Page 31 of Loving You Always

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. “Itisfinished. 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 werejustdoing, you canjustdo 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.”

“Well, if you need me, you know where I am.”

---