Page 110 of The Love Lie
“I could never.”
“Set a plague on both my houses?”
“We’re from the same house, idiot.”
“Huh.” Sam relaxes on the toilet and drops her chin into her palm. “I guess you really are the nice one.”
“Maybe.” Em snorts. “Or I could just tell Mom you said you’re finally ready to settle down and get married.”
“You devious little bitch!” Sam gasps in mock horror, then grins despite herself. “It’s brilliant.”
“Yeah. Let’s see how you like it when she shows up onWake Up, America!demanding you get a boyfriend too.”
Maybe it’s finally time to come clean. About the engagement. About Cooper. About all of it.
“Hey, Em?”
“Yeah?”
I am completely head-over-heels in love with Cooper Kelley.
The truth sits there like a weight on her heart. She already knows what Emily will say.Go after him. Come clean. I don’t care.But just as Em won’t let Sam bear her burdens, Sam won’tlet Em bear hers either. She’s got to figure her own way out of the mess she made.
“I love you.”
“Love you too, sis.”
In the ringing silence that follows, Sam thinks about how easy those three words are to say to her sister.I love you.As simple as breathing. As innate as her heartbeat.
It could be like that with Cooper.
If she lets it.
Emily’s explanation turns over in her mind, again and again, as though if she keeps flipping it and twisting it and dissecting it, the truth will emerge.We weren’t prepared to fight for each other, but we are now. And that’s what made the difference.
Cooper’s been fighting. For every step she took away, he took one closer, keeping them connected, keeping them bound. Wasn’t that his parting promise?
I can’t stop fighting. I won’t.
She’s the weak link.
She’s the missing piece.
She’s the only thing keeping both of them from living happily ever after. And maybeever afterwon’t be forever. Maybe it will. There’s no way to know. But there’s suddenly something that scares Sam a hell of a lot more than Cooper leaving her—the thought of never having him in the first place. Never seeing him again. Never wiping that stupid smirk from his face. Never slipping that hat over her head and kissing him against the backdrop of the fading sun. The idea is so suffocating, the bathroom walls cave in, the ceiling drops, the floor lifts. She’s Alice in the shrinking house, the pressure so immense she can’t breathe.
One moment of courage is all it’ll take to get everything she wants.
One brief, beautiful moment of wild abandon.
A switch flips in the back of her mind. An idea comes to her, the same way all her best ones always have, like a bomb exploding in reverse, the messy debris fusing back together to form the perfect picture. There’s a way to save Emily’s business. To help Cooper keep his. To get her dream job and her dream man and her dream life. There’s a way to fix everything, if she’s brave enough to reach out and take it.
Sam lifts her phone. She pulls up her messages. She taps Nina’s name. A series of unanswered texts flood the screen. The ones she’s been ignoring ever since she got back from Nebraska, a silence that must’ve prompted the producer to take action by calling Emily in the first place. Because somehow that terrible, conniving, brilliant woman always seems to know exactly what Sam needs, and what she needed this time was a push.
She briefly wonders if she should run it by Cooper first, maybe tell Em, but the impulse fades. There are too many factors to work out, too many things that could go wrong. The last thing she wants to do is give either of them false hope. And as she told Cooper over the weekend, it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Sam types her message to Nina—I figured out our final step—and hits send.
The reply is immediate.About damn time.
