Page 67 of The Final Storm
“You’re my wife.” His response is calm, unaffected.
“You can just… let her go? I know we’re having the same conversation over and over…” I trail off.
Sam pauses in the hallway, staring straight ahead. We’re high inside the ship, and it’s quiet and empty. I imagine this is an invitation-only location, and few people venture up here.
He turns to me and sighs while I lean back on the wall, crossing my arms at my front.
“It had to be impossible to sit in front of the Captain, next to the woman you’re still technically married to, holding the baby you had with a woman you-”
“Stop,” Sam says. He cups my face with his hands and gives me a swift kiss on the lips to stop them from moving. “Cecilia and I have been apart for a long time. Before the third storm, before this.” He takes my hand and presses it to his chest, covering it with his.
“You were married to her. You loved her,” I argue. “And she’s alive. You were torn up for weeks about it.”
“I was upset about hurting you, my wife, who had to suffer through her daughter being trapped in a plastic box while her best friend lost her mind. I had to work to keep us here, and I couldn’t be around.” Sam takes in a deep breath, his eyes searching mine when he squeezes my hand harder. “I was scared of losing you.”
He steps closer, pinning me against the wall. “I loved her, yes.”
I wiggle my fingers free of his grasp and turn my head. The honest words I asked for slice into my heart, even though I’ve always known them to be true.
He brings a finger under my chin and turns me back to face him. “But the woman I loved is gone.”
My jaw drops, and I scoff. “She’s on this boat.”
“She’s dead and gone,” Sam argues. “I don’t know who that woman is that’s arguing with the captain about staying my wife. She’s so different. Everything about her has transformed, and I don’t know if it’s her time with the AOE or what she went through during the storms, but there’s not a shadow of the woman I married left. There’s no trace of Cecilia Rivera. I can promise you that. I am sad about that. You would’ve…”
“Liked her,” I mock. I think about that and swallow hard, remembering the Cecilia he told me about before they entered the AOE. The woman who was so enraged at her family’s betrayal that she dove into the pits of hell to get her revenge.
And she lost herself there.
I respected that fire. I’ve felt it myself. The flames burned me from the inside out, and I welcomed the pain. It was worth the scars left behind.
“I think she may have… had something to do with my attack,” I mumble.
“I don’t think you do,” Sam argues.
Do I?I don’t know anymore. She sounds like a woman grasping at straws, not a master manipulator. Not everyone is Dean Riggs, and I struggle to remember that.
“I don’t think she had anything to do with it,” Sam affirms. “I think she’s an inconvenience - a nuisance. She might throw you off the side of the boat if you were looking over the edge, but-”
“Too soon for a joke,” I spit at him.
“But even then, I don’t think she could. She just kept staring at Morgan with more longing than hatred. I feel…” He pauses, unable to say the words I know are there.
“Bad for her,” I finish his sentence.
He nods.
I lean forward, bringing our foreheads together. “What are we going to do?”
“Whatever we have to,” Sam says. “We’ll survive this. We’re in this together. Cecilia isn’t something to worry about. She needs… I can’t believe I’m saying this… support, maybe. Help.”
I take a few breaths, letting his words dance around in my mind. My vision was of her telling me she didn’t want me here, and that’s true. She felt rage and sadness and told me to leave, but if I were in her place, I would do the same. Those feelings would be my own.
“You don’t believe she had anything to do with it?” I repeat. “That’s not just guilt driving you?”
“It would shock the hell out of me. And I’ve had the woman I love inform me she sees the future, and I’m not stunned by that.”
“And the past,” I remind him.
