The Golden Couple (The Samantha Project Series, # 2) (41 page)

“Because it wasn’t last Saturday was it, Erik?” Colin launched himself at Erik again, his fist aimed and ready. Jack and Dave could barely hold him back.
 

“He can hit me again,” Erik said to his dad. “Go ahead. Let him. I’d want to hit him, too, if it were the other way around.”

“That’s not going to help, son.”

Colin pushed Jack and Dave away and put his focus back on me. “How long has this really been going on, Sam?”
 

The pain in his eyes was killing me. I tried to turn away but he wouldn’t let me. He came up right in front of me and waited for me to look at him. His voice was calmer now but filled with disappointment. “Sam. Tell me. How long? Right after you met him?”

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know how.

“Sam, I spent day and night looking for you after you went missing. Was all this going on back then? Was this what you were doing while I was being captured and drugged and beaten by GlobalLife?”

“No! That’s not what happened!” Tears poured from my eyes.

“Enough of this!” Dave stood in front of Colin, blocking him from me. “Neither one of you is in a condition to talk right now.”

Colin ignored him. “Were you two together all that time we were on the road? Were you lying to me that whole time? You said you loved me, Sam. You JUST said it. Just this morning. Was that all a lie?”

“No! Of course not. I do love you, Colin. I would never lie about that.”
 

“Colin, let’s go back to your room.” Dave put his hand firmly on Colin’s shoulder, turning him away from me. Colin didn’t protest. I watched the two of them walk back down the hall.

“Dad, can we have a minute?” Erik asked.

Jack reluctantly agreed. “But you and I are going to have a chat as soon as you’re done here.”
 

I sat down next to Erik in total disbelief over what had just happened.
 

“I’m sorry he had to find out that way, Sam. I didn’t see him coming down the hall. If I had, I would’ve—”

“He hates me, Erik. Colin hates me.” I wiped the tears off my face. “I told you he’d never forgive me.”

“Well, you were right when you said he’d try to kill me.” Erik’s attempt at humor wasn’t helping. He got serious again. “Let him cool off, Sam. He doesn’t even know the whole story yet.”

“He doesn’t need to! He’ll never believe it. And besides, even if I don’t remember us having sex, we did plenty of other stuff I’m not proud of.”

Erik didn’t respond. My comment made it sound like every intimate moment we had shared was bad or wrong. And I knew he didn’t agree.

“I’m just saying that I shouldn’t have let our relationship get as far as it did. I should have put a stop to things before we ended up here.”

“A stop to what, Sam? The physical stuff? Or everything? Are you saying you regret how close we’ve become? Because I don’t regret anything we’ve done. And it sucks to hear that you do.”

“Of course I have regrets. Colin would never have done something like this to me. And I didn’t think I was capable of doing something like this to him. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. In a million years I never wanted to do this to Colin. I never wanted him to feel this way. And did you see how he looked at me? With so much anger and disappointment?”

“Yeah, I got the same look from my dad,” Erik muttered.

“Colin’s been mad at me before, but this is so much different. He won’t forgive me like he’s done in the past.”

“You’ve been friends since you were kids, right? He’s not going to throw that all away.”

“Why would he stay friends with me? I lied to him. I cheated on him. I betrayed his trust.”

“Just explain to him that the whole thing between us was engineered by GlobalLife.”

“He’s not going to believe that, Erik.
You
don’t even believe that. I’m the only one who seems to think that it’s true.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know,” I said, wishing I had never gotten out of bed that morning.