>Sam's POV<

"My offer stands, Sami baby. You're welcome tonight," Melinda purred as she walked behind me and ran her fingertips over my shoulders. Disgusted, I backed away and glared at her.

"Have fun, Sami boy," I heard Penny moan sarcastically from behind the door.

"Pen, please. I'll explain. I'll come in, okay?"

"Do what you can't resist," she muttered indignantly and I took a deep breath before swiping my key card through the slot and unlocking the door. I half expected her to throw something at me, so I cautiously peeked in, but nothing happened. But I didn't expect that Penny wouldn't be there. I looked around, but she was nowhere. Instead, water was running in the bathroom. I sat on the bed and waited for her, but the water didn't stop running - not even 10 minutes later. Was she about to take a bath now? at half past midnight?

"Pen? Are you alright?"

"Leave me alone!" Her voice sounded closer than expected. So she couldn't be in the bathtub. Certainly not on the toilet either. Rather, I assumed she was right behind the door and her voice sounded sad. So sad it almost broke my heart.

"Pen, please. We wanted to talk about it. I..."

"You wanted to talk about it. I only appreciate that this is also your room and the hotel doesn't have any more rooms available", she replied offended and I stiffened. Have we gotten to the point where she doesn't want to see me or be near me anymore?

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked skeptically. She didn't answer me, so I guess I'd better give in until she's ready to talk about it."If that's what you want, I'll go, Pen. I can wait in the lobby until you're ready to talk about it. "

"What is there to talk about? You have no obligation to me. Go over to her if that's what you want." Her voice was almost a whisper and at one point I thought I heard her sob. My head was spinning as I tried to fix this. Penny was never like that. She always listened to both sides before judging. So why didn't she just give me a chance?

"It's definitely not what I want, Pen!"

"But it looked different!" was all she said and I knew that no matter what I said, nothing would appease her right now or convince her to listen to me. At least nothing that came to my mind, because my head wasn't working at full speed thanks to the alcohol. Which also reminded me of something that had bothered me not long before.

"Like you and Alex did before?" I replied, offended that she would accuse me of doing something similar to what she had done before, albeit not quite as intimately as Melinda had come too close to me. On the other hand, did I know? Who knew what they were doing before I was able to see them? After all there had to be a reason why they had gone to the back of the house to talk and not where anyone could see them.

She didn't answer, instead I heard her doing something inside, the water stopped before the door jerked open. I looked up at her in surprise and it took me a moment to realize that she was still glaring at me, but her eyes looked suspiciously like she'd been crying.

"What's that supposed to mean?!", she asked me now and I could clearly see her anger. I certainly didn't want to argue with her, but I also wanted clarity when she also accused me of flirting with another woman behind her back. Heavens, I was dizzy!

"I saw you two together. You were talking in the garden before you left with the other women. Must have been extremely intimate if you couldn't talk about it in front of everyone else, huh?"

"It was nothing. He just wanted to talk. What's this about? I didn't kiss him like you did Melinda."

"I didn't kiss Melinda! Alex is your ex and I wish I'd found out from you instead of getting it shot at me. I wasn't prepared for that."

"Like you didn't tell me you dated Melinda? And by the way, Alex isn't my ex!"

"But that's what he said and he's still into you and you knew that. Then how can you go out in the garden with him alone at dusk?"

"We were just talking."

"Aha. Just like Melinda and I did. Then everything should be clear now, right?" I replied, proud to have found the solution to the riddle.

"Oh, do your lips touch when you're talking with someone? I can't remember our lips ever touching when we're both talking. Mine certainly didn't touch Alex's tonight." She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me unyieldingly. I had to admit, she won that point. I had never seen Penny so angry. I could kind of understand it too. I'd brought her here to mimic her boyfriend and Melinda had done a good job of making her think I was betraying her. I was supposed to help her so her family would stop blaming her for her life and now she was in danger of making things worse with everyone pitying her or even laughing at her.

I forced myself to take a deep breath. "Pen, please. I kept trying to get rid of her and somehow get into the room. Alone! But she wouldn't be dissuaded. When you came up in the elevator, I was distracted and she took advantage of that. I didn't kiss her, she kissed me."

"Really?" she asked me skeptically. "She told me today that you have a past together, which she seems to remember very fondly because you could never keep your hands off her."

I groaned in annoyance. "Listen, there are two sides to every story, right?" She just raised an eyebrow as if waiting for me to explain. "Yes, I dated her. I was here in Cardiff for my first year. But it wasn't long. I was young and I was stupid. She used me to approach someone else at a higher level. Since then, the issue has been settled for me. The way she behaved in the hallway showed me that she hadn't changed. I didn't want her then and I didn't want her now Especially not anymore. I'm not so hormonally controlled that I let myself be driven out of my mind by a blink of an eye." Except maybe it was from Penny, but saying that at this moment would be totally out of place.

"Maybe not from a blink, but from a pair of red lips it seems enough that you can't beat a 100 pound woman?"

"She was amazingly persistent. I didn't want to hurt her."

"You didn't want to hurt her, but you gave no thought to how I would feel if it became public that my boyfriend at my cousin's wedding was making out with her sister? You wanted to help me save face and now it is made things worse and all because you didn't want to hurt her when she did something you said you didn't want her to do?" she objected sarcastically.

"I really didn't mean to. I..."

"It didn't look like it when you held her."

"I wanted to push her away from me. Do you honestly think I would have held her upper arms if I had liked kissing her?"

"How am I supposed to know what you're doing if you like something like that?!"

"Do you want me to prove it to you?!", I grumbled sullenly. I couldn't fight the alcohol anymore, which was making it harder and harder for me to think clearly and my body asking for rest.

"How could you do that? You still want to go over to Melinda's and let me watch you two..." She shook herself before turning to open the closet door. I knew what I did next was fundamentally wrong, but all the anger and desperation that she just didn't want to believe me was building up inside me. If she asked me that, then I would show her how I behaved when I really wanted something.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her into my arms. Within a second my left was behind her and my right was against her face. She parted her lips slightly, for sure to protest, but I didn't even let her do it. I took advantage of the moment, didn't even think about it, just kissed her. I felt her hands on my chest, but the pressure eased just a moment later - the same moment she closed her eyes and dropped - just like me. It was probably only seconds, though it seemed like a wonderful eternity, and yet it wasn't long enough before she obviously got her thoughts sorted, backed away, and pushed me away. Instinctively she swung out her right hand and I narrowed my eyes, anticipating the slap I more than deserved for being so cheeky. But it didn't come.

"Do. That. Never. Again!" she growled softly. I opened my eyes only to see her turn back to the closet.

"I just wanted to show you how I..."

"I'm not like Melinda. Don't think you could play these macho games with me and get me with that. I never thought you were like that, but I'm not interested in that kind of thing." She had tears in her eyes and I just couldn't tell what hurt me more - that she doubted me so much, that I had hurt her so much, or that she wasn't interested in me at all. She couldn't have said it to me any clearer. But why had she returned my kiss in the first place? Was she drunk like me?

"You know everything about me. You know me better than anyone else. Think what you want. I'm tired. Let's sleep and get through the wedding or you tell your family I had to work spontaneously. I want to going home as soon as I can. I'll take the train then," I replied brokenly, putting my car keys on her bedside table before grabbing a pillow and blanket to toss both on the narrow couch before leaving with a clean shirt and boxers in the bathroom.

When I came out of the bathroom, she was already in bed and I sighed in resignation. I had done everything wrong that I could possibly have done wrong. If I had ever had a chance with Penny, at the latest, with the kiss I had certainly wasted everything completely. Could I attribute that to the alcohol? Would she ever be able to forgive me for that? Was there really an excuse for my behavior?

I probably didn't deserve anything else. Still, it didn't change the fact that my heart felt like it would break as I surrendered to sleep in the darkness on the narrow sofa, silent tears rolling down my cheeks.

To be continued...