I release her and collapse beside her on the bed.
Aimee
Afterward, we lay atop the blanket, still breathing hard.
Cam props himself up on his elbow, looking down at me with something like wonder.
“That was—” he begins, but can’t seem to find the next word because his brain hasn’t completely recovered.
“Incredible? Amazing? Exquisite?” I offer.
He nods. “Those things.”
“You’re welcome.”
He cocks half a smile at me. “I have to admit I was somewhat surprised at the tone you set.”
I feel heat rising to my face, and stare up at the ceiling so that I don’t have to meet his eyes. It’s not that I had not been brazen about my desires with him in our relationship before, but this time it had felt different, somehow. Important.
“I just…I guess I just wanted to know that you wanted me.”
A look of confusion crosses his face. “Has that not been obvious?”
I shrug. “Sure. In what you say. In the way you look at me. But after so much time has passed, with so much between us…I needed to see that you would be willing to lose control with me, to overcome resistance to…to be with me.”
His palm comes to my cheek, moving my head to look at him. “Baby, I would do anything to be with you. Overcome resistance, lose control. Lose anything. I really would go to South America to find you, and to hell with my shoes.” She smiles at this. “Nothing matters but you. And if this is a fresh start for us…”
I put my fingers to his lips again. “No promises right now. Nothing but you, and me—” I trail my fingers down his body, take him in my hand, “—and what we are to one another right now.” He pulses and thickens in my grip. “Tomorrow will be another day, and then we’ll see about the rest.”
And the his hands are on me, and his mouth, and his weight, and we stay that way through the night.
And of course, this night is all we get because this whole situation—fake engagement, love-for-money, friends-turned-lovers—was doomed from the beginning.
Not Going Anywhere
Cam
He hits us with it at breakfast. The bastard can’t even wait until we’ve all gone home to do it by email or something. Doesn’t have the decency to blackmail me with it.
Because he wants it all for himself.
He wants to be the golden son.
I know something is up when Aimee and I walk in for breakfast. We had left the tree house as the first gray light began to come in through the windows, mincing across the frosted lawn with our breaths pluming fog in front of us. The tree my father burned—well, was apparently still burning—filled the air with the scent of wood smoke.
We went into my bedroom through the door that faces onto the patio and showered some of the sleeplessness off ourselves. Then we dressed and went to the kitchen, looking doubtlessly a bit unrested.
As we walked into the room, I said to no one in particular, “I will give you five thousand dollars for a cup of coffee.”
No on in particular answered. I shrugged, looked at Aimee. “You want anything, babe?”
Aimee nods, her eyes half-lidded.
I pour us each a cup from the fresh pot that someone had brewed and hand sugar and creamer to Aimee because I know she likes to soften hers up. Then I notice that my family—Mom, Dad, and Eli—are already seated at the smallish kitchen table. The temperature on that side of the room seems decidedly frosty. Dad’s face is red and seems made of stone, but Eli looks positively gleeful. His eyes are bright in a way I haven’t seen since we were kids, and he’s smiling. Grinning, even. His girlfriend, Holly, is there as well, looking more than a little bit uncomfortable. Eric sits at the end of the table, by himself. His face is bleak.
Aimee’s spoon clinks in her cup as we walk toward them. That is the only sound in the room for a moment.
I can’t take silence like that. Drives me crazy. “You all look super cheerful. Especially you, little brother. Did you run over someone’s dog this morning?”
Eli laughs, a quick ha-ha, and claps his hands together once. “Good one, Cameron! You’re a funny guy.” Dad glances his way, and his look is venomous, but not as dark as the one he turns my way. That look I can only describe as “filled with rage.”
Dad has always had a temper, but not the kind that leads to bar fights and stupid personal brawls. His anger has always been focused, controlled and clear-headed. He is one of those rare people who is able to be furious and simultaneously effective and decisive.
And he appears now to be directing his fury and decisiveness in my direction.
The silence lingers and a light goes on in my head.
He knows. I don’t know how he knows, but he does. And it has something to do with my brother.
I have no real love for my father. Well, that’s perhaps not true. I love Jason Simons, because that’s what sons are supposed to do. I think it’s part of our wiring. He was always there for us—or at least near us—was always a provider. Kept us out of harm’s way. Doing at least some of the things a father is supposed to do. But I can’t say I’ve ever liked him. Because he’s the kind of manipulative narcissist who would pit two brothers against one another in an attempt to see which was ruthless enough, single-minded enough, enough-like-Jason-Simons, to be handed the fortune and the business and the blessing and the birthright.
I see all these things—all these plans—boiling under the surface of my father’s eyes, and I know things are not going the way he’s wanted them to.
He slides something across the table toward me.
It’s a cell phone. Nothing as fancy as an Apple product, or even one of the more modern Samsungs. This one is at least ten years old, made by a company whose logo I don’t recognize, and I know it is my dad’s phone. Because if it’s functional, he sees no reason to upgrade.
I look from the phone to my dad. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Pick it up,” he growls. He lifts a small sheaf of papers from his lap and places them on top of the table. These he slides to me, as well. His glare flicks to Aimee, and his lip twitches.
For a moment, I feel frozen. Then Aimee breaks the spell, reaching out to pick up the phone.
“I’m glad at least one of you has some balls,” Dad says.
Eli grins at that. Loads of laughs this morning, that guy.
Aimee looks at the phone a long time, then says, “Oh my God.” She hands it to me, then picks up the papers. “Oh…oh my God.”
I look at the phone. The screen shows two text messages. The sender registers as Aimee’s number.
“Got stuck on turnpike behind accident. Half hour. How goes the fake engagement? Are they buying it?”
Then: “So far so good. See you in a few.”
Paper crinkles beside me and I see that Aimee has twisted the pages in her fingers. I gently pry them free and look them over.
Emails. Banks statements. A brief, unemotional accounting of the tragedy of Aimee’s family, her need, her agony. Sterilized into packets of electrons and tiny configurations of ink for my father’s consumption.
Email from Aimee’s aunt, stating that she would no longer be able to care for Aimee’s mother.
Banks statements from Chase, showing a checking account so slim that Bob Cratchett would have felt at home with it, and then a one-time deposit of seventy-five thousand dollars with my name on it.
In all, it isn’t a lot of material. Three, four pieces of paper and some text messages. Damning, nonetheless.
“Where did you get all this?”
“It doesn’t fucking matter where—” my father says, his voice beginning to rise, but Eli cuts him off.
“It’s all pretty easy when you leave your cell phone lying around,” he says, his voice still on the verge of laughter. He nods to Aimee. “You’re smart and all, screen-locking your phone with a pin. I wouldn’t have been able to open it by myself.” He stretches out an arm and puts it over Holly�
�s shoulders. The girl seems to shrink in the chair. “But Holly happens to be one of the most talented people you will ever meet with a computer. After she opened your phone and found the texts, it was a pretty simple matter to get into your email and bank accounts through the apps.”
“That’s enough, Eli.” My father’s voice is low, but it cuts Eli off more surely than a siren. It’s not that my dad has any problem with the evidence being rubbing in my face and Aimee’s. It’s that this is his show, and he doesn’t want Eli stealing his moment of righteous anger.
His eyes bore into mine.
“You know what that money is? That seventy-five grand?”
I don’t respond, because I have no idea what he wants.
“It’s nothing,” he spits. “A pittance. If she’d needed money I would have just given it to her. Up until this morning, I actually liked her.” He says this, but he won’t even look at her now. “But you,” he starts to raise his voice again. “You LIED TO ME! You lied, so that you could keep your spoiled-child, playboy lifestyle. You lied so you could stay in my good graces. You lied for whatever fucking other reasons, but I don’t give a shit what they are! You LIED TO ME, Cameron!”
He has half-risen from his chair, veins bulging from his forehead, his face beet red. My mother puts a hand on his arm. Her voice is soft. “She needed help, Jason.”
Aimee sobs, a soft sound that perhaps only I can hear. I touch her shoulder, suddenly tentative with her.
“I would have helped her,” he said. “If she had asked. If this clown of a son of ours had asked. If they had bothered.” This probably isn’t true. My father isn’t known for his generosity, but this is the point he wants to make. “But they didn’t.” He sits back down. “Instead, they come here, pretend to be betrothed so that this boy—” he points at me with a finger so rigid I can see all the muscles in his forearm stand out in bas relief, “won’t have to learn how to make his own way in life. So he can continue to suck on the family teat.”
This is where I tell my dad to fuck off. Where I finally cut ties, leave him and his money and his family teat behind me. Where I ask him who in the world still says, “betrothed.” If this is the life my brother wants, he can fucking have it. I don’t need this. What I need—whom I need—is standing right beside me, quietly crying. The thought of her in this much pain, in front of my family and caused by my brother, is killing me.
The words are on my lips. Fuck this and fuck you. But they don’t quite make it out. Because there is another thought in the back of my head. You sure your brother caused this, buddy? You sure the old man is wrong on this one? After all, you did lie.
Now he does look at Aimee. “I believed you,” he said, his voice becoming quiet. “In all this trickery, it was you that pulled it off because I wouldn’t have believed in anyone else marrying Cameron. So brava, Miss Strauss.”
She is weeping openly now, and puts her hand in front of her face. “I’ll give back the money,” she sobs.
Dad shakes his head. “Nonsense. You need it. Your mother needs it. Take it with my blessing.” His lips press together. “Consider it payment for services rendered. Your performance was exceptional. Now get the hell out of my house. Never darken my doorway again. Never come near a member of the Simons family again.”
I freeze. He’s gone a step too far. He has no right.
He points a level finger at me. “You did this. And you fix it. You’ve betrayed your family, and it’s on you to make that right. But if you go with her, you stay with her. You’re out of everything. The business, the family, the money. All of it. Because you will prove yourself to be a man of no integrity.”
I never expected that words—especially words from my father—could sting so much. Could cause the wind to die out of my sails. They wouldn’t, they would be entirely powerless, except that I know they are at least partially true.
I am a liar. I engineered this entire debacle, and I did it out of self-interest. Just to keep the lifestyle I’m used to. Because I want to keep buying fancy cars and picking up bar tabs and generally not worrying about anything. He has me, completely and utterly, figured out.
All the pain in this room rests on my shoulders. My knees go weak.
I look at Aimee. She lowers her hands from her face and turns to me. This is the moment. This is when I choose her and a life without my father and his money. Her eyes are wide and filled with tears and they pierce more deeply into me than my dad’s ever could. I see the hurt there, and the hope underneath it.
We’ll go to my room, pack our things, and walk out the door together.
And I’ll walk out in the wrong. Rightfully shamed for my actions. And suddenly I feel the terror of walking out the door, of leaving my family behind. The only life I’ve ever really known. My mother, the second-most wonderful person in my life, cut off from me. My father, a complete asshole obviously, but the only father I’ve ever had. Gone.
These aren’t thoughts that will stick around. They aren’t deciding thoughts, certainly. Because I’m leaving with Aimee. But she sees them in my eyes, sees my uncertainty, and even through her tears I see her gaze suddenly become cold. I reach out to her, but I’m too late.
“Aimee, I—”
She shakes her head. “No, Cam. You stay.” She looks around the room. “I’m sorry for everything.” And she turns and walks from the kitchen.
And I? I stay rooted to the spot. I tell my feet to move, but they refuse to obey me for a second too long, and that second turns into two seconds, and then Aimee is out of the room and heading away from me. Away.
A chair scrapes back from the table, and I hear Eric mutter, “Shit.” His feet are heavy on the tile as he brushes past me. “She’s going to need a ride.” He glances at me over his shoulder, and his gaze is cold.
I finally find the will to move.
“Cameron,” says my mom, but Dad says, “Let him. He’s not going anywhere.”
I follow Eric down the hall and to my room. The familiar hallway, with its hanging art and well-trod wooden floor, feels like an alien landscape to me. The thought enters my head that something in my life is about to change on a fundamental level, something that will impact me in ways I cannot even begin to understand.
Aimee, I think, knowing how terrible she must be feeling. Eric is right; she’ll need a ride home. I am on his heels when we get to my room.
Aimee’s suitcase lies open on my bed, and she is stuffing her clothes—clean and dirty, without regard—back into it. She moves quickly, taking her compact and hair brush from the top of the dresser and tossing them on the clothes. She looks up when the door opens, a look of hope on her face. But she sees Eric first, and that hopeful look is replaced by an expression so forlorn that it tears my heart in two. She turns back to her suitcase, zipping it up.
Her voice is quiet. “Eric, could you give me a ride home?”
Nobody says anything for a moment. Then I find my voice. “You don’t need to go anywhere,” I say. “Just…just wait here for a few minutes. I can reason with him.”
She closes her eyes. “Reason?” Her head moves back and forth, a slow rejection. “No, Cameron. No.” She opens her eyes again. “I can’t be here.” She looks at Eric. “Please?”
He takes a breath. Doesn’t look at me. “Sure. Meet me at my car in five minutes.”
Aimee takes off the ring. The one that I bought to give to her when I proposed marriage for real, but wound up loaning to her for our fake engagement. She doesn’t look at it, just twists it off her finger and places it on the dresser top. Then she turns and picks up her suitcase. She looks at me once and smiles sadly.
“When you said you loved me, I…I believed you. I didn’t realize it was all part of the show. Goodbye, Cameron.”
“What?” What does that mean? “No, I meant that!”
But she doesn’t respond, just brushes between the two of us and nearly runs down the hall, leaving me to figure it out for myself.
Checking In For An Update
Aimee
How can I have been such an idiot? I’m angry, and I want to lash out. Frankly, I want to slap Cameron’s face and tell him what a shit he is, but who am I kidding? This is my fault. I know, deep down, the person that Cam is. He’s a good man, a decent and generous person, but he’s hiding under the shell of a narcissist who has never known anything but the luxury of his father’s money. And he thought he’d found a way to continue to be that kid who never had to work for anything, while also being that good man.
Jason was right. He could never pull away from the family gravy train. It’s too much a part of him.
And I should have known that. I did know that. I had just…allowed myself to hope. To hope that the man that I know Cam is could overcome everything for…for what? For me?
Who’s the narcissist now?
It’s a voice I know not to trust, the voice that makes me second-guess myself. And so I ignore it as best I can.
“Is this my fault?” I ask Eric.
We are in his Prius, and we’ve just merged onto the turnpike back toward Oklahoma City. I’ve ridden in this car dozens—hundreds?—of times, and it never ceases to amaze me how unlikely it is that Eric drives it. He sits with his big frame half-reclined so that his hair doesn’t touch the roof. His left shoulder brushes the window, and his right shoulder nearly crowds into the passenger area. He drives with one hand on the wheel and the other calmly in his lap. And that’s the way he looks, overall. Calm.
It’s one of the reasons I love Eric. No matter what seems to be going on in anyone’s life, he never gets very excited. Just takes things as they come, and for the most part those things just move around him, leaving him essentially undisturbed. He is a rock in the river of our lives.
All Yours: A Second Chance Romance Page 14
