Page 80 of Tell Me Again
Grace moved out of his arms, wrinkling her nose. “You must really have it bad if you’re defending her. Normally you don’t give anyone a second chance.”
A second chance. Isn’t that what he wanted with Sam? It made sense to give a little if he expected the same from her.
“I’m not talking about her party-girl days,” Grace said, picking up her laptop from the desk in the corner of the kitchen and setting it on the counter in front of him. “I mean the photos.”
“Right. She was beautiful. She is beautiful.”
“Did you follow her career?” Grace asked as she typed a few words into the search bar. An entire page of thumbnail images popped onto the screen, drawing Trevor closer. He blew out a breath as Grace clicked on a black-and-white photo to enlarge it.
It showed Sam standing at the edge of a pounding surf, clouds billowing across the sky behind her. Her arms were spread, long and graceful, with her face tipped up to the sky and her hair blowing behind her. She wore a simple white cover-up with the outline of a bathing suit apparent underneath it.
The way the shadows and light played across the photo made her look otherworldly and a bit fey, as if she were one with the ocean and offering herself up for the pleasure of the crashing waves. The photo was so different than the ones he’d glimpsed through the years, the over-airbrushed makeup and fashion spreads.
Longing stabbed through him, hot and sharp. This is how he wanted her, unencumbered by the mistakes and disappointments of life. Pure. That’s how she was in this photo.
“There are fan sites that catalog her career,” Grace told him, unaware of the effect this one photo had on him. She continued to scroll through the images. It was clear she’d spent some time studying the many facets of Sam’s life in front of the camera.
He touched his finger to the screen when one of the photos caught his attention. “Let me see that one.” He recognized the photo before it filled the screen.
“She’s really young there,” Grace murmured, her voice a little dazed.
He understood why. The resemblance between Grace and Sam was undeniable. The photo of Sam—taken when she was only a few years older than his daughter was now—felt like viewing a muted version of Grace.
“I’ve seen this photo before. A photographer took it on one of her first trips to New York City. I think he was someone famous. She brought a few of the photos back to Colby. It’s when I knew she was going to make it big.”
The images were surreal. Sam was fresh-faced and nearly makeup free, her blond hair trailing across the center of her back. She didn’t have the ease in front of the camera that was on display in the beach photo, but there was an indefinable quality that had gotten under Trevor’s skin when she’d shyly showed him the pictures.
It was the same afternoon that she asked him to leave school and go to Europe. She’d kissed him and said she loved him and asked him to leave with her. To leave their sweltering, suffocating town and not look back.
He’d said no, of course. He’d pushed her away with his rudeness and his fear. His fear that she would amount to something and he’d hold her back and then she’d leave him and he’d never recover. Even as a kid, he’d understood Sam Carlton might be his downfall.
