Authors: J. Lynn
I grinned. “I do.”
Brit looped her arm through mine as we stepped outside. Flurries floated to the ground and the clouds were thick. “I’m glad you guys worked it out. You two are so damn cute together it’s almost disgusting.”
“He’s…” I shook my head. “I’m lucky.”
“He’s lucky,” she corrected, nudging me as we trudged up the hill. “So what are you getting him for Valentine’s Day?”
“Valentine’s Day?” I stopped suddenly. Several people behinds us grumbled as they walked around Brit and I. “Oh shit, that’s next week.” I turned to her, eyes wide. “I have no idea.”
Brit giggled as she tugged on my arm. I started walking again. “You should see your face,” she said. “It’s like you just realized that the world is ending next week instead of being a stupid, man-made holiday.”
I ignored that. “I have no idea what to get him.”
“What have you gotten previous boyfriends?”
“Nothing,” I replied, too panicked to care about what I was admitting. “I’ve never had a boyfriend before.”
Now it was Brit’s turn to stop and back up traffic. “What? Like never? Holy crap, I knew you were a little, um sheltered, but come on. I think Amish kids have more experience than you.”
I shot her a dirty look. “You’re not helping and I’m seriously freaking out here.”
“Okay. Okay. Make fun of you later. Got it.” She wrinkled up her nose. “We’ll go shopping after class.”
Later that afternoon, the snow was still coming down, but the roads were clear for the drive into Martinsburg. At the mall, I was still seriously at a loss, staring at the little red hearts dangling from the ceiling at the department store.
Brit picked up a pair of black satin boxers with red hearts on them. “Uh…”
“No,” I said. Besides the fact that was the corniest shit I’d ever seen, Cam didn’t always wear underwear.
She pursed her lips. “Well, there’s always the standard gifts. You can get him some cologne, a wallet, a tie, or a shirt.”
“That’s really lame.”
“I didn’t say they were good ideas.”
I pouted as we headed into another store. The trip was a total bust with the exception of Brit trying out every body lotion. By the time we left, she smelled like she worked in a Bath and Body Works sweatshop.
Back at my apartment, I scoured the Internet for a good gift. I wanted it to be special, because with Cam, I felt like I was waking up. I saw things differently, more clearly. I wasn’t sure if it was him or how I was with him or if I was finally
changing
. Either way, Cam played a role in this and I wanted to get him a gift that mattered.
After about an hour, I decided that shopping for a guy
sucked
.
I racked my brain. If I could get him a lifetime supply of eggs, he’d be down for that.
Groaning in frustration, I got up and peeked out the window. Snow was coming down thick and fast, blanketing the ground and the cars. The news had said there’d be accumulation, but I doubted the campus would close.
Pulling my hair up in a messy ponytail, I headed toward the kitchen when it suddenly struck me. Something that Cam had mentioned a few times.
He’d talked about wanting to catch a D.C. United game.
Squealing, I raced back to my laptop and checked out their website. Clicking on their schedule, I ordered two tickets for an early April game, thinking that the weather would be a lot more stable then.
I closed my laptop, feeling good about my purchase. He could take me or if he wanted to, one of his friends. I was okay with that as long as he was happy with what I got.
Less than an hour later, Cam showed up, damp from the snow. “Pizza night?”
“Sounds good to me.” I kissed his cheek as I took the box from him. “How are the roads?”
“They suck.” He grabbed two cans of sodas out of the fridge. “Which brings me to this brilliant idea I’ve had.”
I grinned. “Your ideas can be a bit scary.”
“My ideas are never scary or bad.”
“Well…”
“Name one,” he challenged.
I didn’t have to think hard. “How about when you tied a string around Raphael’s shell and called it a leash?”
“That was an innovative idea!”
“The poor thing just stood there and put its head in its shell.”
Cam scuffed. “That’s really no different than any other day.”
I laughed. “True.”
“This idea is great.” Slapping slices of pizza on two paper plates, he winked at me. “They’re saying that it’s supposed to snow through tomorrow morning.”
I was caught between glee and annoyance. Snow was great. Walking on campus with snow or ice on the ground was not.
“And I seriously doubt that any of the classes will be cancelled tomorrow,” he continued as we walked into my living room. “But a lot of people will be out and the teachers will expect that.”
“Okay.” I sat on the couch, scooting over for him.
“So I was thinking we should skip tomorrow, stay right here and watch shitty movies all day.”
My first response was to say I couldn’t skip a whole day’s worth of classes, but as I met Cam’s mischievous gaze, I said screw it. “That is a brilliant idea.”
“I know, right?” He tapped his head. “I’m full of great shit.”
“Yeah, you’re definitely full of it…”
“Ha.”
I giggled as I bit into the cheesy goodness. Cam ate half of the pizza and when Ollie stopped by, he finished it off. It amazed me how the two guys could eat so much and be in such drool-worthy shape. I ate two slices and gained an extra ass.
Sitting between the two boys, I dozed off while they watched a mini-marathon of a reality show about moonshining. When I woke up, Ollie was gone and although I was lying against Cam, his body was unnaturally tense.
I sat up, yawning as I pushed my hair out of my face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you.”
He looked at me, expression unreadable. Unease stirred like a pit of vipers in my stomach. His jaw was so tight that I wondered if he was going to crack his molars.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
Cam exhaled softly as he glanced at the coffee table. “You got a message while you were sleeping.”
My gaze followed his, landing on my cellphone. At first I didn’t see what the big deal was, but then anxiety rose like a fast-moving storm. Wide-awake, I shot forward and grabbed the cellphone. Tapping the screen, my heart jumped.
You’re a lying whore. How can you live with yourself?
I dragged in a breath, but it got stuck. I stared at the message, wishing it would simply vanish from existence.
“It flashed across your screen when it came through,” he said.
Hands shaking, I deleted the message and sat the phone down. Hurt and a wave of irrational anger rolled through me. Those two emotions felt better than the threatening panic.
“You looked at the text?”
“It’s not like I did it on purpose.” He leaned forward, hands splayed over his knees. “It was right there, sitting on your screen.”
“But you didn’t have to look!” I accused, backing off the couch.
Cam’s eyes narrowed. “Avery, I wasn’t sneaking through your stuff. The damn text came through. I looked before I could stop myself. Maybe that was wrong.”
“It was wrong!”
“Okay. It was wrong. I’m sorry.” He drew in a deep breath. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I saw that text.”
I was frozen, standing in the middle of my living room. This was pretty damn close to my worst fear coming true. Him finding out what happened held the first spot, but this was a close second and just as horrifying.
“Avery,” he said in a low, careful voice. In that moment, I realized he wasn’t mad at me. Not in the slightest and not even after I yelled at him for looking at the wretched text. Somehow that was worse than him being angry with me. “Why would you get a text like that?”
My heart threw itself against my ribs painfully. “I don’t know.”
A dubious look crossed his face.
“I don’t know,” I said again, latching onto the lie with everything I had in me. “Every so often I get a text like this, but I don’t know why. I think it’s a wrong number kind of thing.”
Cam stared at me. “You don’t know who that’s from?”
“No.” And that was the truth. “It says unknown caller. You saw that.”
His shoulders tensed at that and then he clenched his knees. Several seconds passed while my pulse pounded.
“I’m sorry for freaking out on you,” I added in a rush. “It just surprised me. I was asleep and I wake up and I could tell something was wrong. Then I thought… I don’t know what I thought, but I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, Avery.” He scooted to the edge of the couch. “I don’t need to hear that you’re sorry. I want you to be honest with me, sweetheart. That’s all I want. If you’re getting messages like that, I need to know about that.”
“Why?”
His dark brows knitted. “Because I’m your boyfriend and I care if someone is calling you a whore!”
I flinched.
Cam looked away, chest rising. “Honestly? It pisses me off, even if it’s an accidental text. No one should be sending you shit like that.”
His gaze settled on me again. An eternity stretched out between us. “You know you can tell me anything, right? I’m not going to judge you or get mad.”
“I know.” My voice sounded small to my own ears and I hated that. I said louder, “I know.”
His eyes met mine. “And you trust me, right?”
“Yes. Of course I do.” I didn’t waver.
Again, there was a pregnant pause that had me assuming the worse. “Shit,” he all but growled, and my heart sunk. Did he know? What was he thinking? The truth—everything—rose to the tip of my tongue, and then he closed his eyes. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
“What?” That was the last thing I expected him to say.
He rubbed his palm along his jaw. “I tell you that you should trust me and that you can tell me anything, but I’m not doing the same thing. And eventually you’re going to find out.”
Whoa. Forget the text message. Forget saying anything. What the hell was going on? Almost numb, I hurried around the coffee table and sat a few feet away from him on the couch. “What are you talking about, Cam?”
Lifting his head, he pierced me such a tortured stare that it made my chest ache. “You know how I told you we all have done shit in our past we aren’t proud of?”
“Yes.”
“I can say that from firsthand experience. Only a few people know about this,” he said, and I suddenly thought of the day he’d gotten upset with Ollie and then at the party when he’d gone after that guy. There seemed to be something that Jase had been telling him without really saying it. “And it’s the last thing I want to tell you.”
“You can tell me,” I assured him, and yeah, I felt like a twat considering all that I wasn’t telling him. I pushed those thoughts away, focusing on Cam. “Seriously, you can talk to me. Please.”
He hesitated. “I should be graduating this year, along with Ollie, but I’m not.”
“I remember you telling me you had to take some time off.”
Cam nodded. “It was sophomore year. I hadn’t been home a lot during the summer because I was helping coach a soccer camp in Maryland, but whenever I did go home, my sister… she was acting different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but she was super jumpy and when she was home, she spent all her time in her bedroom. And apparently she was rarely home according to my parents.”
My stomach sunk as I crossed my legs. I hoped I was wrong and I didn’t know where this was heading.
“My sister, she’s always been this bleeding heart, you know. Picking up stray animals and people, especially stray guys. Even when she was a tiny thing, she always buddied up with the most unpopular kid in the class.” His lips quirked up at the corners. “She met this guy. He was a year or two older than her and I guess their relationship was serious—as serious as they can be when you’re sixteen. Met the kid once. Didn’t like him. And it had nothing to do with the fact he was trying to get with my little sister. There was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way.”
Cam slid his hands downs his cheeks and then dropped them between his knees. “I was home over Thanksgiving break and I was in the kitchen. Teresa was in there and we were messing around. She pushed me and I pushed her back, on her arm. Not even hard and she cried out like I’d seriously hurt her. At first I thought she was just being dumb, but there were tears in her eyes. She played it off and I forgot about it for that night, but on Thanksgiving morning, Mom had walked in on her in a towel and she saw it.”
I held my breath.
“My sister… she was covered in bruises. Up and down her arms, on her legs.” His hands closed into fists. “She said it was from dancing, but we all knew you couldn’t get bruises like that from dancing. It took almost all morning to get the truth out of her.”