Page 13 of Fault Lines
The glass of water I gulped from the kitchen was painfully cold. I didn’t care. I chased it with two painkillers. Then I started on coffee. Anything to scrape the fuzz from my mind.
At least it was a weekday and Cam would have work soon. Lately, I’d missed him so much, but right now? I needed time to think.
Could I really do this? Did I even want to? How would I live knowing what he was out doing? How could I take him into my body and pretend that part of him wasn’t now parceled out to strangers? The part that, for so long, I’d called my own?
I breathed in the comfort of fresh coffee. At least some things still worked as they always had.
I heard Cam’s footsteps from the stairs and, before he even entered the kitchen, poured him a mug alongside mine.
“Good morning, beautiful.” He took a seat at the bar.
He hadn’t even bothered to get dressed for work yet.
“Aren’t you going to be late? You didn’t even run this morning.”
He looked at me, his expression unreadable, as I slid his plain black coffee in front of him and drowned mine in creamer.
“I can be a little late,” he said. “It’s not as if I haven’t put in enough overtime the past few weeks.”
I raised an eyebrow, settling onto the stool. “Have you?” There was a sharpness in my voice that surprised even me.
“Yes, Livi, I have,” Cam said, clipped and impatient. “I told you already, I haven’t cheated on you. Those texts are as far as it went, I give you my word.”
“Sure, you didn’t cheat,” I said flatly. “You’re just waiting for my blessing to get started.”
He took a sip and flinched at the temperature, but didn’t say anything about it. “I’m going to ignore your attitude, because I know you’re hurting. What I’m asking—it’s not fair, but I need it. It’s the only thing that might bring us back to ourselves. Please just think about it, Livi. Don’t say no before you’ve thought it over.”
“And if I do say no? You’ll leave me so you can go fuck other people?”
He shook his head vehemently. “I’d never leave you. You’re my heart, Livi. I wouldn’t survive without you. I just need to get this out of my system, and then we’ll go back to normal.”
“How long am I supposed to just sit here and wait while you sow your wild oats?”
“Don’t talk like that. I don’t know how long. Maybe once, twice, and I’ll see it’s not really what I wanted. Right now, though, I need to feel alive again, Livi. Everything’s just felt so dead.”
“Do you think this hasn’t been hard for me?” My voice went too loud, sudden and thin. “Maybe I didn’t dream of a huge family, but I wanted it, too. I wanted you to be happy, and I can’t even do that for you. And now you’re telling me I’m not enough.”
A tear edged down my face; Cam was up in an instant, arms around me.
“You are enough, Livi. I’m sorry it sounds like you’re not, but you are. I just need… something to shake me out of this. It’ll mean nothing, I swear. I only love you.”
“It will mean something to me.”
He stroked the back of my head, pressing his cheek against my hair. “I know. If I could fix that part, I would. We’ll make rules, okay? Just… spend today making a list of what you can and can’t live with. I’ll make one, too. We’ll talk it over tonight, see if we can make it as bearable as possible.”
He sounded so certain that I’d give in, as if he already saw my answer written across my face. Because he knew the only other option. And he knew I couldn’t leave him. If he was my heart, he was also my weakness, my everything.
“I have to get to work. Take the day, think it over. I don’t want you telling people about this, but you can tell Rachel. You’llneed someone. Just make sure she knows to keep quiet, okay baby?”
I nodded, hardly able to process anything beyond his body heat clinging to me. I’d been starved for touch for so long—the tiniest gesture was enough to unravel me.
“Make your list; let Rachel help if you want. I’ll come home at five and we’ll talk it through over dinner.” He let go and the cold rushed in. I turned my back and sipped my coffee, trying to collect myself.
He lingered, just looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“You should go, or you’ll be really late.”
He sighed. “Yeah. See you tonight.”
