Page 88 of Love Everlasting

“Ain’t enough soap in the world,” Jack hissed, scorching Sam with another look before he finally left the room.

“You should have let him deck me.” Sam’s voice was barely a whisper as he dropped to sit on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped and head in his hands. “He needs the release … and so do I.”

“Why’d you do it, Sam?” Chase slowly lowered to sit beside him, hands loosely clasped. “Over and above the bottle of scotch, what possessed you to reopen the wounds that almost destroyed Shannon’s life?”

“How much do you know?” Sam whispered, the question hoarse with pain.

“Everything. From Shannon’s painful past, to what went on here last night, till she cried herself to sleep early this morning.”

Sam lifted his head, a sheen of moisture marring his gaze as he lagged into a lost stare. “Shannon is the world to me, Chase, everything I ever dreamed of … and everything I’ve never been. Clean. Pure. Untainted by my world, which in my mind has always been a cesspool, no matter how hard I try to dress it up. So when my buddies from college told me the truth about her …” His eyes met Chase’s. “I lost it. All I could think of was her sleeping with that slimeball professor, not giving a whit that she was destroying a marriage.”

“She didn’t know,” Chase said quietly. “Not that what she did wasn’t wrong, because it was, but Jack told me the jerk lied to her. Told her he was divorced when he wasn’t.”

Looking away, Sam slashed shaky fingers through his hair, his tone gruff. “Come on, Rev, Shannon’s one of the most brilliant women I know. She couldn’t figure out that a professor on campus is married? Even if she wasn’t smart enough to research it first, somebody had to tell her.”

“Nobody knew.”

“What?” Sam stared, brows in a bunch. “What do you mean nobody knew?”

Chase stretched out his legs. “I mean it wasn’t a professor on campus; it was a visiting speaker from Stanford, highly regarded in his field.” He slid Sam a sober look. “He met Shannon during his visit and arranged to take a six-month sabbatical at her university. To do research, Jack said, but it’s pretty clear what that research involved.”

Sam’s jaw dropped. “What a lying sack of—”

“Yeah, he was,” Chase interrupted. “It appears he proposed just to coerce Shannon into intimacies, keeping her in the dark along with his wife and children.” His gaze drifted off like Sam’s had before while a nerve twittered in his cheek. “Jack said even as a little girl, Shannon was always so innocent and vulnerable, the twin who always did what her mother asked and always gave in to her sister. While Cat climbed trees and beat up boys, Shannon was the gentle dreamer who always played dress-up as a bride, longing for a fairytale marriage and vowing to save herself for Mr. Right.” Chase’s mouth twisted. “Only Mr. Right turned out to be Mr. Dead Wrong, a creep who managed to disarm both Shannon and her faith.

“I didn’t know,” Sam whispered.

“Of course you didn’t because gossip isn’t interested in the truth.”

Sam peered up, both fatigue and regret etched in his brow. “What happened with the wife? I heard she went ballistic when she found them”—a knot ducked in Sam’s throat—“you know, together, and that she pulled a gun.”

“That much is true, causing a huge splash in the papers when the wife trashed his apartment before taking potshot at her husband and Shannon in the quadrangle.” His mouth thinned into a hard line. “Right before she drove off a bridge, further exacerbating an already volatile and high-profile drama, which fortunately the wife survived.” Chase expelled a harsh breath. “But Shannon almost didn’t. She was so traumatized she fled and totaled her car on the way home, ending up in the hospital pretty banged up.” He flexed his fingers, barely aware he’d been clenching them while his gut cramped over the awful guilt and anguish Shannon incurred. “Jack said the entire mess triggered a year-long breakdown for Shannon, robbing her of the will to live. The guilt was bad enough, but the papers raked her over the coals so much, Jack said she’d wished she had died in that crash. Apparently she dropped out of school and slept most days for a solid year, little more than a zombie the entire time.” His jaw ached from clenching his teeth. “And all because of some sleazebag player who promised to love her forever.”

Sam hung his head, arms limp over his legs, and when his shoulders began to shake, Chase realized he was weeping. “God forgive me,” he whispered, the sound as broken as the man.

“He does, Sam,” Chase said quietly, “and so does Shannon.”

Sam shook his head vehemently, voice harsh. “No, I don’t deserve it, and I definitely don’t deserve her.”

“None of us do, man, which is why the grace of God is so awesome. Unmerited favor, Doc. Can’t earn it, can’t steal it, can’t buy it.” He laid a hand on Sam’s shoulder, a hint of jest in his tone. “Although God knows you’ve tried, more than any human being I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, I have,” Sam said numbly, eyes glazed with moisture as he stared straight ahead. “‘Trappings,’ Shannon calls them, all those things I do and buy to make myself feel worthy.”

Chase exhaled softly, grateful Sam had filled him in on his abandonment by his mother at a very young age. He paused. “Worthy enough so someone will stay forever?”

Sam laughed, the sound bitter as he slapped at the wetness in his eyes. “Yeah, something like that.”

Chase squeezed Sam’s shoulder before letting go. “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” he quoted, just saying the words out loud bringing a calm to his soul. “And He won’t, Sam, and I say that from hard experience. He never deserted me in the burnt-out hovels of Iraq when enemy fire was raining down, nor when snipers picked off my buddies like fleas on a dog. And you know what?” Tears stung the back of his lids as he thought of the irreplaceable friend who had tirelessly tried to teach him about faith. “Not even those buddies who knew Him,” he whispered, “because the moment a bullet stole their last breath, He became their next, standing right alongside to usher them into a world without hate and pain. A world that makes this one look like a trash heap, man, where all the abandonment, all the betrayal, all the sin of any kind, is burned away by the blinding beauty of His unfailing love.” Emotion grew thick in his throat. “A love that will never—just like our God—leave us nor forsake us.”

“Love Everlasting …” Sam whispered, staring off into space once again. “Something Shannon talks about a lot.”

“Because it’s something she discovered when she was in the bowels of hell, just like I did in the crossfires of Iraq, and like Jack did with his father and Lacey with hers. ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love,’ God said, which is the only thing we can really bank on in this life, Sam, the only thing we can truly put our confidence in. Not in things. Not in people. And definitely not in ourselves.”

Sam grunted.

“And you know the best part? Nothing you do or say can take it away. Nor anything anyone else does or says—nothing! ‘Neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.’” He slapped him on the back and rose. “So. What are you going to do about Shannon?”

Sam gouged at the bridge of his nose, eyes closed and a pained expression on his face. “Apologize if she’ll let me, although she hasn’t answered my texts or calls between the time she left last night and when I finally fell asleep.” He exhaled long and slow, as if letting everything go. “And then I’ll leave her alone, which is what she obviously wants.”