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A hand landed on my shoulder, but he didn’t try to turn me to face him. “What could be so wrong in the life of Piper Amato that warrants running away?” His voice was unsympathetic, as if he didn’t believe anything in my world could be so terrible. As if he thought I was being dramatic.
“Where would I even start?” I muttered, too low for him to hear.
Or at least I thought I was being quiet enough to not be heard.
“That’s not much of an answer,” Samuel said. “I’m in danger of thinking nothing’s wrong at all.”
I spun on him. “Go ahead and judge me without knowing the first thing about me. Everyone else does, so I should be used to it by now.”
He didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed or apologetic. His dark eyes met mine, intense and challenging. “Convince me I’m wrong in my judgments.”
I shrugged out of his touch and walked to the edge of the garden, propping my elbows on one of the low walls that encircled the roof and looking out at the city below. I needed to put space between Samuel and me. I couldn’t think with his gaze boring into mine.
“I’ve lived my whole life in a spotlight.” I let out a breath that seemed to take all my energy with it. “Someone’s always watching, judging. I’ve done my best to fit into my family’s image of perfection and grace, but I’m so tired of putting on an act all the time. My life is not a movie for the benefit of everyone who wants to gossip about me.”
“So you’re sick of being popular?”
“I’m sick of being surrounded by people all the time and still feeling so lonely. I can’t trust anyone, and it’s exhausting to constantly watch my back, to keep up the masks I have to show the world.”
“You could just be yourself, the person God created you to be.”
I shook my head at him, meeting his gaze. “If I show them the real me, then when they judge me, it’s personal. An image of perfection is boring—it’s the closest I can get to being left alone, to having privacy.”
“And running around Boston in your brother’s pajamas is your idea of a perfect image?” His lips quirked like he was debating smiling but wasn’t committed to the action.
“No.” I laughed through my tears. “Not at all. But I just couldn’t do perfection tonight.”
“Why?” Was it my imagination or was his voice softening?
“Because I overheard my parents planning out my marriage without me. After everything I’ve done to protect the family reputation, they can’t even trust me to pick my own husband or respect me enough to, at the very least, include me in the conversation.”
“You do realize it’s the twenty-first century, right? I’m pretty sure you have a say in who or if you marry.”
“It’s not that I think they’d try to force me into anything.” I let out a long breath. “It’s the principle of it all. I don’t want to think about my family having someone picked out for me. What if I want to marry someone who isn’t wealthy, or proper, or Italian? What if I pick my own husband and they’re disappointed?”
I turned my back to the city and sat on the flat top of the wall, like I do on the kitchen counters at home when I’m watching Mamma cook.
Samuel moved closer, his hands going straight to my hips as if he’d done this a hundred times before. Warmth radiated from his touch, bleeding into the fabric of my pajama bottoms and spreading into the rest of my body.
“I’m going to let you in on a secret,” he said, looking at me through the bangs that fell into his eyes. “No one makes it through life unscathed. You can either face it head-on or hide and spend your life running. But there’s power in knowing yourself and being yourself without apology. And maybe, more importantly, there’s freedom in it.”
“But Idon’tknow who I am.”
“Of course you do. You’re whomever you decide to be in the deepest parts of your heart and soul. You get to write this story,yourstory.” His hands tightened around me. “Now let’s get you off the wall so you have a chance to live that life.” He slid me closer to him, pulling me down and placing me back on my feet.
I swallowed hard as I looked up at him. He was close, really close. And his eyes seemed to take up the whole world. It was impossible to look away.
He was too old for me, and I didn’t really know him, but I felt safer with Samuel than I ever had with anyone I wasn’t related to by blood. There was an energy between us that felt warm and good. And I could have sworn he was looking at me like he felt it too.
My heart pounded, and I was hyperaware of every breath I took as we stared at each other. Would he kiss me? I’d never been kissed before, and in that moment I wanted him to be my first. I wasn’t afraid of him hurting me or the experience being bad. It seemed physically impossible that Samuel would be bad at kissing.
“Have you ever heard of Anne Brontë?”
That was not what I expected him to say.
Samuel continued, “There’s a line from one of her poems that goes ‘he that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.’ If you’re not willing to bleed for something, you have no business longing for it. Whether that’s freedom, a job, or a person.”
The tension between us stretched on for half a second longer, and then Samuel pulled back, dropping his hands from my waist. “You should get home before your family starts worrying and sends out a search party.”
