Secondhand Heart Read online

  “Jesus Christ, Daisy. What the hell are you thinking?” Bree shook her head. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. I guess it was one of those ‘you just had to be there’ moments. “I had thought Cam was a good thing for you, but now I’m not so sure. If that’s what gets his rocks off, more power to him, but something about that isn’t sitting right with me.”

  I shrugged. She was right and I didn’t want to admit it.

  Bree continued. “The last thing I want is for you to be is a pawn in someone else’s game.”

  Not tonight. Cam’s text made my heart forget to beat. End of week stuff at the bar.

  After closing? I asked. No wasn’t a word I’d ever had the misfortune of being accustomed to, and I sure as hell didn’t plan on starting to get used to it now.

  I’m wiped from last night. Right. Excuses.

  Me too. We could just sleep. Bree’s words thundered in my brain, and getting my way was going to be the only way to shut her up. I was haunted by reruns of Ashley in the office, convinced Cam wanted to see her for more than just paperwork, cocktailed with Bree’s disapproval. That’s what this was really about. I needed to make sure that Cam still wanted to see me, and that Ashley was just a delusional bitch.

  That sounds cool. Now that’s the kind of answer I was looking for.

  I can meet you at your house?

  I’ll leave the key under the back mat. I want to come home to you in my bed.

  Yes, sir. I wanted to take that text back after I hit send, because that was something I always used to say to Jordan. And Cam was never going to replace Jordan.

  Go ahead, judge me. I know what you’re thinking. That Daisy chick is nuts. I’d be thinking the same thing, too, if someone else was doing what I was doing. I’d also think that chick could stand to drop about twenty pounds, but that’s beside the point. If Cam was hiding something from me, I was going to make him tell me. No being a pussy and blowing me off. Either you want to see me, or you don’t.

  Stores closed early on Sunday, which never bothered me before today. I would have really liked to get something cute to greet Cam in. You know, a reward for his good behavior. Even though I knew better, I fished through my underwear drawer, pulling out a few crumpled pieces of lingerie that hadn’t seen the light of day since Jordan had deployed to Afghanistan.

  None of this stuff would fit me, even if I wouldn’t feel like a frigging traitor wearing it. I went downstairs to get a trash bag. Time to get this stuff out of my life. I’d bring it to Savers on the way to Cam’s house.

  Cam wasn’t going to be back until well after midnight, but I still went to his house early, after the baseball game was over. My dad looked at me funny when I skipped out on the beer part of our ritual, but didn’t make that much of a big deal of it, he just drank mine for me. He’d made hot dogs on the grill, which I helped myself to. Had I passed on those, he might have called 911.

  I had a ton of homework, now that I’d been spending so much time with Cam I was falling behind. I brought it with me, and spread it out on the table on the deck. The beach was much quieter now than when I had been there earlier in the day with Bree, and the gentle lapping of the waves against the breakwater made me drowsy, fast.

  Once I had everything packed up to leave bright and early in the morning, I took a few minutes to look around the condo, since every other time I’d been inside, I’d been too engrossed in tearing Cam’s clothes off and all the good things that followed to care about my surroundings.

  A house on the beach had to have plenty of windows, of course, and an open airy layout. All of his furniture looked new, and while it was nice, it wasn’t very adventurous. All brown and beige and boring, with a couple of blue and tan plaid throw pillows bunched up at the arm of the couch. He hadn’t hung curtains or anything on the walls yet.

  This place was screaming for a feminine touch. It needed something to bring it from house to home.

  Cam’s bedroom wasn’t much better. He hadn’t made the bed, and my heart pounded looking at it. Had Ashley come back here, after he’d dropped me off last night? I had to get the image of her laying in his bed, laughing at me, out of my head. There were already enough ghosts in there.

  Call me OCD, but I had to make the bed before I got in it. All of his bedding was crisp, white, and clean, like a hotel room. No evidence of sex anywhere. Plumping the pillows and feeling satisfied with my improvements, I headed into Cam’s walk in closet. Cowboy boots lined one of the walls, with every combination of plaid shirt you could imagine hanging neatly underneath. I turned around and found stacks of jeans and T-shirts. I grabbed a gray Patriots T, shimmied out of my own clothes, and pulled it down over my skin, inhaling Cam’s scent as I did.

  I stopped in front of the mirror, looking at myself in his shirt. The fabric skimmed my curves, and covered me to just below my hips.

  The dog tags had to come off.

  Lifting the chain from my neck felt like ripping skin. But I couldn’t wear both the T-shirt and the tags. It wasn’t fair to either Cam or Jordan. Shit. My eyes burned with tears as I placed the necklace in the side pocket of my overnight bag. It felt like I’d chosen Cam over Jordan.

  It took me a few minutes before I calmed down and fell asleep. Being in someone else’s bed without them in it made me feel like Goldilocks. I wondered if we’d be able to make good on our promise, to just sleep together. I imagined our limbs tangled together, at peace. I realized this was the first time I’d be spending the night with Cam sober. We needed to do this tonight, to make sure what we had was real.

  When sleep came, it felt so good that when Cam joined me, pressing his body against my back and kissing my shoulder, my eyelids refused to open to greet him. His skin was warm and damp, his hair wet from maybe a shower.

  “Hey, baby,” he whispered in my ear, his arms wrapped around my waist to pull me in closer. I tried to respond, but it came out as a moan. “I like coming home and finding you in my bed.”

  Cam wasn’t kidding when he’d said he was exhausted. His body grew heavy fast and his breath slowed and deepened, the warm air against my neck pulling me further into unconsciousness.

  The alarm shocked me back to reality. I hit it fast, not wanting to wake Cam. I slid out from under him carefully, looking back to see if I’d disturbed him. His eyes fluttered open, and he woke up with a smile on his face.

  “Hey.” He didn’t sound quite awake yet, but he reached over and squeezed my hand. “I didn’t get to talk to you last night.”

  “I knew you came in, but I was out.” It was just what I needed. It had been a long time since I woke up feeling this refreshed. “Did you sleep well?” I sounded like someone who stuck out their pinky when they drank their tea. Gross.

  His smile widened and he rolled over on to his back, his arm falling over his eyes to shield them from the sunbeam assaulting him. It took all I had not to crawl back in that bed and do all the things we hadn’t done last night, but damn American Government waited for me halfway across town. He looked back over at me from under his forearm. “Amazing. You?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t notice that T-shirt before,” Cam gave it a tug and laughed. “It’s never looked so good.”

  I pulled it up over my head and threw it at him. “Thanks for letting me borrow it.” Before he had a chance to recover from his shock, I got up off the bed and headed to the shower.

  Sometimes, I did things that surprised even myself, in a good way. That was one of them. I smiled to myself as I turned on the shower, and I didn’t hear Cam come in behind me. I gasped when he grabbed my arms, then my eyes met his in the mirror.

  “Why are you up at the crack of dawn?” he asked, his lips grazing my neck as he spoke.

  “School,” I sighed as light kisses grazed my neck and shoulder. “If you ever want to torture me, sign me up for more summer classes.”

  “I have the day off,” Cam said, lifting his lips from my skin just enough to get the words out. “You should, too.”
>
  “I can’t.” I squeezed my eyes closed as Cam closed his hands over my breasts, his fingers circling slowly. “If we miss a class, we’re screwed.” My brain wasn’t connecting this moment with mundane crap like school. “I don’t remember what happens right now, but it’s bad.”

  “Bad, huh?” Cam chuckled. He let me go so he could untie the string on his pajama bottoms. “We don’t want bad to happen.” He put his hands on my bottom and pushed me forward. “Get in there. We need to work quickly.”

  Cam had the best shower I’d ever been in. There was no traditional shower head, instead, the water fell from the ceiling like it came from a rain cloud. He backed me against the wall, the cool stone shocking me as it hit my skin, and kissed me like he needed me more than the water that ran down his chest.

  He stopped, his face still just inches from mine. He stood there, frozen, our eyes locked. I reached up to trace my finger along the curve of his lips, one side up further than the other. He had a dimple. How did I never notice that before? Cam reached up to my hand, lacing his fingers in mine.

  “What?” I asked. I didn’t understand why he’d stopped what he was doing, when everything about his expression was enough to make my body melt. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He still didn’t move. “I just realized, I’ve never seen you like this before.”

  “Like what?” My muscles were fluttering with need under his touch.

  “This,” My eyes followed his to the window near the ceiling. “In the sunshine.”

  What the hell was I thinking? Cam hadn’t seen me during the day before this morning. In the dusky evening sun at the baseball game, yes, but it wasn’t the same as having a sunbeam greet you in the morning. And before he said that, I had totally made my mind up to move in with him.

  This had been our first night together sober. Out of how many?

  My parents probably couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. They didn’t give a shit about The Spotlight after Ev left the show.

  I don’t even remember the drive to school, which is saying something right there about how distracted I was. There was only one way out of the Manomet section of town, and it was a windy road, which for some reason caused everyone to drive like an asshole.

  The college was a satellite school, since we were too far away from the city for a real college, and the classes were at a former rope company. Dad said my great-grandfather worked there after the war. Rumor had it, the place was haunted. The huge building held many businesses, mostly medical, but also the town’s unemployment office. Blood, guts, ghosts, and desperation.

  The perfect environment for higher education. Just enough to scare you into paying attention. I loved it.

  Today I was nothing more than a warm body taking up space. We were so close to the end of the session, I could see the beach at the end of the tunnel. Today people started to do their end of class presentations, which I hadn’t even touched yet. Crap. Between Cam and Ev, my present was interfering with my future.

  Cam asked me to come back to the house after class, which ended at noon. Time crawled. I could practically see it dragging its ass, stopping to nurse sore muscles, and mocking me while I listened to someone drone on about the possibility of a new political party making an impact with voters. Usually, I would have been interested, but today, not so much. If I had a brain in my head, I would have paid attention just so I could have lifted some of the information for my presentation next week. But my brain was fried on Cam, and as far as learning, I was actually going to have to fend for myself.

  I rang Cam’s doorbell, having left the key behind. I felt anxious, standing there waiting for him to let me in. When he opened the door, he leaned against it, looking even tanner in daylight wearing a white T-shirt, his bare feet sticking out of worn jeans. My eyes wandered up and down his body, it was like I was seeing a completely new person.

  I’d never felt quite like this before. I wasn’t sure what was happening.

  He chuckled softly. “Hey.” Once I looked back up at him, his eyes were twinkling. He kind of needed a haircut. I say kind of because I liked it untamed and beachy from the salt water.

  “Are you going to let me in?” I mimicked his half smile.

  “Oh,” Cam seemed to be lost in the same dreamland I was. He moved sideways so I could walk in. “Yeah. How was class?”

  “Endless.” I stopped in front of him, my fingers curling in the collar of his shirt, I couldn’t keep my hands off of him. I went up on my tip toes to kiss him. “Time away from you.”

  The hand Cam had had on the door frame was now on my ass. “I missed you, too. Come back here with me.”

  I followed him back to the deck, where he’d set up lunch. He even held out my chair for me to sit down. It looked like he’d had it catered. More likely, he’d gone up to The Lobster Pound for lobster salad, which waited for us on the prettiest salad I’d seen in a long time, a bed of lettuce with cucumbers, bright red tomatoes, and olives framing it. “This looks awesome.”

  “I spend seventy hours a week at the restaurant. Something had to sink in, eventually. Iced tea?” He filled my red plastic cup from the Tupperware pitcher.

  I nodded. “You don’t have to wait on me, it’s your day off.”

  “If I do things for you now, maybe you’ll return the favor later.” He wriggled his eyebrows.

  “Ulterior motives.” Like there ever was any doubt. I put a bite of lobster in my mouth. Heaven. “I see how you are.”

  Cam shrugged. “I see it as the gift that keeps on giving.”

  I insisted on clearing the plates, not like it was any big sacrifice, I knew a house like this had to have a dishwasher. Cam followed me into the kitchen, I could tell he wasn’t used to letting people do things for him. I’m sure Ashley never lifted a finger. Ugh. I wondered if she was still lurking around town, or if she’d been satisfied with fucking up just one night royally.

  His hovering made me a little uneasy. If I had company in the kitchen, it was usually my mother, nagging me until I lost my appetite. “What do you want to do now?” I asked him.

  “Did you bring your suit?”

  “No.” So dumb. “I didn’t expect to come back. I should have stopped at home, but I didn’t think.”

  “That’s okay.” He came up behind me, and I sucked in my breath as he lifted my hair up off my neck. I knew he was going to kiss it, and let’s face it, neck kisses are just so good. “We can do without it.”

  I turned around to face him, sliding my hands around his waist. “But I love the beach, and we’re right here.” I looked up at him and stuck my bottom lip out in a fake pout, squealing when he nipped it.

  “We can still do the beach.” He looked at me like I was missing the most obvious thing.

  I looked down at my clothes, my standard T-shirt and denim shorts. “I’ll get dumb tan lines.”

  Cam rolled his eyes and pulled me away from the counter by my arm. “You’re not going to get any tan lines.”

  I followed him upstairs, figuring he was going to bring me to bed, but we walked right past it and on to the second floor balcony. His condo had one off of the kitchen and the master bedroom, in case you thought this place could get any more perfect. It couldn’t. There were two lounge chairs waiting for us out there, separated by a round glass table.

  I looked at him, questioning, but didn’t move.

  “Me first.” Cam pulled his shirt up over his head. “Your turn.”

  “We’re outside.”

  He held his arms out wide on either side of his body. “There are walls.”

  I gulped. Underwear was just like a bathing suit, right? I rolled my shirt up and took it off, holding it in front of my chest, feeling bare. “People are on the beach.”

  “They can’t see anything, this part of the beach is private. And the way the decks are angled, it’s really private.” Cam undid his belt and shimmied out of his jeans, leaving his boxers. It was like a deranged game of strip poker. “Relax.”

&
nbsp; “It’s not that,” I sputtered. “Well maybe, because you, my friend, are turning out to be quite the exhibitionist. But everything with us is about sex.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Cam smiled up at me from his chaise, squinting slightly.

  His answer caught me totally off guard. Part of me expected him to react like a girl and apologize or try to justify himself. But instead, he owned it, turning it around on me to feel like I should back pedal. “It’s just that, well, shouldn’t there be more?”

  Cam grabbed the shirt I’d been clutching to my chest, and threw it in to the bedroom. I sat down, facing him, waiting for his answer. “I don’t think that’s it at all. I love spending time with you, and we have a lot in common. It’s been a long time since I’ve had such a good time with a woman.”

  I looked down at my bare skin, my sheer bra keeping no secrets. “But it always winds up like this.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?” Cam looked confused. “I’m not going to apologize for being attracted to you.”

  And the debate went to Cam in a landslide.

  I couldn’t look him in the eye, his confidence sapped mine. “It’s never been like this before.”

  Cam got up and sat next to me on my chaise, pulling me into his side. He rubbed my arm. “How old were you when you met Jordan?”

  “Eleven.”

  “And when did you guys start being more than friends?”

  I smiled at him. “Don’t ask.”

  “Nice.” Cam nodded and raised his eyebrows. “I know you didn’t expect to be starting over, now or ever. There’s not a book for this stuff. It’s going to be different every time.”

  That familiar burning feeling started in my eyes. Shit. “It’s just that—“

  “You keep saying that,” Cam turned my face to his. “I’m going to kiss you every time that you do.”

  “That’s supposed to make me stop?” A rogue tear escaped when I closed my eyes to welcome Cam’s lips on mine.

  “I just want to let you know the consequences of your actions.” Cam brushed the tear away from my cheek. “But it sounds like you’re trying to make excuses for yourself.”