All Yours: A Second Chance Romance

by Ellie Bradshaw

  Love Is Just A Word

  Cam

  She’s here when I wake up. I peel my eyes open and light lances in spears me right in the brain and I groan, and she leans over me, her hair brushing my cheek, and says, “Cam?”

  This is worst hangover of my life. Must have been one helluva rough night, because I don’t remember any of it.

  I’ve been having a dream, though, and I remember that. Aimee is in it. All through it. We fight, we make up, we make love. She leaves. My dad makes a hateful face that I would ignore, but my God he’s on my back, so heavy, and somewhere something is burning and my hands hurt. And then I hear her voice, telling me that she loves me, and everything is just fine, even the pain in my hands is fine. And then I wake up and she’s right here in my bedroom. Right where she’s supposed to be.

  I say, “You’re the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” but my tongue doesn’t work and my mouth is numb and feels full of sawdust and ashes, so the only thing that comes out is a protracted moan. But I’m sure she gets it. She touches my face and her fingers are cool. I could wake up like this every day and be happy. It’s time to get up. Time to get up and touch this girl and make love to her and do…whatever it is I’m supposed to do today. I can’t quite remember, but I’m sure it will come to me. I go to swing my legs off the bed, but then my head screams and my hands scream and my treacherous mouth won’t say words, but it seems perfectly capable of screaming, too, so it does that, just not as loud as the pain.

  “Oh, God, Cam!” Aimee says, her voice filled with urgency. Her hand on my shoulder is so strong, and she pushes me back onto the bed with apparent ease. “Be still. I’ll go get the nurse.”

  I hear her footsteps move away from the bed and I want to call her back. “Don’t leave me again!” I want to say, but Jesus everything hurts and my mouth still won’t say words.

  And did she say “nurse”? Why is there a nurse? I turn my head slightly, see the machines and the IV rack. I am confused for a moment, disoriented. But then it all comes crashing back to me.

  ***

  Burns hurt like a mad bastard. I’ve always thought I have a high pain tolerance, but the hours after I wake up are an education in personal limits. The doctor who comes in shortly after I awaken tells me that the burns will leave scars, but that I will regain use of my hands. I know that I should be thankful for that, but at them time the pain is great enough that I would just rather it go away than learn about my injuries. So a kind nurse obliges me and gives me enough morphine drip to make the world go fuzzy and warm.

  In my moments of consciousness, I want to talk to Aimee. She’s there most of the time, sitting beside me. Sometimes she says, “See you tomorrow,” and I know that she’s off to be with her mother, and that my world will be less while she is gone. But it’s okay, because I also know that she will return. And when she is there, I want to tell her all the things that I’ve never said right, or that I’ve never been able to follow through on. I want to promise her those things that I should have promised to her from the very beginning.

  But it seems that all the time I’m awake—well, awake and not wacked out of my mind on industrial-strength pain killer—a battalion of doctors and nurses is constantly up my ass, prodding me, inspecting me, asking me questions. Once, in a bleary-eyed moment, I look to my left and see my father sitting there in a wheelchair. He says, “Cam,” and touches my shoulder, but voice and his face go fuzzy and then I go back to sleep.

  On the third day out of my coma, I stop pressing the button for painkillers quite so regularly. I know the pain will come back, and that it will be bad, but I want to be awake—really awake—for Aimee.

  She deserves so much from me; I can at least give her that.

  Also, before Aimee arrives that morning I ask my mother to go home to retrieve something for me. When I tell her, she purses her lips, seeming to weigh the request. Then she shrugs, turns without a word, and leaves. She returns with it an hour later, then leaves again to attend first to Jason and then to Eli at home.

  I have never seen anything as radiant as Aimee in a pair of jeans and a gray sweatshirt. Perhaps that’s not true. I’m certain that Aimee has worn plenty of outfits that looked just as good on her—or off her. But in this moment, I can’t recall any of those other versions of her.

  She walks in the door, sees me, and smiles. I go all melty and for a moment the awakening pain in my hands goes back to sleep. She walks around the end of the bed and takes her place in the chair next to me, leaning over to kiss my cheek. As she leans in, I consider turning my face at the last instance and kissing her mouth, but I feel like that would be cheating. So I take the peck on the cheek.

  Yesterday they bandaged my hands, and now I seem to be wearing enormous mittens made of gauze. I reach out with my bandaged hands and take hers between them. She looks down at me, concerned. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

  It does, in fact. The pressure really gets the old nerve endings sizzling. But I say, “Nothing hurts like not touching you.”

  She looks down at me, and her face softens. I see something behind her eyes that I yearn to see there, always. But then she blinks and that something, that corresponding yearning, goes away. Her smile is sad. “Cameron—” she starts. Then her eyes look past me and flicker in recognition. Her face freezes, the smile becoming brittle. There is a small squeak behind me, rubber on tile.

  “I’m glad to see you’re awake,” my father says from behind me. His voice is rougher than usual from all the smoke he breathed in the barn.

  I force a smile at Aimee, squeezing her hand between my protesting, bandaged ones. Then I sigh and laboriously turn in the bed to look at him.

  Aside from the wheelchair and some singed hair along his temples, Dad looks much the same as usual. He operates the chair under his own power, the cords in his arms writhing beneath the skin. He looks like the picture of health. His eyes rove over my face, as if memorizing it.

  “I thought you were going to just…stay sleeping,” he said, and though his rasping voice is hearty, it cracks at the end. “I was worried I’d lose…” he trails off, his eyes going to the window. His breath is suddenly the loudest thing in the room.

  Aimee’s hand slips from between mine. “Cam, I’ll be going.” Her voice is quiet, but my father hears her. He nods slightly, opening his mouth to say something.

  “No,” I say, reaching over to put my hand on her knee. “Please stay.”

  “Cam—”

  “Please.”

  She settles back in her chair, neither she nor my father looking too pleased about it.

  He clears his throat, wheels his chair a little further into the room. His lips purse in and out, a sure sign that he has something to say.

  “I would have died in that barn,” he says, his voice steady. “The fire moved quick, and I didn’t even know the place was burning until the roof was falling on me.” He locks eyes with me. “You saved my life.”

  I shrug, trying to be nonchalant about it. “You’re my dad. I wasn’t going to let you die in there if I could help it.”

  “I owe you.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “No, you—”

  He holds up a hand. “I do. I owe you. I’ve made a point to never owe anything to anyone, but now I owe you my life.” He smiles, and the smile is somehow bitter on his face. He wheels a bit closer. “I’ve never been a soft man, or an easy father.”

  You can say that again.

  He glances at Aimee, seems to consider stopping, but continues. “I’ve dedicated my life to business. To excellence. To hard work. You, Cameron,” he shrugs one shoulder, “haven’t.”

  A lecture? Now? Jesus, Dad.

  The set of his mouth is tight, ungenerous. Reluctant.

  “But that doesn’t matter. Because now I’m in your debt.”

  I glance at Aimee, and she is staring at my father, riveted. I know how she feels. To see everything that has occurred between me and my dad, all the hard feelings, all the unsaid words, and the fact
that we almost died a horrible death together, reduced to some basic economic principle, is both fascinating and unsettling.

  “And so I’ll give you a choice. You can come work with me, take the business seriously, and when the time comes for me to retire the company will be yours. You will immediately be a billionaire. You will have a lifestyle other people can’t even imagine.”

  But.

  “But,” he looks again at Aimee, this time more pointedly, “she cannot be part of any of it. You can’t bring your lies any deeper into my life, Cameron.”

  Fuck you. I can’t find my voice, choked as I am with immediate outrage. I look again at Aimee, and her lips are pressed together. Her face is white and her eyes are shining. Dad sees the look on my face, and he raises a hand.

  “I said you have a choice. The alternative is this: I give you fifteen million dollars. Cold, hard money. I know you both like that.” His lips twist cruelly. “Fifteen million, and you walk away. Take her with you if you want, it’s no concern of mine. As soon as you’re out of the hospital I’ll put the money in your bank account and you two can be on your way. Never ask me for anything again.”

  And there it is. My father never felt an obligation he didn’t think he could buy his way out of. And I guess he has reason to think that way. He makes generous offers. Fifteen million dollars is a lot of money. People live lifetimes without ever seeing that kind of money. If there is an “Aimee and I” after all this, we could be more than comfortable for the rest of our lives after this.

  She looks at me, and her voice is hollow. “You should take it,” she says. Her words reflect my own thoughts: “It’s a lot of money.”

  And then she stands up. Aimee faces my father. I grimace, preparing myself for the torrent of Aimee’s anger. I’m interested to see how Jason will weather that storm. Probably pretty well, until she drops the hospital TV on his head.

  But she doesn’t come unglued, or start yelling, or start dismantling furniture. Instead, tears stream down her cheeks, but her voice is calm. “You raised a good man, Jason. I don’t know how you did that. It doesn’t seem possible to me that a man as—as hateful and contemptible as you could raise someone worthwhile.” Her words don’t seem to affect him. He stares at her as if she is just an interesting thing on television. “But I’ll have nothing to do with you or your money. I have no interest in your business. I won’t spend another moment in a room in which you poison the air.”

  She starts to leave.

  “Aimee,” I rasp. She stops, turns slightly. “Hold on just a moment.”

  “No,” says my father. “By all means leave.”

  “Shut up!” I snap. Now he does react, his head snapping in my direction. He eyes me, suddenly wary. “Aimee, to hell with this guy. I have so much to say to you, and none of it involves him.” She looks at me again, her eyes pools I could fall into. But not yet.

  “Dad, I love you.” The words feel weird to say, but as I say them I know they’re true. They have to be; why else would I have run into a burning building for him. He responds by arching an eyebrow at me, a wry look on his face. The look of a man naturally suspicious of dainty words like, “love”.

  “I love you,” I repeat, “but you’re an asshole. Ironically, that fact probably saved your life. The reason I was at the barn in time to save you is that I came to find you. I came to find and tell you to get fucked. To take your money and your company and your approval and just jam them all right up your ass.” As I speak, his face gets redder and redder, and a vein begins to throb prominently on his forehead. “I should have told you that in the morning, first thing, when you confronted us about the fake engagement.” I struggle to sit up on the bed, abused muscles spasming. I must grimace, because Aimee shoots a concerned look at me.

  “Cameron,” she says, moving back to her place beside the bed. She rests a hand on my shoulder. I touch her hip, reassuring myself that she’s there.

  “Thing is, Dad, the engagement was fake. But I didn’t want it to be.” I say it to him, but I look right at her. “The whole time, for me, it was real. All I wanted—all I still want—was to marry this woman. This amazing, wonderful, beautiful woman.” Aimee is staring at me, her lips trembling. I turn back to my father, who looks as if he’s going to hop out of his chair and use it to beat the daylights out of me. And maybe I deserve that. “And when you tossed her out of the house, I should have gone with her then. I should never have made her feel that I would choose your money over her. And I’m so sorry I let her feel that way, because it was never, ever true.” Her fingers squeeze my shoulder.

  “The truth is, it’s nice being the son of a rich man. It’s great having access to all the money I want. But I don’t need that. I don’t need you. I need her.” I lower my head and kiss her hand. “So it’s very gracious of you to come in here and offer me my birthright or whatever, but if that comes at the cost of Aimee, I don’t want it. Honestly, I don’t want it anyway. I have no interest in being your prized son, following obediently in Dad’s footsteps. Give it to Eli. He wants it.”

  “Not enough to come into the fire after me,” Dad hisses.

  “He does seem to have inherited your inclination toward self-interest,” I say blandly. I look up at the ceiling. “Fifteen million dollars, though. That is a whole bunch of money.” When I say this, Aimee looks steadily at me, waiting for me to make the right decision, for once in my life. “But I don’t want anything more from you, Dad.” I look at him again, and his face is astonished. The idea that someone wouldn’t accept an amount of money that large is completely foreign to him. “If I—we—took that money from you, it would just be over our heads the rest of our lives. Every moment of happiness we experienced would be tainted by the fact that you gave it to us.” Aimee smiles, and her smile is brilliant. “So stick the fifteen million up your ass as well, Dad.” She laughs and startles herself, her hand flying to her mouth.

  I hear his teeth grind, and his face twists into a snarl. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life owing you a debt that I can’t pay!”

  I take in the whole room. The IV rack, the institutional chairs. The tiny TV on the wall. Aimee. My dad in his wheelchair. Everything seems brighter, somehow. My body feels lighter, as if I could hop out of the bed and run a couple miles. “That sounds like a personal problem, Dad, and I’m not a priest. I’m afraid I’m not able to help you.” It feels as if my bones creak as I slowly swing my legs off the bed.

  “What are you doing?” Aimee asks, suddenly worried. I smile up at her as best I can through the strain.

  “Do you remember when I took you to dinner and asked you to come to Vail with me?” I have managed to sit up now, my legs hanging off the edge of the bed.

  “Yes,” she whispers.

  “I didn’t want to take you to Vail just to get away. I also wanted to take you to…to celebrate.” I take her hand between both of mine again, lift it and kiss her palm.

  “Celebrate what?” she says.

  My dad says, “What is this?”

  I had almost forgotten he was there. “You can leave now, Dad, or you can stay. But shut the fuck up.”

  I don’t expect him to do what I tell him, but for some reason he does.

  Aimee puts her palm on my cheek. “Celebrate what?” she says again.

  I fumbled under the sheet for what my mother had brought to me. She had been kind enough to put it in a black velvet box she had lying around. I didn’t take it from beneath the sheet. Not yet.

  “I had planned something that night, before things went so sideways between us,” I say. My legs are weak, and they almost drop me to the floor when I put weight on them. When she sees me wobble Aimee grabs my waist.

  “Easy, big boy,” she breathes. “Back up on the bed.”

  I smile, breathing hard as if I just ran a half marathon. “Nope,” I say. “I fucked this up once. I’ll do it right this time.” Slowly, slowly, I lower myself to one knee. A cool draft goes up my backside, and I realize for the first time that
I am wearing a hospital gown, and that it has opened in the back. Oh, well. Nothing everybody here hasn’t seen before.

  Aimee’s hand flies to her mouth again. “Cam,” she says between her fingers, her eyes glittery.

  “That night I was going to ask you—what we were going to celebrate in Vail—” I find myself stammering, half out of breath, largely in pain, and suddenly scared to death. “Aimee, I was going to ask you to marry me.”

  “Oh my God,” she breathes.

  “Well, that’s one way to do it,” my father mutters.

  “And I didn’t ask you, Aimee. I was so full of myself, and I couldn’t see the pain you were going through. All I could see was the next thing that I wanted to do. And so I fucked it up.”

  She’s shaking her head. “No, you didn’t—”

  The door swings open again and sensible rubber soles squeak on the floor. “Mr. Simons—” the nurse begins.

  “Quiet,” my dad growls.

  “Oh,” the nurse says, noticing me on my knee in front of Aimee. “Oh my.”

  “And then, at my parents’ house, I fucked it up again. I should have done then what I’m doing now. I should have severed some ties so that I could make new ones with you. Because everything I said at the party was real. None of that was for show. There was never any show. Not with you. And then later, when I was on my hands and knees and blinded by smoke while Dad’s barn was coming down around me, you know what got me through that?” She shakes her head, her eyes wide. “The thought that if I just gave up and stopped that I would never see you again. And that I would never get to tell you, for once and for the rest of my life, what you mean to me. What you really mean to me.

  “Everything.

  “Aimee, I love you. I love you so much that all I want, in this whole world, is to make a life with you. One of our own, that doesn’t have anything to do with someone else’s plans, or money, or influence. Just us.” She is biting her lip now, and I think that’s probably a good sign. I pull the small box from under the sheet, holding it out awkwardly between my bandaged hands. “Will you marry me?”