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I don’t fall apart, even though I want to. I can’t do that in front of her. But having her helps me more than she’ll ever know.
When the elevator doors ping at the penthouse suite, I finally let go and pick up the casserole again.
“I got a babysitter for the evening,” Natalie says softly. “But I can’t stay the night.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” I say.
“Are you okay?”
I shake my head. “No, but I will be. I just need time to process.”
“I wish there’s a way I can help,” she says.
I take her hand, intertwining our fingers.
“Natalie, having you here is helping.”
Chapter 22
Natalie
Sam only lives a few miles from me. It’s hard to imagine we’ve been living so close to each other, but we’ve never run into each other in a store or something. I guess Sam and I don’t move in the same circles, and we don’t have the same habits.
I was grateful for that before. Now, I’m starting to think it’s a damn shame we’ve waited this long to connect again. But everything happens when it should, and I like to think that him appearing in my life again now is all for a reason.
Nothing happens by chance, right?
I try not to dissect that thought too much—I can easily say Mason and I were meant to be together, so when Michelle got sick, fate made her ask me to go to the auction date in her place. But it’s not so easy to think about David passing away and what that must have meant. Was that supposed to happen, too? You can’t just pick and choose fate as the answer when it works for you. Either you believe in it or don’t.
It’s too confusing, so I let it go and focus on the meeting at hand.
Sam’s apartment building has a door I need to be buzzed into before I can go up. He buzzes me in and I walk up to his third-floor apartment. He’s already waiting for me in the door when I reach the top of the stairs, winded.
“Do you do this every day?” I ask.
“Yeah. You get used to it after a while. And it lets me eat as many Devil Dogs as I want.” He grins at me and I laugh, shaking my head.
“I can’t stand Devil Dogs. David loved them just as much.”
Sam nods, and for a moment, silence hangs between us as we think about him.
“Come on in,” Sam says a moment later and steps back.
His apartment is stylish. The parquet floor gleams as if it’s been polished to within an inch of its life. Modern couches huddle together intimately with a television against the wall, a small dining room table blocks off the living area from the open-plan kitchen, and it’s a pleasant space to be in.
“Your place is lovely,” I say.
“It’s Feng Shui,” Sam says, glancing around. “I think it flows much better now. I read a book about it.”
I don’t know what it looked like before, but it works now.
“Coffee?” Sam offers and I nod. He tells me to take a seat in the living room while he makes coffee in the kitchen, and I perch on the edge of the couch. I tuck my handbag next to me.
“I can’t stay too long. I have another appointment soon.”
“That’s fine. I just wanted to let you know what’s happening,” Sam says from the kitchen, his voice rising over the sound of his espresso machine. “How’s work going?”
“Very well. It looks like they want me to go in a new direction. It’s exciting.”
