CLOSER (SAM FENDER)

THIRTY- TWO

2 months later

Violet

Autumn pressed itself into the belly of our lives and slowed things down. It slowed everything down really.

It'd been two months since Reading. Two months since Jake's exit from the band and the fight between all of us. Two months since Sam and I decided that we couldn't be without each other. Two months since our secret came out. Two months since Jake nearly killed me. That part, that part hadn't set in yet. I skipped right over those thoughts and memories anytime they crept into my mind. That part I hadn't unpacked.

When Sam brought me back to the flat from the hospital, I couldn't stand to be in the living room. And I didn't much care for the kitchen. The only place that felt normal was closed in his bedroom, which had turned into our bedroom. I never went back into the room I shared with Jake. Sam gathered all my things and we kept the door shut. That was until the pressing weight of the memories there became too much to bear. Neither of us could stomach the energy in the flat anymore. It became stagnant and cold, and we spent more time away from in than in it. After a couple of weeks, we started looking for something new and in just a few days time had secured a more private spot closer to the studio. It was bigger, it had more space and a larger outdoor area. But above all that, it was ours. There were no memories of Jake there. Nothing but Sam and I. Something new.

We'd moved in last week, and I was still unpacking bits and pieces of our lives and placing them in their necessary areas. We'd quickly learned we needed more furniture than the few pieces we had, and this place had another level to it that needed furnished. We moved our older stuff to the loft on the second floor and bought a new living room set for the downstairs. I hated the idea of spending the money, but Sam insisted, saying he had enough from album sales and touring and wanted to splurge. Even though it was his money and the small contributions I'd made toward our new home were minuscule compared to his, he still claimed the house was ours, not just his.

Ours.

The concept of speaking about Sam and I in plurals was still new to me. Everything was us, or we, or ours. Dinners, events, household purchases, small trips, grocery deliveries, all of it. Everything became shared and it wasn't a bad thing, it was just different than anything I'd experienced before, especially anything with Jake. And I knew I shouldn't compare, but all of the sudden I had someone who couldn't keep his eyes off of me. Even the guys spoke about us as a unit. "Are the two of you coming?" or "You guys joining us?" became a pretty standard question these days. To be fair, I'd always been there quietly hanging against the background, but with Sam, there was no background. I was in the foreground of everything. I was at the hilt of every conversation and choice. Whether it was intentional or just who Sam was with me, I loved him deeply for that.

"Doing okay up here, love?" Sam tapped on the doorframe lightly and stirred me from my thoughts. I'd been folding shirts in the too large, walk in closet for the last hour, and I was nearly done organizing everything. I smiled on a nod as I looked at him.

He walked over to the island in the center of the closet and grabbed a handful of his t-shirts and began following suit.

"I've got it." I said on a smile and he nodded before kissing my forehead.

"I know you do. But if I don't help, I have a feeling you'll hold this against me when we're forty and you're doing all the laundry." He laughed and my stomach twisted into knots at the concept of having a life with him. I looked back down at the shirt I was holding and but my lip. Sam noticed my reaction and sighed.

"Hey...that doesn't freak you out does it? Me talking about us when we're older? I know we haven't been officially together long, but it just...it feels -"

"No, Sam. It doesn't freak me out. Quite the opposite." I smiled and turned toward him as he blushed.

We silently finished folding the laundry until he asked if I wanted to get dinner in a couple of hours. I weighed the thought before agreeing. Sam and I didn't go on many dates. We spent most of our time in group settings, almost every meal spent with at least one of the guys or with Liam or his Mom. Liam and I had grown even closer since the...incident. I shuddered slightly at the thought and Sam narrowed his eyes at me.

"You alright?"

I nodded once. "Just thinking about how we haven't been out, just the two of us really." A bit of a lie, but I wasn't ready to talk about everything with Sam yet. We'd come close to it once and it ended in tears. I was too scared to nurse the edges of that wound, and as if Sam could tell, he never pried. It was my understanding that Liam had given him as many details as he could, but Liam didn't know everything. No one knew about the things Jake said to me before Liam showed up. No one saw the look on his face but me. Those were the thoughts that kept me from finding sleep at night. Those were the things that pricked my skin and made me nervous. And even when I'd resort to the sleeping pills my doctor prescribed me when I told her I couldn't handle it, I'd still wake up from a nightmare with Jake's hands all over me. Those were the things I hadn't told anyone, not even Sam. He didn't even know about the sleeping pills.

"Hey...you there?" He waved a hand in front of my face.

"Sorry...what'd you say? I blacked out for a second..."

He smiled nervously. "I said you're right. Guess I owe you a good date."

"You don't owe me anything." I said turning to him slowly as his hands found my waist. That was one thing we never had a problem with, keeping our hands off each other. I was worried at first that the heat would fade, especially since I spent the first six weeks of our true relationship with a small cast around my wrist. But nothing threatened that flame between us, and if anything, it roared more violently than it had earlier. Belonging to each other somehow made everything more intense, that, and Sam claimed he had a lot of lost time to make up for.

He kissed me softly, taking his time and moving slowly as he pulled me closer to him.

"I love you." He whispered into my ear as I trembled.

"I'm never going to get sick of you saying that."

"Good. Because I'm going to remind you every single day."

I smiled up at him as he released his grip on me and walked toward the bedroom. I closed a few of the drawers and flicked the lights off in the closet before moving to the bedroom myself and plugging my phone in to charge. I looked around the room and sighed as I took it all in, trying my best to rid my thoughts of everything related to Jake and the attack, but it was there, burning below the surface, dying to make itself known.

"Reservations at Tom's at 6:30. Good, aye?"

I glanced over at the door where Sam was standing with his phone, and nodded. "Yeah...that works."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "You sure you're alright, love? You seem...off."

"Yeah...I'm fine." Another lie and a fake smile. It was becoming too easy for me to pretend, it almost was believable to me.

But Sam didn't pry. Instead he just bit his lip on a nod and walked away, leaving me to sit with a head full of nerves and memories I wasn't ready to face. But they were there. Burrowing themselves deeper into my soul.

"I want to kill him, I want to ruin him." I winced at the memory of Jake's words as they trickled through the empty pockets in my mind. "Just like you hurt me?" The ice in his breath as he pushed me further against the wall and held me there. I walked into our en-suite nervously and opened the drawer where I kept my makeup. Shoved back behind the sleeping pills was a bottle of Xanax that my doctor also prescribed. I didn't take them much although over the last few days, they'd helped with the impending panic attacks and kept them at bay. I knew not to mix them with the sleeping pills and I'd kept the two separate, but I needed to calm down. I didn't want to go to dinner with the weight of memories crushing me down and if Sam already noticed I seemed off, it would only get worse if I didn't do something about it. I tossed back the Xanax and caught my reflection in the mirror as I swallowed the pill.