Chapter 6: A Campaign of Provocation

Three days. Three days of careful choreography, of timing bathroom breaks and kitchen visits to avoid each other, of polite smiles over family dinners while the air between them crackled with unspoken words. Three days of Elijah trying to convince himself this was better—safer—while his body screamed in protest every time he caught a glimpse of Sam's bare shoulder or heard her laugh at something their father said.

Sam, meanwhile, had retreated behind a wall of perfect politeness that was somehow worse than her old combative attitude. She answered when spoken to, smiled at appropriate moments, and treated him with the distant courtesy she might show a stranger. It was exactly what he'd thought he wanted, and it was driving him slowly insane.

Which was probably why he didn't immediately notice when her campaign began.

The first sign was subtle—so subtle he almost convinced himself it was an accident. He'd been grabbing a late-night snack from the kitchen when Sam appeared at the top of the stairs, heading for the bathroom. She was wearing one of his old basketball jerseys, the navy blue fabric hanging loose on her frame, the hem barely covering the tops of her thighs.

His jersey. The one that had mysteriously disappeared from his laundry pile last month.

Their eyes met for a split second as she passed, and something flickered in hers—a challenge, maybe, or a test. But before he could analyze it, she was gone, leaving him standing in the kitchen with a box of cereal forgotten in his hands and the image of her legs burned into his retinas.

Coincidence, he told himself. She probably grabbed it by mistake.

But deep down, he knew better. Sam didn't do anything by mistake.

The second incident happened the next morning. Elijah was coming out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist, water still dripping from his hair, when Sam's door opened. She stepped into the hallway wearing nothing but a towel that was precariously tucked between her breasts, her skin flushed and damp from her own shower.

They stood there for a frozen moment, two near-naked bodies in the hallway that had become their battlefield, and Elijah felt every drop of moisture on his skin turn to steam.

"Sorry," Sam said, her voice carefully neutral even as her eyes raked over his bare chest. "Didn't know you were out here."

She moved past him toward her room, but the hallway was narrow, and the brush of her arm against his sent electricity racing through his nervous system. The scent of her body wash—something floral and feminine that made his mouth water—lingered in the air long after her door clicked shut.

This time, there was no mistaking the deliberate nature of her timing.

By the third "accident"—Sam bending over in the kitchen to retrieve something from a low cabinet while wearing shorts that barely qualified as clothing, the motion giving him a perfect view of the curve of her ass—Elijah realized he was under attack.

And the worst part? It was working.

Every calculated encounter left him more wound up, more aware of her, more desperate for something he couldn't name. His concentration was shot to hell. His textbooks might as well have been written in Sanskrit. He found himself making excuses to linger in common areas, hoping for another glimpse of whatever game she was playing.

The realization that he was being manipulated should have made him angry. Instead, it made him admire her strategy. Sam had always been brilliant at reading people, at finding their weaknesses and exploiting them. She'd identified his Achilles' heel—his inability to stop wanting her—and was systematically destroying his defenses.

The question was: what did she want him to do about it?

The answer came on Thursday night, when he found her in the laundry room wearing nothing but lace panties and his old Columbia sweatshirt. The one he'd been looking for all week.

"Oh," she said when he appeared in the doorway, not sounding surprised at all. "I didn't hear you come down."

She was folding clothes with meticulous care, each movement designed to torture him. The sweatshirt was huge on her, hanging off one shoulder and riding up every time she reached for something, giving him tantalizing glimpses of creamy skin and the delicate curve of her waist.

"That's my sweatshirt," he said, his voice coming out rougher than intended.

"Is it?" Sam glanced down at herself with feigned surprise. "I found it in the dryer. I assumed it was one of Dad's old ones."

The lie was so transparent it was almost insulting. She knew exactly whose sweatshirt it was, just like she'd known exactly whose jersey she'd worn the other night. This wasn't about laundry—it was about claiming territory, about marking herself with his scent and forcing him to acknowledge what she was doing.

"Give it back," he said, stepping into the small room.

"When I'm done with laundry." She turned back to her folding, dismissing him, but he could see the tension in her shoulders. She was waiting for something—for him to push, to take what she was offering, to finally stop being the coward she'd accused him of being.

Instead, he found himself moving closer, drawn by forces he couldn't resist. The laundry room was small, cramped, and with each step forward the air between them grew thicker. By the time he was standing directly behind her, he could feel the heat radiating from her skin.

"Sam," he said quietly.

She went still, a pillowcase clutched in her hands, but she didn't turn around. "What?"

"What are you doing?"

"Laundry." Her voice was steady, but he could see the rapid rise and fall of her breathing beneath his sweatshirt.

"That's not what I mean, and you know it."

This time she did turn, slowly, until they were facing each other in the narrow space between the washer and dryer. Her blue eyes were bright with something that looked like triumph mixed with nervousness.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, but her tongue darted out to wet her lips—a nervous habit that made his blood pressure spike.

"The jersey. The towel. The shorts. Now this." He gestured at the sweatshirt that made her look like she belonged to him. "You're trying to drive me crazy."

"Is it working?"

The question hung between them like a live wire. Sam's chin was tilted up in challenge, but he could see the vulnerability lurking beneath her bravado. She was putting herself out there, making herself available, and waiting to see if he'd take the bait or reject her again.

The smart thing would be to walk away. To maintain the careful distance they'd established, to keep pretending that what had happened between them was a one-time mistake that could be contained and forgotten.

But Elijah had never felt less smart in his life.

"Yes," he admitted, the word torn from somewhere deep in his chest. "It's working."

Sam's breath caught, her eyes widening slightly. She'd been expecting him to deny it, to deflect, to retreat behind his walls of guilt and propriety. His honesty had caught her off guard.

"Good," she whispered, but there was a tremor in her voice that betrayed her own nervousness.

They stood there in the humming silence of the laundry room, surrounded by the domestic detritus of family life—his father's work shirts, Helen's silk blouses, their own clothes tangled together in ways that felt symbolic. The normalcy of it should have been jarring, a reminder of everything they had to lose.

Instead, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

"This is dangerous," Elijah said, but he didn't move away.

"I know." Sam stepped closer, close enough that he could see the gold flecks in her blue eyes. "I don't care."

"Our parents—"

"Are asleep." Her hand came up to rest against his chest, directly over his racing heart. "It's just us."

The simple touch was his undoing. After days of careful avoidance, of pretending his body didn't respond to every glimpse of her, the feeling of her palm against his bare skin was like coming home and catching fire all at once.

"Sam," he said, but it came out like a prayer instead of a protest.

"I'm tired of pretending," she whispered, her fingers spreading across his chest. "Tired of acting like we don't want each other. Tired of walking on eggshells because we're afraid of what people might think."

"What do you want from me?" The question was raw, desperate, because he genuinely didn't know how to give her what she needed without destroying everything else in the process.

"I want you to stop running away." Her other hand joined the first, both palms now pressed against his chest as if she was trying to absorb his heartbeat. "I want you to stop treating what we have like it's something shameful. I want—"

The sound of footsteps on the stairs above them froze them both mid-sentence. Heavy, deliberate footsteps that could only belong to his father.

They sprang apart like guilty teenagers, Sam spinning back to face the laundry basket while Elijah pressed himself against the wall, both of them breathing hard. The footsteps continued down the hall—toward the kitchen, thankfully—but the spell was broken.

"I should go," Elijah said, but he didn't move.

"Yeah," Sam agreed, but she was looking at him over her shoulder, her eyes dark with frustrated desire. "You should."

But neither of them moved. They stood there in the cramped laundry room, surrounded by the scent of fabric softener and the ghost of what had almost happened, and Elijah realized with crystal clarity that Sam's campaign of provocation had worked exactly as intended.

He was no longer running from what he wanted.

The question was: what was he going to do about it?

"Tomorrow," Sam said softly, as if reading his thoughts.

"What about tomorrow?"

Her smile was equal parts promise and threat. "Tomorrow, I'm going to make it impossible for you to keep pretending you don't want this."

She turned back to her laundry, effectively dismissing him, but the challenge in her words lingered in the air like smoke. As Elijah forced himself to leave the room, to walk up those stairs and into his bedroom where he could still smell traces of her perfume on his sheets, he knew with absolute certainty that tomorrow was going to destroy what was left of his self-control.

And maybe, just maybe, that was exactly what they both needed.

Outside his window, the suburban night settled into comfortable routines, but inside the house, something had shifted. The careful balance they'd maintained was cracking, and soon—very soon—it would shatter completely.

Sam was done playing defense. She was done waiting for him to come to his senses.

Tomorrow, she was going on the offensive.

And Elijah found himself looking forward to it with a hunger that terrified him.