Page 9 of But For You

“No.” I shut Sam down, eyes wide as I waited. “Where’s my automobile?”

“We, um”—the officer coughed as he passed me a business card from his clipboard—“had it towed to a garage downtown and⁠—”

“Just stop,” Sam barked at me, snatching the card away. “Sit here while I go find your doctor and figure out if you have a concussion or⁠—”

“Sam—”

“After I get you home, then we’ll worry about the damn van.”

“I can⁠—”

“Stop,” he ordered again, and because I didn’t want to cause a scene, I went still and quiet and stared at the clock on the wall.

The officer muttered something and left, and Sam told me that he had to go and find out about the other people in the accident and would see about my release at the same time.

I stayed quiet.

“You’re gonna pout now?”

I turned my head and was about to say something when he lifted his hand.

“I don’t wanna fight with you. Just let me do this.”

“I’m not a child, Sam. I can take care of my own car. I can do⁠—”

“So, I shouldn’t be here? I shouldn’t have even come?”

“No, I just … lately, it seems to be The Sam Show and not The Sam and Jory Show. You do everything, and I don’t get why that’s happening.”

His eyes searched mine.

“Sam? Do you think I’m helpless?”

The glare I was getting would have terrified most people. But this was the man who loved me, and as always, when I stopped and actually used my brain, I understood what was really going on.

He was terrified.

I had scared the crap out of him that morning, and because he was waiting for the other shoe to drop anyway … it was almost like he was expecting bad news. And he was—he was expecting the worst.

“You think Kola and Hannah and I could get taken away.”

“What? No,” he said quietly, not a lot of force behind his words. “No,” he finished, as though trying to convince himself.

He was such a liar.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, putting my hands on his heavily muscled chest, unable to stop myself from curling my fingers into his shirt, holding on.

Yes, he was being overprotective, but not for the reasons I’d thought. He didn’t think I was stupid; he just didn’t want to let me, or his kids, out of his sight for any reason. Not ever. And because he was trying not to be suffocating, he was managing the exact opposite.

“I wasn’t thinking.”

He took a breath. “What’re you talking about?”

“The more you work, the more you see, the more you realize that this—what we have—is not the norm. Most people don’t get the kind of happiness that we have, the home we have, so you get overprotective and smothering.”

He furrowed his brows, and I smiled up at him as I hooked my legs around the back of his thighs. He leaned closer, hands on either side of me on the narrow hospital bed.

“You think you know me?”