Secrets & LiesBy Laney
Sam's POV
She’s crying.I slump against the door as I listen to her sobs echo through the hallway. I should go. I shouldn’t be standing here debating whether or not to go back in yet I can’t walk away. I’ve tried but every time I take a step I hear another sob and I’m back where I started.
Confusion is the only emotion I’m feeling right now.
I… I really don’t know what to do.
A part of me wants to leave the hotel and pretend none of this happened, the other part of me wants to go back inside that hotel room and make sure she’s all right.
How could this happen? What was I thinking? I feel confused, scared, sick, and angry. I slept with a woman – a stranger! No amount of alcohol is going to excuse that. If the Colonel or the General finds out about this my career, my life, is history.
Oh god! I SLEPT WITH A WOMAN!
Breathe, I have to breathe. God! How could I have been so stupid? No, stupid doesn’t even begin to cover it. I endangered myself, by having sex with a stranger, I endangered my career because I had sex with a woman… but that’s not the worst of it. There is a chance I could have said something last night that might land both Will and I in hot water.
I’m a goner.
I’m trying to understand how it happened… but I can’t. I’ve been drunk before and not once have I done anything like this. I can’t afford to do anything like this. I work for a highly classified program in the Air Force, getting drunk on its own is dangerous. But getting so drunk that I sleep with a woman AND have no memory of it…
I don’t deserve the rank of major.
Shit! I don’t know what’s freaking me out more. The fact that I slept with a woman or that I could have inadvertently revealed details of a top secret program. I could go to jail for one or both of those things.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything but…
Shit.
I have to go back in there.
If I told her anything… I’ll have to report it. Damn it! I didn’t think this could get any worse but it is. I can’t help but feel sorry for Will. She has no idea who or what I am… She doesn’t know she might be in a lot of trouble.
I realised long ago that all my life consists of is secrets and lies. It was that reality that had me drinking last night. For one night I wanted to stop being Major Samantha Carter, astrophysicist and interstellar traveler. I wanted to forget the pressures of my job and just pretend that an option of happy ever after was out there for me.
Some days I can live with knowing I’ll never have the proverbial white picket fence. My job is my life but there are times when it’s not enough. I tried having relationships but it never works out. I miss dates, I’m home late, I don’t call. My career demands far too much, it comes first and no one likes taking second place.
I have a beautiful house, great car and bike, brilliant career… and no one to share it with.
Now there’s a chance I could have destroyed not just everything I have… but what Will has as well.
How am I going to live with that? Will doesn’t deserve this and I’d like to think I don’t either. The Air Force is my life. It’s all I know. It’s who I am and I feel… I feel as though I’ve lost it. Even if I don’t get discovered and Will knows nothing about the SGC, I still feel like I’ve lost it. This has changed everything. Rules and regulations are my life. While I have sometimes gone against orders, it’s always been in a situation of life and death, or the end of the world…
This isn’t either of those.
But god, it feels like it.
I’m an Air Force brat, I joined the academy as soon as I graduated High School. This goes against everything I believe in. I know, I know, I was drunk but… that really doesn’t excuse what I did. I couldn’t have been that drunk if Will was telling the truth and we did leave the bar separately.
Not only that, if I was plastered beyond belief, I don’t think Will would have done anything.
She… she’s not the type. If she was, I wouldn’t have seen such remorse back in the room. She really was sorry, and horrified, about what she had done. WE had done. No, Will really thought I was sober which means... shit… it means that there must have been a part of me that wanted her.
If Will isn’t the type to do anything when a person is drunk, then she really wouldn’t have taken me by force. Which means that I had gone along with it. Drunk or not… it didn’t matter. It means that I wanted to.
I think I’m going to be sick again.
Shit!
What did this mean? I know it doesn’t mean I’m gay. I’m not. Really I’m not. Sleeping with a woman doesn’t automatically make you gay… but it changes things. Shit! SHIT! I’m not ready to deal with this… any of this.
How could one night turn my life upside down like…
“Sam?”
Will! Jesus! I push myself off the wall and turn to face the woman of my thoughts. Christ, how distracted am I? I didn’t even hear the door.
She looks like hell.
Her eyes are still swollen from crying, her nose is red, and her hair is strewn all over her face. “Sam, is everything all right? Did you forget something?”
I can’t help but notice that the first thing she asks me is if I’m all right.
She really is a nice person.
I can see why I would… well, why I… She’s a really nice person. Kind of like a female Daniel. He is the only other person I could see getting this upset about a one night stand. He’s the most tenderhearted man I know.
Will is looking at me expectantly.
I can’t really find the words to say to her. For some reason, I don’t want Will to know that I’m not just here to make sure she’s all right but to make sure I didn’t put her in any danger.
I have to make sure my mistakes, my secrets and lies, don’t destroy either one of us.