Page 184 of Story of My Life
“Tell me,” Cam demanded, rolling on top of me and pinning my arms over my head.
I snort-laughed. “You and your brothers were ready to drive to his apartment and beat him up when he said sort of mean things about me in a magazine. I’m not giving you any more ammunition when we could be having more sex instead.” I wiggled my hips suggestively under him and reveled when his eyes went dark.
“You’re insatiable,” he said, brushing my bangs back from my face.
“You’re the one with the power tool between his legs.”
He rolled his eyes. “I can tell you’re tired. Your penis descriptions start to go downhill.”
“Descriptions, yes. But my appreciation of said penis never flags.”
He dipped his head and dropped a kiss to my nose. It was so sweet, so unexpected, I panicked and decided to ruin the moment.
“Cam?”
“Hmm?”
“What happened to Laura’s husband?”
He sighed, but I felt his muscles tense against me as if warding off some invisible enemy.
“I–I was going to ask her or Google it, but I thought…”
“He died,” Cam said, climbing off me and flipping onto his back.
“Oh, God. That’s awful.”
“Yeah,” he said flatly.
I was literally biting my tongue to keep from asking another question. This wasn’t fodder for a character on the page. This was real life heartbreak, and it wasn’t my business.
Cam pulled me against him and tucked my head into his shoulder. “He was running with her when they were hit. Young driver. Distracted. The sun was…whatever. Miller tried to push Laura out of the way. He died before they made it to the hospital.”
A tear snaked down my cheek to Cam’s warm, hard chest. “Were you close?”
“He was my best friend since elementary school. Except for when I found out he and Laura were sneaking around behind my back and we beat the shit out of each other every day for a week our senior year. I loved him. We all did.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
“He was a good guy. Good dad. Good husband. Good friend. Too bad the good can’t last forever.”
I listened to the steady thump of Cam’s heart and wished I hadn’t asked the question, hadn’t dug deeper.
40
THAT’S A LOT OF PIGS
HAZEL
Our public-acknowledgment touraccidentally accelerated the following morning. After an early awakening, when we discovered Bertha curled up next to Peaches in her makeshift pen, Cam took the first shower. Grumbling about “piss-poor water pressure” and “fucking Houdini raccoons,” he went downstairs to make breakfast.
I took my time pulling on Cam’s discarded T-shirt and smushing my unruly bedhead into a bun. I was carrying Peaches down the stairs when I heard a loud shriek followed by a thud and a “Fuck!”
I jogged into the dining room in time to see Zoey peeking through her hands.
“Who cooks eggsnaked?” she yelled.
“Who doesn’t fucking knock?” Cam demanded. He was holding a tea towel over his impressive array of genitalia and trying to scrape eggs back into the pan he’d dropped.
