Page 113 of Never Forget
"A door that I didn't want to walk through."
"We were doing something good for you, Sam?—"
"Yeah, it's good." I cut her off. "Just not the kind of good I want for myself, Amber."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means college is good. Your father's money is good. The life you were planning—it's a good life. For someone else. Not for me."
"I was building us a future."
"No. You were buildingyourfuture. And you just expected me to follow along."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. She didn't have anything to say.
I let her sit in it for a second.
"And Jack."
Her face moved.
"You told her about Jack."
"Doesn't she have the right to know the truth?"
"From me, Amber. She had the right to know the truth from me. You used my guilt and her grief to get what you wanted. That's what you did."
Her eyes filled.
"I did it because I love you, Sam."
"This isn't love, Amber. This is something else."
And standing there, looking at her, I saw it all at once. The dinners at her father's club where I'd been seated next to someone "I ought to meet." The shirts she'd bought me in a size I'd never said I wore. The way she'd talked about our future like it was a plan she was halfway through executing and I'd been filled in on the wrong page. I hadn't been her boyfriend. I'd been a renovation.
She didn't answer.
"Give me the keys."
She stared at me.
"My apartment keys. The ones you still have. Give them to me."
"Sam—"
"Now, Amber."
She didn't move.
"Are you going to handle this like a grown woman? Or do I have to speak to your father to get you to do anything right?"
Her face went red.
She turned without saying anything and walked into the house. I stayed where I was. I didn't follow her. I didn't want to watch her walk through her hallway to her bedroom to retrieve a thing she should never have had in the first place.
She came back a minute later and dropped them into my palm.
I closed my hand around them.
