Page 59 of Stand

Her lips were so tight he could feel their strain. He avoided a sigh and carefully pulled onto the shoulder. He’d barely stopped before Sam had jumped out of the car and hopped the barrier before taking off across a scrubby unused field.

“Sam!” he shouted through the open door. “You can’t just—”

She was running. She wasn’t going to hear him.

He was quite capable of imagining an out-of-control semi suddenly showing up on this two-lane highway and plowing them all. Welp, if Sam didn’t care about her car, he wasn’t going to either. “Kids, get out. Lyss, get out on Matt’s side.” He went to the back to let out Cairo, who had whimpered as soon as his mistress left the car.

He instructed the kids to climb the barrier and wait on the safe side of it, well away from the traffic.

“What is she doing?” Matt asked.

Hell if Ty knew. He didn’t know anything about Sam, if he was honest with himself. Four days in her vicinity did not a relationship make. She sure the hell wasn’t confiding anything in him this time. And if jumping out of a car on a major highway hadn’t been enough to convince him she wasn’t up for sharing, her face at the diner sure had.

She’d reached almost three-quarters of the way across the field now. Cai pulled at his leash and whined again. Another set of trees stood on the far side. Would she stop there? Would she remember that they couldn’t wait on the side of the road forever? Or was this really who Sam Fielding was—just as self-centered as he’d thought when he’d seen her again five days ago?

Good thing he was staring after her, because otherwise he would have missed the moment when she disappeared. One second her head was there, moving in the rhythm of her steps, the grass around her hiding the rest of her body—the next it wasn’t. Had she fallen? Sat down? What if she’d twisted her ankle or hit her head?

He didn’t realize he’d thrown Cairo’s leash at Matt and was running after her until he heard Matt yell, “Dad!”

“Stay away from the road!” he shouted over his shoulder. He had to find her. Something was wrong.

Even though he thought he ran in a straight line, he was off course by a few feet, and only when he heard her could he see her. She was cross-legged in a patch of deep grass, her head in her hands, and she was sobbing.

Ty’s heart cracked right in two. His mother had cried a few times since his father left, but they’d been quiet tears, quickly stifled when Ty came into the room. Julia’s tears had been copious and messy, designed to intrude and then to get her way. He’d never seen anything like this. He and his kids had broken Sam.

The only thing he could think was that he had to hold her together. Literally if necessary.

♦

Sam didn’t know he was there until she felt his hand warm her knee. Rain had fallen recently and the grasses were soaking through her shorts, cooling her legs and making her tears disappear into the ground. If she could just disappear, too, that would begreat.

But Ty bloody Cavanaugh wouldn’t let her disappear. His hand kept her there, reminded her of the present, of her situation, of all the phone calls she’d just made and how fucking awful she felt. Her chest hurt from this embarrassing crying.No onegot to see her cry.No one.Except Ty freaking Cavanaugh.

“Get lost, Ty,” she croaked. Her body shuddered, and she let out another sob before she could stop herself.

“Sam,” he said. And screw him if his voice wasn’t as comforting as a warm blanket on her cold legs. “Sweetheart,” he added, and Sam sobbedagain. “You can’t do this to yourself,” he went on.

“The fuck I can’t,” she said shakily. Who was he to tell her what she could and couldn’t do? Even if that was despising herself and everything she’d decided she stood for? Closing the door on the past, being the badass butt-kicker of the archaeological world, never looking back, never going home, preferring ancient civilizations to the ones she came from? It had worked for so long, and now along came Ty and his kids and dared to show her that there were some things you couldn’t walk away from.

She could at least hide her face from him, as blotched and damp as it had to be. She still had some pride left. But Ty sat next to her on the wet ground and stretched his long legs out on either side of her, and she could feel him along her legs and back. And he began to gently rub her back, the bastard, showing her without words that he empathized, that he was there for her, that he was here for this.

“Go away,” she whispered one last time.

“Can’t,” he whispered back. “Sam, has anyone ever just hugged you because you needed a hug?”

“Shutup,” she said, because the last person to do that had been Ty, in a closet. Eighteen years ago. Like a complete fool, she laughed. Worse still, she leaned into him, and now he’d wrapped his arms around her and was holding her so tight, she couldn’t move. His breath was on her neck and his forehead against her hair, and he was whispering things, kind things, warming things, and making her cry and laugh more. The rat bastard.

“You don’t know me,” she said.

“Sure, I do,” he said, his voice not even rising to the tops of the stalks of grass. “You’re fearless. You’re brave. You’re kind. You love endlessly and never look for that love for yourself. You live your life like a grizzly bear”—she laughed again and her body went limp in his arms—“you’ll yell when you think you need to, but you’ll fight to the death for people you care about.” His breath skittered on her neck. “Even people you’ve just met.”

Her face was in his chest now, her whole body given over to leaning sideways into him. If she hadn’t been completely exhausted, she would have been disgusted with herself.

“I’m selfish,” she said, trying to keep the distance somehow. “I didn’t come back because I didn’t want to come back. I let my sisters suffer because I wanted to get away so bad.”

“You were a kid,” he said. “You can’t blame yourself for protecting yourself.”

“And I’m afraid ofeverything,” she went on, shaking her head. “I’m afraid of all the people in town. I’m afraid of anyone finding out who I was, who I really am.” More tears fell onto his shirt. “Those phone calls reminded me. I can’t get away from it. I shouldn’t get away from it.”

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