J
o had lived so long with pressures, with deadlines, with demands that she sometimes forgot weightless moments like these existed. Stretched out on a blanket in the middle of a field, no one in sight. She observed the languorous trajectory of a bee a few feet away, zigzagging from flower to flower. She raised her head to catch the rare August breeze in her hair and drew the smell of nearby honeysuckle in through her nose. She could be dozing at any point in history—medieval England or Revolutionary France or Rivermont during the Civil War. A field was a field was a field. No social media. No iPad. She’d even left her cell phone at home.
So this was a lazy day. It was all coming back to her. Long summer days she, Walsh, and Cam had spent at the river, fishing, tubing, swimming. Soaring in an old tire swing across the water, nothing more exhilarating than the possibility of falling.
That’s what she felt every time she was with the man asleep beside her. The lovely threat of falling. The gorgeous certainty of gravity. What comes up, must come down. Wasn’t love inherently law-defying? Trusting that the feeling, the connection, the promise between you and another would never come down? Would never drop you and split your heart wide open?
Cam stirred beside her on the blanket. She swatted at the bee buzzing around his head, disturbing the little bit of sleep he’d probably get. They’d only spent a few nights together, but there was a pattern. He painted at night while she slept. She’d fall asleep in his arms and wake up in an empty bed. There were demons in his dreams, and she wanted more than anything to charge in with crosses and holy water, but Cam wouldn’t let her in. If there was an exorcism, he’d have to do it himself.
Cam jerked on the blanket, straining away in his sleep, like a cattle prod poked his back. A frown pinched the skin between his brows. His lashes almost disappeared his eyes squeezed so tightly together. Something that was a half cry, half growl, a bastard of fear and fury, broke past his lips. A muscle strained in his jaw like it might punch through the stubbled skin.
He mumbled something that sounded like “stop” and “no.” She should wake him. He wouldn’t want her to hear or see any of this. Cam’s face was usually a fortress, guarding his emotions and thoughts. Right now the gate was down and there was no hiding, no protection from the turmoil he wrestled with in his sleep. He ran a frantic hand over the blanket in the space between them, as if searching for something.
Jo touched his shoulder, a gentle pressure. His hand manacled her wrist in a grip so painful her fingers went a little numb.
“Ouch.”
His eyes snapped open when she cried out. Terror stretched his pupils until they almost swallowed the blue and gray, like brimstone filling the sky.
“What did…What…?” Cam noticed his hand caging the narrow bones of her wrist. “God, baby, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
He loosened his fingers but left bright red impressions on her skin. He touched her wrist, his eyes latched onto the angry marks already forming.
“It’s okay.” She brushed back a patch of tangled hair from his forehead, damp with the heat of the day and the hell of his nightmare. “You were having a dream, I think.”
The door slammed shut over his face, sequestering his emotions again.
“Did I say anything? Or do anything, besides almost crush your wrist?”
“Crush my…Cam, it’ll just bruise a little.” She held back the question for a few seconds before she couldn’t hold it anymore. “What were you dreaming about?”
Cam pulled himself to his feet, brushing nonexistent grass from his jeans, and extended his hand to her.
“You ready to go? I thought we could grab some peaches from that roadside fruit stand on the way back.”
“It won’t work.” She accepted his hand up, tugging at the tiny denim cutoffs he had packed for her. “Ignoring it, I mean.”
“It has so far.”
She gestured toward the blanket where his nightmare had just leaked out into the open.
“You call that working? Cam, you should talk to someone, even if it isn’t me.”
Cam didn’t bother with words but just folded up the blanket and walked off toward his Ducati. She remembered the day he had gotten his Harley while they were still in college. She had given him a cigar as a gag gift because he acted so much like a new father. Flashier bike. Expensive clothes. Black card. So many upgrades in his life, but he was still the guy who knew exactly which buttons to push to make her laugh and loosen. He was still her best friend, and he knew how to unravel her in the best possible ways. Why wouldn’t he let her repay the favor? What was holding him back?
She would try again tonight. For now, she relished straddling a monster of growling metal between her legs and gripping Cam’s hard-as-rock abs from behind. Did it get better than this?
* * *
“Here you are.” Jo placed a bowl of peaches on the table and set the basket she carried onto the patio flagstones. “I wondered where you’d gone.”
Cam looked up from scribbling in his sketchbook. There were miles between the smile on his face and the look in his eyes.
“Sorry I disappeared after dinner. I just needed…” His words left a trail in the quiet Jo couldn’t follow. He rolled his charcoal pencils on the patio table.
“No problem.” She passed him a cream-covered peach slice. “Great idea stopping by that fruit stand, by the way. These are so fresh. You like peaches and cream?”
“Never had them together, actually.” He popped one in his mouth, licking at the cream lingering in the corner. “Hmm. Good.”
He rested his elbow on the patio table and watched her for a moment before reaching for another cream-slathered slice.
“Is this the moment of truth?” He passed a grin to her across the space separating them, the muted fairy lights leaving his hair and eyes inky. “You softening me up with fresh fruit?”
“And cream.” She popped a peach slice into her mouth, talking around the sweet juiciness. “Don’t forget the cream.”
Cam’s grin, halfhearted at best, fell into a somber curve, finally catching up with his eyes. He knew the time had come. She couldn’t let him go into one more night like the others. She needed to understand this hell-induced insomnia of his. They could only go so far with his secrets wedged between them. Not go so far just sexually, though she
had
reached for her knitting needles today.
Hor-ny.
But she hadn’t waited seventeen years to sleep with Cam. She had waited seventeen years to
be
with him. To peel away all the layers and lay naked with him, not just skin to skin, but heart to heart. Soul to soul. She needed him to bare everything, but she would go first.
“So the peaches aren’t the only treat.” She reached down into the basket by her feet, bringing out two lidded mason jars. “Ta-da!”
Cam sketched a silent question between his raised brows.
“Remember when Aunt Kris used to give us these?” She handed him a jar.
“To catch fireflies.” Cam smiled, twisting the hole-punched lid off and laying it on the table. “You always caught twice as many as me and Walsh.”
“That’s because I knew the secret.”
“Which was?” His eyes followed her body rising from her seat.
“Let them come to you.”
She held out her jar and waited for a firefly to come near and then swiveled the jar to capture it. She replaced the lid and turned to Cam, giving him a
now you try
look.
For the next few minutes they both tried, wandering past the patio border and down to the river where the bugs clustered into small clumps of flitting light. They may have been seventeen years older, but to Jo’s ears, their laughs sounded the same as when they were kids. Careless. Light. Free. Breaking through the night, accompanied only by the sound of the restive river, falling asleep for the night.
Jo flung herself onto the grassy bank, carefully placing her jar on the ground beside her. With the fireflies flaring against the glass, it was like a living lamp. Between her jar and Cam’s, she could just make out the outline of his face, much more relaxed than before. She hated to steal that, but there was actually a point to all of this.
“You remember what Aunt Kris told us about the fireflies?”
Cam stretched out beside her on his side, elbow bent and head propped in his hand.
“No, enlighten me,” he said with a straight face.
“Was that a pun?”
“I can be clever.” He raised her hands to his lips, drawing her pinky finger into his mouth.
She stared at her finger in his mouth. Desire built sweet and taut between them. She hated to squelch it but pulled her hand away.
“She said the light was how they communicated with one another.”
She watched the masonry of his changing expression, saw him build a wall brick by brick until his face showed nothing of what he was thinking. But she knew.
He sat up, facing the river, elbows on his knees and the jar of light at his back. She couldn’t see his face anymore and wondered if that would help or hurt this conversation.
“That’s what I want for us, Cam.” She scooted up beside him, bringing her jar with her to provide a little light. “Your past, your secrets, your hurts—you’re storing them all in the dark, and they’re having their way with you every night. I think the light will make it better.”
Cam drove his fingers through his hair, cupping his forehead in his hands and aiming his eyes toward the ground. Jo cleared her throat and prayed her plan would work. Time would tell if this was a brilliant move or a bumbling mess.
“I’d like to go first.” Jo wrapped her arms around her bare knees. “We both know your past was harder than mine. Darker than mine, so I won’t try to compare battle scars.”
Cam snorted, the only indication he still heard her.
“But I will share some of the most embarrassing, pitiful moments of my life to even the playing field some.”
Cam’s body was stiff and still. Not a smile. Not a twitch. Not a shift of his feet. Maybe he had gills under his T-shirt because he didn’t even seem to be breathing. Jo figured this first one would relieve some of the tension at least.
“Low point number one. This one is kind of funny, even to me, and I am the butt of this joke.” She poked a finger in his face. “No big butt jokes. This is not the time.”
Despite the somber expression on Cam’s face, his lips twitched just the way she had hoped.
“I was in high school and refused to go all the way with my first boyfriend.”
“Mark Ballow.” Cam turned his head, giving her his undivided attention. “I hated that guy.”
“So did Walsh. So did Daddy. So did Aunt Kris.” Jo chuckled and plucked at a patch of grass. “That’s probably why I stayed with him as long as I did.”
“Walsh and I wanted to end him several times.”
“I remember. I can’t believe I ever had a date, as protective as you guys were.”
“Yeah, well, hopefully it spared you a few broken hearts.”
“Oh, they weren’t the ones breaking my heart.”
Cam winced, mouth wry.
“Point taken. Go on. Give me the low point.”
“Sadist.” She reached over to kiss behind his ear. “Well, he wanted to go all the way, and I didn’t, so we compromised.”
“Compromised how?”
“We agreed on a blow job. My first, in fact.”
Cam turned his body to face her fully for the first time, more in the light than he had been since they’d sat by the river.
“You blew Mark Ballow? I would have choked him if Walsh didn’t scalp him first.”
“Correction. I
tried
to blow him, but I…um, ran into a little difficulty.”
“What kind of difficulty?”
“I threw up.”
Cam’s lips clamped and his cheeks puffed up with the laugh bomb exploding inside his mouth.
“You…like on his dick?”
“On his dick. On his jeans. On his new sneakers. It was a gag reflex thing.” Jo wondered if her cheeks glowed brightly enough to provide more light than the fireflies. “You guys always wondered why we broke up—well, that was the straw that blew the camel’s back, so to speak. Mark drew the line at vomit in his boxers.”
Cam fell back on the grass, shoulders lifting and shaking. He bit his lip, but laughter kept sneaking out.
“It may be funny now, but—”
“Oh, God, it would have been even funnier then,” Cam said. “Wait ’til I tell Walsh.”
Jo leaned over Cam, pressing one palm to his windpipe and the other into the grass beside his head.
“Breathe one word of that to anyone and I will end you, Mitchell.”
“What are you gonna do, bully?” Cam reached up to stroke a finger down her nose. “Take my milk money?”
Jo laughed, laying her head against his chest and willing her heartbeat to match his. Willing them to be in accord as they got closer and closer to the ash-covered secrets he kept.
“Okay, next low moment.” She sat up and grabbed her glowing jar, insinuating her fingernail into a hole in the lid as far as it would go.
“I could listen to these all day.” Cam lifted and dropped strands of the hair falling between her shoulder blades.
“When I was fifteen, I had a massive crush on this boy.” Jo looked over her shoulder, meeting Cam’s eyes in the dim firefly light.
She’d harbored a crush on one boy, and he was sitting beside her on the riverbank. Cam knew it and so did she.
“He was way out of my league,” Jo said. “I had glasses and braces and was ninety-five pounds wet.”
“He wasn’t out of your league.” Cam sat up beside her, his eyes sober and sorry in the dim light. “Trust me. You were out of his.”
“It didn’t feel that way to me. He was the most…um, the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.”
Cam looked at the ground like the truth in her eyes was too much for him to hold.
“I met him a few years before, but it took me that long to work up the courage and ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance.”
“I’m sorry, Jo.”
“And he told me no,” Jo pressed on, ignoring his apology. “I knew he would. I mean, even at fifteen, he could have any girl he wanted.”
“Unless he wanted a girl who was too good for him.”
Ignoring that again.
“It wasn’t that he turned me down. I’d been ready for that, but he told me he already had plans with his friends.”