Loving You Always (8 page)

A
breeze surprised Kerris in the stifling August heat, persuading a rare smile to her lips. There had been so little to smile about lately. She’d been home from the hospital for two weeks, and still had a lot of pain. The doctors said that was to be expected, since she had basically been body slammed by a tree. They had pills for the pain, and she took them, eager for numbness. But the pain under her skin? Slamming against the walls of her empty womb? Echoing in the hollow chambers of her heart? There was no pill for that. If there were, she would have overdosed on it by now.

She was lucky to be alive. But she sat on the patio on a gorgeous day, watching her gorgeous husband set lunch out for them, and felt anything but lucky. Cam maneuvered her wheelchair so her leg in its cast cleared the table.

“Good thing Mama Jess has cooked and frozen enough food to feed the troops.” He settled into the seat across from her, his smile artificial and forced.

Kerris carved out a smile for him.

“Yeah, Mama Jess has been a godsend.”

She’d been coming over every day to help. Those times were the closest to peace Kerris had known for the last two weeks. When it was just Kerris and Cam, things were so awkward. Cam seemed as relieved as Kerris every time Mama Jess showed up. Faking it was exhausting. Sometimes Kerris took the pills just to be asleep whenever Cam was home.

He was trying. She was, too, but everything—every smile, every word, every look between them—was so hard. She thought longingly of the ease they had shared before they married, before they even dated. That pure, open friendship. They were both knotted souls under it all, but they’d shared a simple connection, built around honesty and mutual affection. She strained her eyes every day to see a trace of those friends, but all she could see was the wary distrust between them. All she could feel was the guilt they shared over Amalie’s death.

He had looked at her with no expression when she told him the name she wanted for their baby girl. He nodded wordlessly, looking away from her searching eyes. Had he cried over the baby she’d never even gotten to hold? Did it feel like someone was shoving gravel into the soft muscle of his heart when he thought of Amalie, never having a chance?

Cam toyed with his napkin. He picked up his fork and then put it down. He looked to the left and watched the river, still and placid. He looked to the right, considering the vegetable garden she and Mama Jess had planted earlier in the summer. Even when her pregnancy had made it harder, Kerris had wandered out between those rows every day to check on her small patch of earth, pregnant with life, just like she had been.

Cam bullied the vegetables on his plate into corners, poking at them. He looked everywhere but at her. Kerris knew things had been difficult between them; she knew that they hadn’t talked and needed to, but his restlessness disturbed her. He was like a wild boar penned and desperate to escape.

“Is everything okay, Cam?”

His broad shoulders slumped; his lean body was taut with an emotion he could barely disguise any longer. He looked at her, his face already telling her things she didn’t want to know.

“Not for a long time, Kerris.”

Amazing how words so softly spoken could feel like a spike splitting your heart.

“I don’t understand.”

Only she did understand, but had no idea what he wanted to do about it. His eyes skittered away, paying more attention to the patio flagstones than to his wife.

“Ker, I can’t do this.”

“You mean the rehab and everything?” She hoped that’s what he meant. Something she had an easy, quick solution for. “That won’t start ’til these casts are off. So we’ve got a while, and it won’t be so bad. The nurse will be here during the day, and she’ll take me to rehab. It won’t interfere with work or anything. We’ll get into a groove and—”

“Not the rehab. I can’t do…us anymore. These last two weeks have been…The night of the accident, I said I was done.” He finally looked her right in the eye, and the resolve she saw there shook her. “I still am.”

So this was what it meant to feel the earth move under your feet; to feel the whole world tilt, and when it righted itself, for it to look like completely unfamiliar terrain. But not so unfamiliar. Really, ground she had covered all her life. Abandonment. Rejection. It actually felt strangely, sadly familiar. And she realized something in that moment. Though Cam had said he’d never let her go, she had been the one clinging with a grasping, desperate need she hadn’t even acknowledged to herself. Finally, someone had committed to her. Someone had thought she was good enough, wanted her enough to make a permanent commitment. And she would have allowed nothing, not even the love of her life, to jeopardize that commitment.

“Say something.” Cam’s eyes under his long, thick lashes looked like he didn’t know what to expect.

She sometimes forgot how beautiful Cam was. A dark angel. Even as she had held on to the mangled matrimonial ties that bound them, she had taken him for granted. She hadn’t appreciated his kindness. Hadn’t longed for the passion she knew he deliberately checked so he wouldn’t frighten her. Hadn’t sought out the secrets and the shadows behind his eyes.

Her throat blazed with the tears she refused to shed until she was alone.

“I am sorry, Cam.”

“
You’re
sorry?” Disbelief warred with guilt on his face. “Kerris, I almost got you killed. Our baby girl…”

His words and something in his eyes died. Maybe it was the last of his love for her. Maybe it was the dream of a family that had compelled every misbegotten step they had taken over the years. Maybe it was something he’d buried with Amalie.

“Cam, you are not responsible. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. No one forced me behind that wheel.”

“God, Kerris, don’t make this easier for me.” He cleared what she thought might be tears from his throat. “There’s nothing you can say to make me feel like less of a bastard right now.”

“I don’t blame you,” Kerris said. “It occurs to me sometimes to blame you, but deep down, I don’t. And I guess eventually I’ll have to get over blaming myself, but I’m not there yet.”

“I thought we could make this work. But Amalie on top of what happened with…I kept telling myself we could get past it.” Regret darkened his stormy eyes. “And I’m sorry for that night, for what I made you do. It was just the thought of you and Walsh—”

“Don’t.”

She had to stop him. She couldn’t talk about the night he’d demanded her body as punishment for her sins. And Walsh’s name between them was too much.

“Let’s not dissect all the ways we hurt each other, Cam. Not today. I’m too…”

Too weary. Too injured, inside and out. Too desperate to be alone.

“Until the divorce is final, you’re still on my insurance, so your medical bills should be covered.” He stood, suddenly businesslike and brusque, but that didn’t hide the desperation underneath. “I’m leaving tonight, so you can stay here for as long as you need to. Hell, you can have the cottage in the…in the settlement. You made it a home, and I know how much it means to you.”

“Where will you stay?” She studied her cast, where Meredith and Mama Jess and a few nurses had signed it.

“I’m leaving tonight for Paris.”

Her eyes shot to his face, shock and confusion competing for mastery in her muddled emotions.

“Paris?”

“I applied to the Sorbonne months ago and was accepted.” He shuffled his feet, a dance of discomfort with himself. “I hadn’t told you because I knew that would be shit hitting the fan on top of everything else we had going on. I delayed admission and was planning to talk to you about it after…after the baby was born.”

“You mean you planned to spring it on me as a done deal, knowing I would cave and follow you over there.”

“Yeah, that about says it all.” Self-contempt twisted his well-shaped mouth around the admission. “But there’s nothing here for me. Ms. Kris is gone. Walsh and I are done, obviously. Our marriage is a joke, maybe was from the beginning. Amalie is…”

Cam bit off the sentence as if the name had pierced his tongue. He titled his head back and looked up at the sky before returning to the conversation.

“Even though it’s off term, Sebastian has some friends I can crash with until the next term begins. I’ll get you the address once I settle in Paris.”

“What about your job?”

“I quit my job a couple of weeks ago. Not like I really need it now that Ms. Kris’s estate has settled. Meredith didn’t tell you?”

“Meredith!” Her turbulent emotions exploded through the numbness his announcement had caused. “Why would
Meredith
have to tell me my husband quit his job?”

“Why would my
wife
pretend she was asleep every time I came to the hospital?” Cam returned with re-emerging fire.

They stared at each other, helpless and hostile, a suffocating silence stealing their breaths.

“I didn’t know what to say to you.” Her voice abandoned the fight, leaving behind a whisper. A rogue tear slipped down her cheek at the memory of him standing over her in the hospital. “And I assumed you didn’t know what to say to me.”

“I didn’t. I figured Walsh had said it all.”

His acrid words slapped her, and she shut her eyes against the stinging reproach.

“You think I didn’t know he came to see you? That he was getting a play by play from Meredith?”

“He only came once, and I don’t think he tried to hide it.”

“No, I’ve never met a man as bold as Walsh about stealing another man’s wife.”

“He was concerned about me. We’re friends.”

“Fuck!” He detonated the imprecation like a bomb, pulling the ring on the tenuous control she’d sensed him exerting. “Even now you can’t admit that you love him? That’s what this is all about. That’s why we didn’t work. If he had just…if you could have…”

A groan escaped the bear trap of Cam’s tightly clenched lips. He pulled a hand over his face before running it along the back of his neck.

“Fuck.” He inflated the expletive with frustration and hurt. He turned his head away, wiping surreptitiously at the wet corners of his eyes. He moved toward the patio door, cocking his ear, listening for something she didn’t hear.

“Expecting someone?” She felt listless beneath the weight of the tragedy they had become.

“Um, yeah.” He walked to the door leading back inside. “Meredith’s dropping off Mama Jess.”

“What for?” She imagined Mama Jess walking into this minefield they were negotiating right now. She would pick up on it right away. “She can come back later. We should finish this.”

“That’s what I’m telling you.” Cam headed toward the door and looked at her over his shoulder. “It
is
finished. I’m leaving, and Mama Jess is staying with you.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She used her good hand to bang her good leg in the wheelchair. “I’ll be fine. We can’t expect her to drop everything and just…just…”

She trailed off when Mama Jess came to the patio door. All of Kerris’s arguments and reasons why Mama Jess shouldn’t come, shouldn’t drop everything to be with her, disintegrated. She realized it was exactly what she wanted, exactly what she needed to get through this. What she’d never had. A mother who would drop it all, do it all, fight it all, for her little girl. And that was how Mama Jess looked at her in that moment: like she was a tigress and Kerris her cub.

“You,” Mama Jess practically growled at Cam, “can go now.”

“Mama Jess, I was just—”

“Whatever you were
just
doing, you can
just
do it in Paris or wherever you’re flying off to. Go. We got this.”

“My flight doesn’t actually leave until eight.” Cam walked over and squatted down in front of the wheelchair. He took Kerris’s hand despite the small rumble coming from Mama Jess.

“I know…shit. I know everything’s screwed up,” Cam said. “I just…I can’t stay here. We can’t keep pretending it’ll get better. You understand?”

She looked down at his thundercloud eyes in his angel face. Their marriage was a decomposing body, its rotting fetor of betrayal and mistrust clogging the air between them, but she knew he still cared. Whatever part of him still loved her was being ripped out by this end. She could see it. She knew it, but her heart still beat a painful cadence.

Abandoned. Rejected. Walked out on again.

The ties that bound them, though mangled and matted, Cam was the one severing.

“I understand.” Kerris hoped he wasn’t distracted by the tears she couldn’t keep from rolling down her cheeks. “Go. I get it.”

“Yeah, well, uh…”

Cam tipped his head back, probably searching for words that would make something right that had been wrong from the beginning. His throat worked around his Adam’s apple, one tear tracking into the dark silk of his hairline. She swiped at his tear with her thumb, lifting one heavy corner of her mouth.

“It’s all right, Cam,” she whispered, glad Mama Jess had gone back inside. “Just go.”

“Kerris, I do love—”

“Don’t say it.” She cut him off, a please-get-out-of-here-before-I-break plea in her eyes. His voice was a dull-edged knife slicing clumsily through her heart, fiber by bloody fiber. Dull and slow and imprecise and drawn out. She would have preferred a quick cut, but he just kept talking.

“If you need anything…”

“Go. Thank you for getting Mama Jess to stay here with me. She’s exactly what I need.”

“Will you…” Cam swallowed, pressing his lips together. “Will you be with him now?”

The question dangled between them. She oscillated between flaring, blazing emotion, and a telling numbness that permeated her bones to the very marrow. She was an open wound, vulnerable and infected. She had been through a lot, and the most dangerous thing she could do now was to decide. She was afraid to move, afraid she’d screw things up even worse than she had already.

Still. She needed to be still.

She shrugged shoulders that felt like they couldn’t have cared less. She stroked Iyani’s bracelet on her wrist.

“I really don’t know. Not now, not anytime soon. I’m afraid to be with anyone right now. When you leave, I’ll truly be alone. And I think that’s what I need.”