Chapter Sixteen

Camden

Snow covered every part of the meadow between the ridges, with the exception of the hot springs and the creek that ran beside it, heavy with the beginning of spring thaw.

The contrast of undisturbed snow against the steaming turquoise mineral pool was something I’d never found an equal to. I’d traveled all over the world, seen both the breathtaking and the brutal, but there was nowhere on earth I found as beautiful, hence the tattoo on my arm.

Opening this hot springs up to tourists would have made more than a pretty penny, but our great-grandfathers had agreed to keep it for the private use of the Danielses and Bradleys only. With the exception of a few summer parties when we were in high school, this generation had honored that agreement. Relished it, really.

I parked the Jeep alongside the old bathhouse and got out, hauling my backpack with me. The snow barely gave way under my boots as I trekked above where the bathhouse perched precariously over the north end of the pool and down the other side.

The structure was still sound, as far as an 1880s piece of ruin left to time could be. Dad had reinforced it the summer Xander broke his wrist after we built a tire swing under it, and the supports still looked good.

The tire swing had not survived Xander’s misadventure.

Willow’s 4Runner crested the ridge from the west, and my stomach tensed in anticipation. A month. I’d been home a month, and I’d gone from vowing to never see her, to never touching her, to…I didn’t even know. She was Willow, and even though I knew this was a shit idea, I couldn’t stop myself. I never could when it came to her.

She was the exception to everything.

“Hey!” She grinned as she shut the door to her car, toting her own bag over her shoulder.

“Nice wheel.” I pointed to her front left.

“You like that?” She posed like a car model. “It’s brand-new from the manufacturer and looks exactly like the other three already installed. But wait, there’s more! It comes with four new tires, since its friend on the back right was also flattened while avoiding a deer. All for the price of I-think-I-just-put-Keith-Mayberry’s-kid-through-college!” She ended with a flashy grin, and I laughed.

I never knew how she did it, but she could flip my moods with a twist of her lips. Lips I knew the taste and texture of. Lips that had fueled way too many dreams lately. All because I had the self-control of a teenager when she came near.

Or maybe it was because I’d wanted her since I was a teenager.

“Let’s get in. It’s freezing out here.”

She nodded, and we climbed down the stone-ringed embankment until we reached the heavy, flat stones that bordered the north and west ends of the pool. We dropped our bags, and I busied myself with getting my towels out and stripping down, mostly to keep from watching Willow strip down.

I laid out one towel to step on and folded the other for when I got out, then started dropping clothing until I was in nothing but the black swim trunks I’d worn under my pants. “See you in there!” I called out and jumped, careful not to cannonball, because I wasn’t fifteen anymore.

The water engulfed me in heat, and I lingered but didn’t hit the bottom before I swam back up. I broke the surface, and the drops of water on my face immediately chilled.

“How is it?” Willow asked from the edge.

I turned around and nearly swallowed my tongue.

She stood on the ledge, pulling her long brown hair up into a knot on the top of her head. Words. I didn’t have words. “Incredible,” maybe. “Beautiful,” definitely. “Sexy as hell”? Yeah, we’d go with that, too. Her suit was a two-piece and straight out of a forties pinup fantasy, complete with navy-blue bottoms, gold buttons up her stomach, and a red-and-white-striped top that looped around her neck and tied between her breasts in a bow that I was going to undo with my teeth.

God. Bless. America.

I locked my jaw to keep those teeth exactly where they were.

“Well?” she asked, and it took me a second to remember what she’d asked in the first place.

“It’s a balmy one hundred and four degrees, just like every other day of the year.” Though I really was wishing it was a hell of a lot colder at this moment.

“Perfect.” She sat on the edge of the stone, then lowered herself into the water until it covered her to her neck. Then she moaned. “This feels amazing.”

This was the worst idea I’d ever had in my entire life.

Except that it was her idea.

She made her way toward, then past me, stopping at the grouping of shallow stones that made up the east end of the pool. “Come sit,” she called out.

“That’s probably not the best idea.”

“Why?” She tilted her head to the side and leaned back so her weight was braced on her hands.

The water hit her neckline, but it was also crystal clear in that section.

“Trust me. This is close enough.”

“So you’re going to stay out there in the middle and tread water the entire time we’re here?” She disappeared behind a cloud of steam as the breeze shifted, then reappeared.

“Maybe.”

“Suit yourself. So you know the entire town thinks we’re together, right?” she questioned.

Ah yes, the elephant in the room or, rather, in the hot springs.

“I am aware.” I swam a little closer when another wave of steam hid her from me. I might not be able to touch her, not in the way I wanted, but I wasn’t going to deny myself the simple pleasure of looking at her.

“Because you keep putting your hands on me when we’re in public.” She arched an eyebrow in clear challenge.

“Define ‘hands on you.’” It was nothing compared to what I wanted to do.

“You put your arm around me at the diner.”

“You held out your hand first.” I moved through another cloud of steam when I couldn’t see her.

“You held my hand at the Historical Society meeting.”

“You…” Shit, I had nothing. “You hugged me.” There.

“You held on to my waist.”

“So you didn’t fall off the chair. Do you have any clue how clumsy you get when you’re distracted? You get this laser focus on something shiny, and everything else doesn’t exist, including your own feet. Trust me—I was saving you from yourself.”

“You kissed my forehead.” All pretense of play dropped in those hazel eyes.

I’d kissed a hell of a lot more than that in my kitchen. I swallowed and sat on the edge of the ledge that marked the shallow end. “You chose me over your dad.”

“You pulled me from my car and carried me home.”

I turned to fully face her, the water falling to my stomach. Cold air prickled at my chest, helping to ground me. “That was just being a good neighbor. Plus, the entire town didn’t see, so I don’t think it counts.”

A smile tugged at her lips. “Okay. You took a bullet for me.”

“Six,” I corrected her, feeling that sliver of terror at the reminder of how close I’d come to losing her. “It was six bullets. Buckshot.”

“I thought you were dying,” she admitted. “I didn’t know about the vest.”

“I thought he’d kill you before I could get out there.” I ran my hands over my air-cooled face.

“I thought about you before I saw you.” She shifted and sat up.

“What?” Game over.

“I saw the gun, and your dad was talking about cougars, and I thought about you.” She tucked her knees to her chest. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yes.” Believing in anything earned you a shit ton of disappointment.

“I thought about you every single day, Cam.”

Fuck me, the woman wasn’t pulling her punches.

I did, too. But I couldn’t say those words. Couldn’t cross the lines I’d already stumbled across once. That had been passion and need, but to do so here would be choice. An unforgivable choice, and I’d already made one that broke her heart.

“I thought about you when you went to college and when you came home and stopped speaking to me. God, you were so cruel that summer.”

“I know.” The hurt in her eyes made me close mine.

“Why?”

My heart slammed in my chest, the reason screaming for release. To say the words I hadn’t been able to. Because she was everything that was good about Alba—about life, really. And he’d been that good, too.

And they’d been right together.

And I’d never be either of those things.

I looked over at her, and she sighed, realizing I wasn’t going to answer her.

“I thought about you when you left for basic, and when Sully told me you’d been selected for Special Forces training, and every day you were in the evaluation process. Every day. I missed you so much that I wasn’t sure how people kept breathing with that kind of pain, you know?” She looked up at the sky. “I missed you every day for ten years, Cam.”

I knew exactly the kind of pain she meant, because I’d carried it with me, learning to exist around it, to bury it, only to have it resurface time and again. And she was here, within arm’s reach, and I still couldn’t ease that damned pain. I wouldn’t let myself.

“We can’t do this,” I said softly.

Slowly, she brought her eyes back to meet mine in challenge. “Why?”

“You know why.” Logic told me to end it there. To swim over to the other ledge, grab my clothes, and get the hell out before this went anywhere we couldn’t come back from. “I should go. I never should have come, and I knew it.”

“But you came anyway.” She shifted up on her knees, and goose bumps covered her shoulders.

“I have a hard time staying away from you,” I admitted. I could offer her the same honesty she gave me. I owed her at least that much. “Always have. Darkness is drawn to the light, right? And there’s nothing brighter in this town than you.”

She softened at the compliment, and I instantly wanted to take it back. I should be shoving her as far away from me as possible, not saying shit to make her come closer.

“You have a choice. You’ve always had a choice.”

“Not when it came to you. I was never good enough. I’m still not. This”—I gestured between us—“can never happen.”

“I decide who’s good enough for me, not you,” she argued, slipping to the side so we were only a couple of feet apart.

“Then, think again, because all I’m good for is building things and destroying people. I destroyed you once, too.”

She flinched.

“I saw your tears, your heartbreak when I brought him home. I know what I did to you.”

“Sullivan’s death was not your fault,” she said in the same tone she’d used when we’d had the same fight in the kitchen. The same fight we’d have forever if I gave in to what I wanted. It didn’t matter how many times she said it. Sully’s death was on my hands.

“Keep telling yourself that, Willow.”

“I’ll keep telling you until you believe it,” she promised, coming up on her knees and taking my face between her hands. “You told me your ugliest truth that day, but you never let me say mine.”

“As if anything you have could compare.” The air between us was charged.

“You saw me crying the day of Sullivan’s funeral. That’s true. I loved him, and I don’t regret loving him.”

I turned my face, but she followed until her knee brushed my thigh.

“So you saw my grief, but you never stopped to see my relief.”

My gaze snapped back to hers.

“I was heartbroken that Sullivan died, but, Cam, the only reason I could breathe was because you survived. I was so ashamed that all I was allowed to feel was the grief when the relief was the bigger emotion.” Her shoulders hunched as she looked away.

“What are you saying? You were relieved that Sully died?” I whispered.

“No.” She shook her head. “I was relieved that you didn’t. And I knew that eventually I’d be okay. I’d heal. And I did. I put myself back together and made myself whole. But I knew that if your places had changed, and we’d buried you, I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t—I can’t—picture my world without you in it somewhere.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

Was she really telling me that if she had to choose one of us to come home that day, she would have chosen me? That was impossible. Everyone chose Sullivan. My father, Xander, even Willow herself.

How big of an asshole was I that I longed to believe her? That I wanted to think I was worthy of being someone’s first choice?

I wanted to be her first choice.

She came closer until our breaths mingled with the steam rising from the mineral pool.

“Say yes,” she begged, turning my words from our first kiss around on me.

But I couldn’t. Not when I was only her choice because he couldn’t be. As badly as I wanted her, I couldn’t be her silver medal. Even when the beating in my chest screamed to take what I could get, the lone scrap of pride I’d held on to all these years couldn’t do it.

“No.” I moved away from her, sliding back into the pool.

“Why?” she shouted, sitting on the edge of the shallow end. “You fight for your country. For Sullivan. For your dad and even for me. Why can’t you let someone fight for you? Why won’t you let me fight for you?”

The naked pain in her voice shredded my composure like nothing else could, and my control snapped. “Because I’ll only hurt you.”

“News flash, we don’t have to be together for you to break my heart. Trust me, I’ve got a few years of evidence to back that up. Try again.”

“Because you don’t really want me.”

“Of all the stupid things to say.” She dropped under the water and swam, surfacing past me near the midpoint of the pool, where the steam obscured her again.

“I’m not a replacement for Sullivan!” I shouted at her. At the world. At God. At whoever cared enough to listen.

The breeze carried the steam away just long enough to see her stricken face. “No,” she whispered, but it carried. “Sullivan was the replacement for you.”

What did she just say? I stopped treading water and immediately sank as she turned her back on me and swam toward the other side.

I dove underwater and shot across the pool, coming up in front of her. We both gasped. Me for air and her with surprise.

“Say it again,” I demanded.

“Do you hate me?” She flattened her lips between her teeth as tiny droplets of water slipped down her face. “It would fit, since I hated myself. You were home for the summer after your freshman year of college, and I saw the girls hanging all over you in Julie’s hot tub, and you didn’t push them away, and it hit me that you never would. Not for me. You didn’t see me like that.”

But I did. I’d just never acted on it.

“Sullivan found me crying, and he kissed me, and I let him because it dulled the pain. I used him, and he let me, and I grew to love him for it, and eventually for everything else, but I knew I couldn’t love him like he loved me. Not when I didn’t have a whole heart to give him.” Her mouth trembled. “Not so bright and shiny now, am I?”

How could she not see that her vulnerability, her honesty, made her that much brighter?

“Say it again,” I repeated, my tone bordering on a plea. I needed to hear it more than I needed my next meal or my next breath. Her words could sustain or destroy me.

She looked away, waging an internal battle I couldn’t fight for her. When she brought her eyes back to mine, the fear there was laced with a resolve that had me holding my breath.

“It was always you, Cam.” She closed the inches between us, resting her hands on my chest, on the heart she didn’t realize only beat because hers did. “I’ve loved you since forever. I’ve been in love with you since I was old enough to understand what that meant. No one else ever had a shot of getting close. How could they, when you took my heart with you?”

She loved me. She’d always loved me. She’d wanted me, and I’d been too scared to put myself out there for her, to risk her rejection or her acceptance. I had the strength not to act on my own feelings, but I could never reject hers.

One of my arms wrapped around her waist as I propelled us back to the shallows. Apprehension still lined her forehead, but she laced her fingers behind my neck. When we reached the ledge, I hoisted us up until I sat where I had a few minutes ago, more than ready for a do-over. She didn’t look away as I gripped her thighs in my hands and lifted her so she straddled my lap, one knee on each side of my hips.

If she could be brave, then so could I.

“I’ll probably never be good enough to believe that you could be mine,” I said softly, splaying one of my hands over the bare skin of her back. “I made peace with that years ago. But I’ve always been yours.” Her eyes widened, and I knew I owed her the full truth, the same as she’d given me. “Only yours. Always yours.” Holy shit, I’d finally said it.

Her mouth collided with mine, and I lost myself in her. Her hands tunneled through my hair and held me as she poured her love, her joy into a kiss I never could have imagined.

It felt like coming home.

I gripped her hip in one hand and the base of her neck in the other, tilting her head so I could kiss her deeper. Our tongues danced and tangled; our lips caressed and lingered. I kissed her until I knew her mouth as well as I did my own, until she whimpered and rolled her hips over mine.

I kissed her slowly, with tenderness, and then I took her mouth with greed and pure need. Every nerve in my body was alive and tingling, electric with her nearness. Each of my senses filled with her. Just Willow. I was never going to get enough of kissing her. Not if I did it every day for the rest of my life.

When she arched for more, I slowed our pace, sucking on her bottom lip. Her nails bit into my scalp, and I gave her control until her tongue, her teeth, her damned hips had me harder than the ledge we sat on.

It would only take two seconds, the movement of two pieces of fabric, and I could be inside her.

The thought sobered me faster than a bucket of cold water could have. I changed the tone of the kiss, slowing until I pressed my lips against hers softly.

“We have to stop or I’m not going to,” I told her as I rested my forehead against hers.

“I’m okay with not stopping.” She kissed me again, and we fell back into it, because how the hell could I not? I’d dreamed of kissing Willow for years, almost decades, and she was in my arms. No secrets. No lies. “Not stopping would be awesome.”

“I’m not okay with not stopping,” I finally managed between kisses.

She startled, looking at me with raised eyebrows and parted lips I immediately wanted back. “What?”

I grinned and stroked my thumb up her jawline. “Contrary to popular belief, sex isn’t all a guy wants.”

She scoffed. “Really.” She wiggled her hips over the evidence that sex was definitely on my mind. “Because I really want you, and it feels like you’re in the same boat.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want you. Because I do. God, I do. But I’m not taking you in the mineral pool. At least not the first time.”

“My house is five minutes that way.” She nodded toward her car.

I laughed. “I’m not rushing this.”

“Can I rush this?” she asked.

“No.” There was no force on this earth that could make me take this for granted.

“Because you’re scared I’ll change my mind? Or because you will?” Her hands slipped to my shoulders, and she started to pull away.

I locked my arms around her waist.

“I saw you that night. When Sullivan kissed you in the gazebo,” I admitted.

Her eyes widened, but she stayed silent.

“I saw you leave and knew you were upset, so I went searching for you. If I had to guess, I would say that I was about five minutes too late. Instead of manning up and telling you how I felt, dealing with all the shit we were going to get in town because I’m me and you’re you, I watched you kiss my brother. It fucking killed me. That was why I joined the army the next day.”

“Oh, Cam.” Her fingers soothed the back of my neck.

“I couldn’t stay there and watch it happen, even if I thought it was probably what was best for both of you. I was afraid I’d lose it one day and beat the shit out of him—my little brother—for having the only thing I’d ever wanted for myself.” I let my thumb graze her lips, and she kissed it lightly. “I was mean to you that summer because I had another month until my basic report date and couldn’t let you get any closer than you already were. Couldn’t let you see and couldn’t take the sight of you with him.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“That’s not your fault. It was mine. My point is that five minutes changed the course of our lives. Five fucking minutes and my inability to get out of my own way kept me from kissing you that night. And it wasn’t the first night, either.”

Her brow wrinkled, and I leaned forward, gently kissing the lines just because I could. Because she loved me.

“By the time you were old enough for kissing, I was a senior in high school, and I didn’t want to take the chance that you didn’t want me.”

“I always wanted you,” she argued.

“And I probably knew it, if I’d just thought about it hard enough. But I wasn’t just scared that you’d reject me. I was scared that you wouldn’t. That I’d hurt you like I did everyone else. That the town would turn on you.”

“I don’t care about the town’s opinion, and you’d never hurt me.” She shivered, and I brought us to the edge of the ledge, then lowered us so she was immersed in the water while she wrapped her arms around my neck.

“Hurt you physically? Never. But I wasn’t the most trustworthy with your emotions, and the thought of ruining you?” I shook my head. “Besides, I was leaving for college. What was I going to do? Leave you brokenhearted and lonely? How selfish would that have been?”

“I was anyway.”

I kissed her lips, letting the touch soften the memories, trying to trust that this was real and not some fucked-up dream I’d wake from. “Our timing was off. It was always off.”

She grinned. “You’re saying you couldn’t find the pika.”

I laughed, and it felt great. God, to have her in my arms, to kiss her, to laugh with her. It was beyond my wildest dreams.

“Right. I knew how to sit quietly with you. I knew how to be patient, and that’s why I knew the timing wasn’t right. Then you were kissing Sullivan, and I realized the time had passed and I hadn’t been brave enough to grab it. Five minutes, Willow.”

“And this all goes back to you not wanting to take me back to my house because…” She kissed my jaw, and a little of my resolve drifted away with the steam.

“Are you scared you’ll change your mind? Or I will? Is that why you’re rushing?” I asked.

“No, I’m rushing because I’ve wanted you for so long that I’m about ready to combust with it, and if we’re finally on the same page, I’m done wasting time.” She nibbled my ear.

Shit, her reasoning was sound. But so was mine.

“I’m not rushing,” I said, tipping her chin up so I could see her eyes. “Because our timing is right for the first time in our lives. I’m not rushing through something I’ve wanted my whole life just for instant gratification. I’m going to savor every single step I get to take with you. I’m going to date the hell out of you, Willow Bradley.”

She grinned. “Dating, huh?”

“Yeah. I’ve messed up just about everything in my life, but this?” I kissed her gently. “This, I’m going to get right.”

So help me God, I was not going to screw this up.