Chapter Text
Sami gripped the steering wheel tightly with one hand while she dashed tears from her eyes with the other, as she recklessly sped through the streets of Salem, on her way home to change after a very emotional confrontation with EJ. The thought briefly crossed her mind that she shouldn’t be driving when she was upset like this, but she quickly dismissed it. She needed to get home quickly, before the thoughts running through her head completely overwhelmed her.
EJ’s words from their encounter in the Horton Town Square echoed through her head. “I did it because I love you...Samantha, it felt incredible. It felt wonderful. And it was real.”
EJ had looked so sincere when he’d said those words. He’d looked at her like she was the most beautiful, wonderful person he’d ever seen in his life. No one, except him, had ever looked at her like that. He always looked at her like that.
She’d felt so betrayed. He’d manipulated her again. Couldn’t he understand that she was confused? A large part of her, the part that acted on feelings and which she outwardly loathed, wanted to grab onto EJ and never let him go. However, the rational, logical, sensible part of her told her that it would be a huge mistake. It whispered to her of EJ’s past lies and betrayals, warning her that he would inevitably hurt her the same way again. It told her that the only way to get away to keep her heart intact was to go back to the man who’d given her love, respectability, and stability. Rafe.
But were respectability and stability worth subsuming her true self?
“I was being me...,” she’d said to EJ, feeling the pain of opening herself up to him, only to have him manipulate and lie to her - again.
“And it was wonderful,” EJ had replied, his eyes filled with sincerity and ... love.
He wasn’t lying about being in love with her, was he? But was it enough? EJ was so much like her that she knew he would eventually screw up and hurt her, just like she would screw up and hurt him. It was who they were and what they did to each other. It was what they’d just done to each other...
“I did it because I love you.”
“Love? You love me? You are pulling out all the stops,” she replied in disbelief.
“I’m telling you the truth. It’s from my heart.”
Wanting to hurt, to wound, and to destroy him, she replied cruelly, “You don’t know what the truth looks like. And you don’t have a heart.”
She’d succeeded. She could see it in his eyes. It gave her some sense of satisfaction that he was hurting as much as she was.
To drive the knife in further, she later added, “You tell me that you love me, but those are empty words ... because you are empty. Rafe knows what real love is. I belong with him. I’m gonna go be with him.”
She turned to leave, but EJ took her hand and stopped her, pulling her back toward him.
“I see what you’re doing here. You’re pitting me against Rafe...the darkness against the light...because it’s easier. Because it’s safer. Because it’s expected.”
EJ was right dammit. It was exactly what she was doing. She was afraid, so afraid, of the way that EJ made her feel. He made her feel so out of control and her family despised him. When she was with him, her family went back to their disapproving selves, choosing to dole out their love only when she and EJ were at each other’s throats, trying to destroy each other. What kind of love was that?
She swiped away another stream of tears as she turned her car, blindly following a path that she’d followed many times before, but it wasn’t to her apartment, like she’d intended when she’d left the town square.
She could still feel the whisper of EJ’s breath on her face as he pulled her in and said possessively, “I lied to you so that I could have you.”
Maybe she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it while EJ was saying those things to her, but everything that he had said to her had been sincere. Every word. She knew what it was like to pull out all the stops and to play dirty to get what she wanted. EJ had done just that, and she’d condemned him for it. Had anyone ever gone to the efforts that he had to be with her and to win her love? Had anyone else loved her so much that he’d come back to her time and time again, even after she’d pushed him away, sometimes in the most brutal manner possible? The simple answer was ‘no.’ No one else had ever loved her with such a single-minded intensity. Maybe that was why EJ scared her so much.
That wasn’t the only reason that EJ scared her. He didn’t just ‘tolerate’ her or make her change herself to fit with him. Well ... she didn’t have to change to fit with him because they were so alike and he made no secret that he genuinely loved and admired every part of her, even the parts that drove her to hurt him or retaliate for something he’d done to her. He’d always been so accepting of her, no matter what, that she’d thought it was a front he put up to lure her in, certain that once he’d ensnared her he would force her to change to suit him. She’d been through that before with men who claimed to love her, faults and all, but EJ really was different - he genuinely wanted her and only her, just as she was.
She took a gulping sob as she put on her signal light and turned another corner, her mind going back to that night, nearly a year ago when she and EJ figuratively tore each other apart before they literally tore each other’s clothes off.
“Don’t you ever - don’t you ever say anything like that to me again! I love my kids! I love them more than anything!” Sami screamed at EJ. He had some nerve telling her that she was an awful parent when he was no better.
“Really? Because it seems to me that the only person you really care about is yourself!”
“Shut up! You just shut up!” she screamed, in absolute denial.
“Oh, you jump from man to man doing whatever your selfish little heart desires. Who cares if it leaves your children without any stability or without a father?!”
When she looked back, she realized that EJ had been right on that November night almost a year ago. Since he’d said that, she’d jumped from Rafe to Lucas to EJ and then, back to Rafe again all in the space of less than a year. What had she been thinking? She hadn’t. She’d been all over the place, blindly bouncing from one man to another while, all the time, she’d known, deep down, that the only man for her was EJ. She’d just been too scared, of both EJ and herself, to admit it.
Sami finally registered that she wasn’t driving toward home, as she’d originally intended - she was driving toward EJ’s office. She’d made such a mess of things - reuniting with Rafe for no good reason except fear and spite and then rejecting EJ - but she had to make this right with EJ now, before she let her fear get the best of her again.
“I love you, EJ,” she said aloud to herself, testing it out.
“I love you, EJ,” she repeated, finally feeling free of the fear that had always held her back from giving herself over to him completely. All she needed to do now was tell EJ before it was too late - before he closed his heart to her again.
It was the last thought she had before there was a loud crash and everything went black.
**********************************
Sami’s eyes fluttered open and she blearily registered a familiar face with a beautiful set of hazel eyes. She whispered, “EJ?”
“No, Mom, it’s Johnny,” answered a puzzled and familiar adolescent voice.
“Johnny?” Sami asked uncertainly.
“Yes, Mom, your son...”
When her eyes finally focussed on the face in front of her, she gasped. He wasn’t EJ, but the adolescent in front of her bore an uncanny resemblance to him. What the hell was going on? This had to be some sort of trick.
Panicked, Sami sat up and clawed at the bedcovers over her. She barely registered the cacophony of voices that told her to calm down as hands pushed her back down on the bed.
“Sami! Sami! Calm down! It’s okay.”
Sami’s wild-eyes followed Rafe’s voice and focused on his familiar face. He looked different ... much older. He had deep lines bracketing his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before, and his hair was streaked with gray. She didn’t understand what was going on. Tentatively, she asked, “Rafe?”
“Yeah, honey, it’s me.”
Sami stopped struggling against the hands holding her down and slowly took in the faces of the people gathered around the bed. Her gaze lit upon the familiar hazel eyes of the tall, lanky youth whom she’d thought was EJ, along with a pretty blonde, who looked to be the same age, and a smaller, brown-haired girl with those same hazel eyes, who looked to be thirteen or fourteen years old.
Oh shit. These were her kids...but...her kids weren’t this old. She’d only just dropped them off at school that morning. If these were her kids, they would have had to age something like ten years. Dear God.
She didn’t know quite what to say, so she asked, “What happened?”
Rafe frowned. “You don’t remember?”
Sami ignored the sharp, throbbing pain lancing through her head and shook it in the negative.
“When the kids came home from school, they found you out cold on the floor in the kitchen. It looks like you were standing on a chair, reaching for something, and slipped. You hit your head on the counter on the way down. That was yesterday.”
Oh. That wasn’t what she remembered at all. “I thought I was in a car accident ...That’s the last thing I remember.”
“No, Sami. You were at home when we found you.”
“But the last thing I remember is being upset and then suddenly getting hit by another car. Then, nothing ...”
Rafe looked dismayed to hear that. He shook his head and said, “Sami, you were in a car accident...ten years ago.”
Sami shook her head vehemently, eyeing the familiar strangers standing around her bed and cringing away from Rafe when he tried to take her hand. “No. That’s not true. This is a trick!”
“No, it’s not a trick, Sami. Calm down!”
She yelled, “I’m not going to calm down! I’m not going to calm down until someone tells me what the hell is going on!”
All hell broke loose. Doctors and nurses ran in and pushed everyone off to the side. Hands pinned her down while multiple voices urged her to calm down. Sami fought them, scratching, biting, and kicking as they tried to subdue her. After a few moments, she felt a prick in her arm and then there was nothing.