Lahat ng Kabanata ng Lush Curves (Dangerous Curves 8): Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

We both were,” Sam said, so softly that Annie barely heard him over the crowded restaurant. “Me and Vic. It was Christmas, and he was home from college for the break. We were coming back from picking him up at the airport. We hit some black ice and spun out, went over the mountain edge and rolled down a hill, until we crashed into the bottom of a ravine.”“Oh, no.” All Annie could think about was Sarah and Noah experiencing such a traumatic event. “Oh, that’s so awful.”“It was worse for Vic, believe me. He managed to get me out of the wreck and carry me out of harm’s way, then he went back for our parents, who were unconscious. The car was on fire by then, and he got burned… all over his hands and arms and face. He fought hard, though, he didn’t want to stop trying to save their lives, but he couldn’t get them out of their seatbelts. He got dragged away by some passing motorists, in the end, dragged away kicking and screaming and fighting them, and it took five full-grown men to do i

“True.” He suddenly looked mightily cheered, and she smiled back at him. “So, anyway… that’s where I come from. I’d say that pretty much anything really good about me is because of my brother’s sacrifice – and it’s one that I can’t ever repay or match. I know that.”Annie nodded, and he gazed at her across the table, admiring how blue her eyes were, how they sparkled when she smiled.“And where do you come from, Annie?”She looked down at her plate, blinked in a bit of confusion. After all, she’d gone along for three years, just assuming that Sam’s life had been totally unlike hers, totally unlike Sarah and Noah’s. She’d wrongly – due to a serious case of reverse-povertyism – thought that anyone who was a doctor had to have had a pretty easy start in life. At the very least, parents to kick in for an education and food and rent when things got tight. Not in a million years had she thought that Sam – happy, kind, confident, commanding Doctor Sam Frickin’ Innis, E.R. trauma doctor – ha

“That’s exactly what Mom did,” Annie said quietly. “She’d do everything in the world to keep Dick from losing it, but it was like trying to hold back an avalanche rolling down the mountains. So then she’d put me in my room and tell me to get under the bed, and she’d step between the door and Dick, just step up and into the punches. She – she got so hurt, hurt so bad, and she did it for me.”“She was your mother,” Sam said, reaching for her hand. “Mothers do that for their kids. They do it without question, without regret.”“Yeah.” Annie took a deep breath, held onto him, drawing a bit of strength. “I’d do it for my kids.”Sam wanted to ask her if she had done it for her kids, decided to wait and let her tell him that, if it had happened and if she wanted to. So he just stayed quiet, held her soft, small hand, loving that he was touching her at long last.I’ve waited three goddamn years to do this.“Mom died when I was seventeen,” Annie said. “Believe it not, Dick didn’t kill her, but

“The thing is, I think I could have made a go of it, once Sarah and Noah turned ten maybe, and were in school all day, and could be trusted with a house key if I was running late getting home. For sure, I could have held down something part-time, budgeted and figured it all out as a single Mom. It would have been hard and I knew that, but I’d have managed, one way or another. Women do it every single day, and I’d have just put on my big girl panties and put my head down and done it. But… well… Noah…” Her voice trailed off and she looked awkward. Sam knew that she felt terrible about coming across like she was blaming her son for anything, because she clearly wasn’t. But there was a hard, harsh reality about him that Annie had had to factor into each and every decision of her life, for three decades.“Noah is autistic,” Sam finished for her. “And that’s a game-changer, in every way.”“Yes.” Annie nodded, and he admired the warmth of her red hair in the light. “He couldn’t go to regular

“Ahem.” She cleared her throat. “‘A new love is approaching, as silent and sure as a morning mist over a lake. Do not miss the mist, do not miss the dawn of the new’.” She almost rolled her eyes, contemplating how her ‘approaching love’ sounded like a psychopathic stalker, or a serial killer, but refrained from actually rolling them because of course her ‘love’ was a maniac. With her track record, what the hell else would he be? “You?”“‘She does not believe, but she wants to believe. She needs to believe as strongly as she needs to breathe. Belief is her breath’.”He raised his eyes to hers, and just like that, Annie was caught in his gaze. It wasn’t Sam’s usual kind, open, intelligent look. No, this one was hot, fierce, bright. It was the look that he’d levelled her with over coffee, when he’d growled at her to not dare call him ‘sweet’ again.It was a look that knocked the breath out from her lungs, knocked her knees out from under her, knocked every sane, rational thought out of h