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The occasional night with her wasn’t enough. He wanted more. And Sam wasn’t going to stop until he had it.
He brought pizza and that need to be with her. To just be in the same damn room with her. To be able to look into those eyes that had haunted him for too long and realize he had a second chance to make things right.
“Bringing a pizza is cheating,” Lacy told him, settling back into the couch with a slice of that pizza on a stoneware plate.
He laughed. “How? Gotta eat. You always loved pizza.”
“Please.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Everyone loves pizza.”
“Not many people love it with pepperoni and pineapple.”
She took a bite and gave a soft groan of pleasure that had his body tightening in response. “Peasants who don’t know what’s good,” she said with a shrug.
Ordinarily he might enjoy bantering with her, but tonight, he couldn’t seem to settle. Sam set his pizza aside and looked into the fire that burned cheerily in the hearth. The hiss and crackle of flames was a soothing sound, but it did nothing for the edginess he felt. He couldn’t shake that conversation with Kristi.
“What’s wrong?”
He looked at her, firelight dancing across her face, highlighting the gold of her hair lying loose across her shoulders. That same flickering light glittered in her eyes as she watched him. She wore jeans, a deep red sweater and a pair of striped socks, and still, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“Sam? What is it?”
He got to his feet, stalked to the fireplace and planted both hands on the mantel as he stared into the flames. “I talked to Kristi today.”
“I know. She told me.”
Of course she had. Women told each other everything—a fact that gave most men cold chills just to think about it. He turned to look at her. “Did she tell you that she’s been putting her whole damn life on pause because of what I did two years ago?”
“Yeah, she did.”
He pushed one hand through his hair, turned his back on the fire and faced her dead on. His brain was racing; guilt raked his guts with sharpened claws. “I never realized, you know, how much my decisions two years ago affected everyone else.”
Lacy set her pizza aside and folded her hands in her lap as she looked at him. “How could they not, Sam?”
Scrubbing the back of his neck, he blurted, “Yeah, I see that now. But back then, I couldn’t see past my own pain. My own misery.”
“You wouldn’t let any of us help. You shut us all out, Sam.”
“I know that,” he said tightly. “I do. But I couldn’t reach out to you, Lacy. Not when the guilt was eating me alive.”
“Why should you feel guilty about what happened to Jack? I don’t understand that at all.”
He blew out a breath, swallowed hard and admitted, “When Jack first got sick—diagnosed with leukemia—that’s when the guilt started.”
“Sam, why? You didn’t make him sick.”
He choked out a sharp laugh. “No, I didn’t. But I was healthy and that was enough. We were identical twins, Lacy. The same damn egg made us both. So why was he sick and I wasn’t? Jack never said it, but I know he was thinking it because I was. Why him? Why not me?”
A soft sigh escaped her and he didn’t know if it was sympathy or frustration.
Didn’t matter now anyway. He was finally telling her exactly what had been going through his head back then, and he had to get it finished. But damn, it was harder than he would have thought. Shaking his head, he reached up to scrub one hand across the back of his neck and started talking again.
“I was with Jack through the whole thing, but I couldn’t share it. Couldn’t take my half of it and make it easier on him.” His hand fisted and he thumped it uselessly against his side as his mind took him back to the darkest days of his life. “I felt so damn helpless, Lacy. I couldn’t do anything.”
“You did do something, though, Sam,” she reminded him. “You gave him bone marrow. You gave him a chance and it worked.”
He snorted at the reminder of how high their hopes had been. Of the relief Sam had felt for finally being able to help his twin. To save his life. “For all the good it did in the end.”
“I never knew you were feeling all of this.” She stood up, walked to him and looked into his eyes. “Why didn’t you talk to me about this then, Sam?”
He blew out a breath. Meeting her eyes was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Trying to explain the unexplainable was just as difficult. “How could I tell my wife that I felt guilty for being married? Happy? Alive?” He pushed both hands through his hair, then sucked in air like a drowning man hoping for a few more seconds of life before the sea dragged him down. “God, Lacy, you were loving me and Jack had no one.”
