SHE COMES OUT OF HER bathroom wrapped up in a giant white towel. Another is wound around her head like a turban. She smells fresh and clean and looks like my Cam all stripped of the fancy shit that I love, but that’s not her.
She’s this: simple and sweet and innocent. She’s everything I’m not and I want to protect that about her. Yet just by being with me, it brings out things in her that shouldn’t be.
Hateful, like she was tonight when she saw me with Hannah. Damn, that makes a man feel good to see his woman want him, only for her, that bad. But she shouldn’t even fuck with the idea of being second to someone else. Not even for a moment. It’s impossible.
Careless, like she is when she shows up in places she shouldn’t be.
Conflicted with her family because they think she can do better.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, I look up at her. I know I’m switching into fight mode. It happens a day or two before fight night every time. I’m touchy, cross, more than a little ill-tempered. It’s exacerbated by the text that sits on her phone a few inches away—a text that offers all the things I can’t provide.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, going into her closet. She rummages around and comes out a few minutes later in the yellow number I love for bed.
“You got a text,” I tell her as she climbs onto the bed. I don’t move, just sit facing the doorway. “I was lying there and it went off. Thought it was mine and picked it up.”
I give her time to read it, process what I’ve seen, before I look at her. “I don’t care who that bastard is, I’m going to dismantle him.”
“He couldn’t whip his way out of a wet paper bag,” Camilla sighs, sinking back in her pillows. “So if that makes you feel more like a man, go for it. Just know if I wanted to beat him up, I probably could.”
“That was Barron, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Exhaling a long, shaky breath, I look at the doorway again. “He really asked you to Paris.” It’s not a question, although I questioned it before. I know it’s true because I read the text. “Some dumb shit asked you to another country.”
I could never take her to another country. I can barely take her out of this county. Who is she hanging out with where invitations to France are tossed casually around and why did this Barron Monroe think she was fair game?
“As you can see, I told him no. Which is more, I might add, than you told Red.”
“Damn it, Cam,” I growl. “I needed the help.”
“She looked handy all right.”
I twist around the best I can. “I’ve known her for years.”
“I’ve known Barron since we wore diapers. Does that make a difference to you? Barron also didn’t touch me tonight—”
“You better hope he didn’t,” I say through clenched teeth, the mere thought of it making me want to come unglued as I turn to look at her.
There’s a shift between us that wasn’t there before tonight. I don’t know what caused it or how to fix it, only that I won’t be sleeping and I won’t be saying anything that will be helpful tomorrow. And by the look on her face, she won’t either.
Standing, I grab my shirt off the floor and pull it over my head.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“Home. I have a bunch of shit to do and I’m not going to sleep anyway.”
She sits up, her gown barely covering the tops of her breasts. “I’m sorry, not about Barron because I can’t help that. But I am sorry about the Red stuff. I need to let it go.”
“Yes, you do.” I bend over and give her a simple kiss. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She starts to say something, but I keep walking. It’s probably better than me sticking around. We’re both irritable and it’ll end in a fight. There are no two ways about it.
Camilla
“Here they are in green,” I say, holding up a pair of yoga pants. “I think she said she has them in a grey now too.”
Joy and I search the racks of Halcyon, looking through Ellie’s new arrivals. Her business is really picking up, and she and her business partner, Violet, have hired a couple of people to help them. They especially need it now that Ellie’s going to be a mama.