such a woman.

“I love our family reunions,” Josh says with a quicksilver grin.

Elijah lets out a low growl that I can empathize with. I wouldn’t want to be held back from a fight, either. And I can’t even argue his point. I deserve to be beaten. I deserve to be locked in a closet, thrown down a well. I’ve always deserved it.

“Go,” she says, her head held high. “I love that you care about me this much, and I know that because of a messed-up childhood, this may be the only way you know how to show it. But I’m a grown woman. You don’t get to dictate who I sleep with. And I’m asking you to leave.”

Only Elijah looks at all chastened by the words. Josh gives an irreverent little salute before heading down the hallway. I’m the only one left, and I turn to face her.

“Samantha, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“You too,” she says softly, heartbreak lending her brown eyes an almost rust-colored red. “You’re the worst one, about to apologize for taking my virginity not even a full day after you did it. I deserve better than that. If you want to get back into bed, to try to find some peace and joy together, then you can stay. But if you want to apologize for wanting me, you can leave.”

I swallow hard, but there’s only one thing I can do.

My feet suddenly weigh a thousand tons. My head swims with the certainty that I will regret this moment until my final day. And my heart beats with a terrible truth, that I can’t possibly stay in this room. Josh was wrong when he said I was still holding on to that baby bird in the closet. I have to let her go. And so I walk out of the room, my expression stoic as it slams behind me. We can’t be on the same side of the door, not when I’m trapped in hell.

SAMANTHA

I grew up without being able to count on my father. Even when Liam North became my guardian, part of me had already learned not to trust grown-ups. They only wanted to tell me what to do, only wanted me to please them. Some things are learned deep in your bones.

I couldn’t wait to become an adult so that I could make my own decisions. Now that I’m here, I realize something was missing in my dreams of adulthood. I can make my own choices; I can choose Liam, but I can’t make him choose me. The sky is full of wind and storm; my wings only take me so far.

That’s how I find myself playing the Lady Tennant, my own composition of loss and heartbreak. It makes me think of biting cold and lonely nights. I thought I wanted to graduate from high school, to turn eighteen, to play on a tour—when all I really wanted was not to be left behind.

That’s what’s happening, even if I’m the one walking out the door.

We’re not going to be pen pals. I may be an adult now, but Liam still makes the rules. I can’t make him write or call or visit me. And I definitely can’t make him love me.

The composition ends abruptly, written only in my head.

It felt wrong to give it one last sorrowful note.

It felt final.

Now the true end comes to me, a silvery line that flutters, uncertain. It darts this way and that, caught on some uplifting wind.

The notes rise higher, ending on the auspice of hope.

Only a few months ago, my bow fell still in the middle of a song. Now it comes to a graceful close at the end of one I wrote myself. Instead of waiting for Liam to react to the silence, I stand and cross the threshold.

He sits at his office, not making any pretense of work. His large flat-screen monitor is dark. The black leather blotter on his desk is empty. The lamp is off.