His Counterfeit Campfire Bride

by Gwen Hayes

  Oh, he had no idea.

  He went on to explain using “I statements” instead of “you statements.”

  “Let’s practice. Sera, we are going to role-play. You are ready to start a family, but Miguel won’t talk to you about it.”

  She took a deep breath and remembered the tips he’d just told them, refreshing herself with the pamphlet. Miguel snorted at her attempts to be prepared. He would. She set down the paper. “Honey, since we are finally having a quiet night at home without a lot of things pulling us in different directions, I’d like to talk about starting a family.”

  Playing along with the role-play, Miguel answered, “Sera, I think we should enjoy this quiet night and make the most of this time. We don’t get quiet nights at home very often.”

  “I know, sweetheart. I specifically set this evening up so we would have no distractions. It’s important to me that I have your full attention.” That line was straight out of the pamphlet.

  “I’d love to give you my full attention. Let’s start with a glass of wine in the hot tub.”

  He was deflecting. With sex. She had a feeling that might be how he’d deflect discussions if they were really in a relationship.

  Which of course would never happen.

  “If we start in the hot tub, we’ll get off track.” She imagined that Camp Miguel and Camp Sera liked to sit in the hot tub naked. They seemed like that kind of couple. “Why don’t we talk first and then have that wine.”

  “I’m really not in the mood for a heavy discussion.”

  “It doesn’t have to be heavy.”

  He tensed, play acting came very naturally to him. Not so much for her. “I already know what you are going to say. You want a baby. I’m not ready.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  Or maybe it did. Maybe just arguing with him came very naturally to her.

  “Am I wrong?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then let’s table it for now.”

  “I don’t want to table it. You always do that!”

  Birk interrupted, “Remember to use ‘I statements’ Sera. They are less likely to put Miguel on the defense.”

  She was about to tell Birk where he could put his ‘I statement’ when she remembered they weren’t really fighting. That this was a game. Right?

  “What do I always do?” Miguel wanted to know.

  “You table it. Is it so hard to just tell me how you are feeling?”

  “You aren’t listening to how I’m feeling.”

  Birk held up a hand. “I statement.”

  Miguel looked about as happy with Birk as she was. “My feelings about having a baby haven’t changed. I’m not ready. I told you I didn’t think I’d ever be ready. But that isn’t good enough, is it?”

  “I just want to know why.” He’d be a great dad. She could see him coaching his kids about baseball like he did with her.

  “No you don’t. You just want me to change my mind.” He shot Birk a glare, daring him to interject. “We talked about this before we got married. I told you then I didn’t think I’d ever want kids. You said you were okay with that.”

  “Is that why you didn’t marry her?”

  Miguel’s face lost color for a moment and then got red. “Excuse me?”

  She wished she could take it back, but it was already out there. “You told me you had asked someone to marry you before me. Is this what broke you up?”

  “We are not talking about her.” His voice was so cold. So not Mr. Fun. Mr. Everybody Loves Me.

  “Why? Why can’t we ever talk about her?”

  Poor Birk. “You guys are getting a little off topic. While I think this is opening up a dialogue about things you need to discuss, it’s not the exercise we’re working on.”

  She didn’t think Miguel even heard Birk. “She has no place in this or any conversation. Let it go, Sera.”

  “You don’t get to just put up that kind of wall. I deserve to know why you didn’t get married. I’m your wife.”

  “Are you listening to yourself here? You are my wife. She is not. She doesn’t have a place in this conversation.”

  “Did she want kids?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you broke up?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you marry her then?”

  Miguel stood up. “I did.”

  “What?”

  “I married her. We were married for three days and then she died. Can we let this go now?”

  THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO happen.

  As soon as the words were out of Miguel’s mouth, he wanted to take them back, swallow them back down to where he’d been keeping them all these years. Never ever utter them again. The white hot rage left him as soon as the words did, and now all he was left with was a hollow ache and regret.

  He sat back down.

  “I’m sorry...I didn’t know.” Sera reached for his hand and then snatched hers back when he glared at her. He reached over and squeezed her knee in apology. “I shouldn’t have pushed.”

  Birk leaned forward in his chair, coldly assessing them both. “So you’ve never talked about your first marriage to Sera, Miguel?”

  “I don’t talk about it with anyone.” He settled back into his chair, defeated. “Nobody else knows. Well, the hospital chaplain and the two nurses know, I guess.”

  “You married her in a hospital,” Sera deduced. “And then she died?”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. His parents didn’t even know. Not even after all this time. They’d learned to not bring her up—and since he certainly never did, the three-day marriage was moot.

  “Bria was literally the girl next door. We’d been dating throughout high school.” Why was he telling her this? “We had a lot of plans. We’d been accepted to the same college, were going to get married and settle down in our hometown after we got teaching degrees.” Sera raised her eyebrow. Teaching was a long way from business and marketing. “I wanted to teach middle school. Bria talked about teaching for a few years and going back for a higher degree. She wanted to be a principal. We knew what street we wanted to live on, how many kids we wanted to have.” He closed his eyes. “Three.” When he opened them, Sera had tears in hers. “And then she got sick. We had our entire lives planned out.” He thought Sera would get a kick out of that. That he used to be a planner.

  “Miguel, you don’t have to—”

  “When she got so sick that we knew she wasn’t leaving the hospital again, we wanted one thing from that future that was never going to be. Just one thing. So we got married in the hospital. And I didn’t tell anyone. And when she was gone, I stopped planning out my life and just concentrated on living it.”

  He was sure Birk was enjoying this show—a rare chink in their marital armor. But he was quiet. Watching them both. Watching as Sera eased her way into Miguel’s lap to offer comfort. Watching as Miguel tensed at first, then held her close. Listening as she murmured nonsensical words that shouldn’t have been necessary after all this time.

  It should have been worse that Birk witnessed this, but Miguel was glad he was there. If it had been just Sera, he might have cracked completely, but falling apart in front of Birk was not an option.

  Why was falling apart in front of Sera not out of the question?

  He was sure he was some kind of textbook case for the counselor. Young boy loses his young love. Instead of being overwhelmed with grief, he goes the opposite way. Party all the time. That’s what he’d done.

  He’d calmed down since college, of course, but Miguel barely remembered his first two years. If there was a prank, he was in on it. If there was a party, he was the center of it. If there was a pretty girl—well, he went through a lot of them in his younger days. Anything to numb the pain.

  His parents had tried to rein him in—offering trite advice about what Bria would have wanted for him. But Miguel didn’t care. Bria was gone. His whole world was gone. And he’d vowed to never hurt like that
again.

  No marriage. No kids. Just work and play. Yeah, it was a shallow existence. But it was a painless one.

  He tried to imagine what it would be like to really be married to Sera and lose her like he had lost Bria all those years ago. He didn’t think he could go through that again. But as she curled into his arms, overwhelming all his senses, he wondered if a better man would try.

  Chapter Seven

  Good morning, Campers

  Don’t forget the field trip to Briarsted today. Bus leaves at nine a.m. If you have a softball game today, you can catch the tour tomorrow.

  Day Six

  Softball: 10 a.m.

  Canoe trip to Elephant Rock: 1 p.m.

  Arts & Crafts: 4 p.m.

  HE WAS QUIET. IN HIS own world. Thrown back into a dark corner—the darkest corner—of his life, and she’d been the one to toss him there.

  Sera wasn’t even sure how the counseling session had gotten so far away from them. It had felt like a game at first—role-play these two people in this marriage that doesn’t exist. But something had flipped inside her. A bad switch. She felt his reticence to commit to a child like it was a personal attack on her. Which was ridiculous. What was it about him that brought out the worst in her? She shuddered when she remembered the last six months. How awful she’d been to him. How awful he’d been to her. Things were different now, after they’d decided to work together. After they’d had sex.

  So what made her want to dig in so hard during their mock communication exercise?

  They’d been on eggshells ever since the counseling session yesterday. Oh, they’d gone to their couples’ massage, their softball game, the campfire—but they’d been shadows of Camp Miguel and Camp Sera. Going through the motions, but not committing. Not fully.

  And while they’d slept together last night—they didn’t have sex.

  Holding hands for show, they walked down to the dock for yoga, taking their usual spot on the mats. Miguel said it was important that Birk see them together, and maybe he was right.

  It was cooler today. The sunrise taking its time to push through the clouds. Maybe it wouldn’t manage today. It smelled like it had rained last night. Maybe they’d get some more. It certainly went with her mood.

  “We’re going to do a new pose today,” Essa said in her steady, calming voice. “Yab Yum is about divine unity. It will allow you to align your chakras—but for those of you not interested in the meditation or woo-woo benefits—it also just feels really good. We’ll have the bigger partner cross legged like Birk is doing. Then the smaller partner will sit on the lap like this.” She climbed on to him and crossed her legs behind Birk’s back. “Once you sit Yab Yum, it is really up to you how to continue. You want your eyes aligned, but you may simply close them and breathe together.”

  Oh shit.

  Miguel sat, crossing his legs as best he could—and it was certainly better than their first yoga session. She eased down over him, settling with their groins aligned. Their eyes locked. It should have been too intimate, but it still didn’t feel close enough.

  “Lean your foreheads together and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths and then just be, allowing yourself to synchronize to your partner.”

  Just be. Did she even know how to do that?

  He was sturdy. So sturdy. She rested against him, trying to keep the wall around herself in this very intimate pose. Trying not to sink too far. But it wasn’t long before they were breathing as one.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  Part of her was reaching for him even as she tried to stop it. But he felt like the sun and she was craving warmth.

  She opened her eyes to find him focused on her. His arms tightened, pulling her closer. The hard length of him pressed into her. And he smiled.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Willing him to understand she hadn’t wanted to rip him apart, no matter how it seemed.

  He shook his head. “Shh. It’s okay.”

  Meditation had always seemed out of her reach. She understood it on a basic level, and it was gaining popularity in the corporate world along with buzz words that wouldn’t last long. Like “forty-hour work week.” But people were trying to find a balance. She’d just never been able to think of nothing. It was jarring—almost scary—the few times she’d tried. But for ten minutes, she was able to sit chakra to chakra with Miguel, focusing only on their breath, the sound of the water lapping against the supports of the deck, the breeze. Like they had a bubble. Around them, the worries of things said and unsaid might be swirling around, trying to permeate their cocoon of silence—but for the first time, she was able to let it go.

  “Let’s just concentrate on Camp Miguel and Camp Sera for the next two days. Can we do that?” he asked. “I’ll even make you a sandwich.”

  Sera giggled and vowed to just be. No past. No future. Just live in the moment.

  She didn’t know what happened come Monday. What they would take with them from this experience. But she knew what she’d leave here at Camp Firefly Falls.

  A piece of her heart. One she couldn’t afford to lose.

  Later that afternoon

  MIGUEL WOULDN’T CALL IT NAPPING. His eyes were open, he was aware, but it’s like his body was unconscious. The sex they’d just had...crazy good. Too good. Maybe even unreal good.

  “We live here now,” Sera said from her position of being sprawled over his chest. “I’m too tired to ever leave.”

  The Yab Yumming on the dock that morning had started a sensation in him that he couldn’t just push down. All day, he’d wanted to get it back. That perfect feeling. That unity.

  But they’d had softball, lunch, and then a canoe trip to Elephant Rock. Sitting behind her in the canoe, watching the play of her back and shoulder muscles, had been difficult enough that he’d carried her back to their cabin from the boathouse and they’d been naked ever since.

  Sera rolled away onto her side, but it was too far. He kissed her shoulder, her neck. The hollow of her throat intoxicated him. “Too tired.” She flopped onto her stomach.

  “I don’t think you are.”

  “You’re insatiable, Castillo. Do we have any food in here?”

  “No.”

  “Go get me a sandwich.”

  He laughed and kissed her strong back, trailing down until he got to a pink scar, which he also kissed, following it around her side under her breast. “What is this. Shark attack?”

  She stiffened. “Something like that.”

  He remembered registering the mark briefly the other night and again this afternoon. But it was light in color and looked more like a scratch. He traced it with his finger. “Tell me.”

  He wanted to hear a story about her childhood. About little Princess Seraphina getting into some kind of trouble. She couldn’t always have been as careful and controlled as she was today.

  “It’s from my surgeries. My heart surgeries. I had coarctation of the artery when I was a kid. I was born with it. It’s a heart defect.”

  He pulled back. Momentarily stunned. “Surgeries? You’ve had multiple heart surgeries?” The medicine bottle in their shared bathroom made an appearance in his memory. “Are you still sick?”

  He remembered all the medicine Bria had taken daily. Most of it to counteract the side effects from other medicines she had to take. His vision constricted and noise started fading to the background. He tried to blink away the sensation from the blood leaving his head.

  “No, not really. Not anymore.”

  He remembered the pink curtain around Bria’s hospital bed. The exact sound the rings made when the nurse would slide it closed when she took care of the catheter. The plastic pitcher on the nightstand, always full of ice chips. The basin, always ready for the next attack of Bria’s nausea. He closed his eyes. “What do you mean not really?”

  The memories came flying back to him. Bria hadn’t wanted to die in a hospital gown, so he’d helped her into ducky pajamas. They were two sizes too big by that stage of her illn
ess.

  “Well, as long as I take care of myself and get frequent checkups, then I’m fine.”

  His hand tightened on her arm. “What would a bad checkup be?”

  “I guess if they found heart enlargement on the ECHO or other cardiac testing. I wouldn’t want to have another heart surgery—it’s a little more major now than when I was a kid—but it’s not like I’d have much choice. But I can’t dwell on it. I just take good care of myself and make sure to see my doctor. It’s why I’m so organized.”

  Heart surgery? Lunch was threatening to come back up.

  He couldn’t. Not again.

  God, he’d just found her. If he lost her now...

  But worse...what if he lost her a year from now? Ten years? What if they had a kid?

  A life he didn’t know he wanted flashed before his eyes and all of it could be gone in a blink if she had a bad checkup. Just like the plans he’d made once before.

  He knew better. He’d perfected knowing better for years.

  The cloying smell of carnations. The way the light from the stained glass hit Bria’s waxy skin in her coffin.

  He got up, started gathering his clothes. “We might be missing something that will help us win the grand prize. We should get back out there.”

  She sat up, her brow wrinkled in confusion. She looked beautiful wrapped up in a sheet, her skin still red where his beard had scraped her. “Miguel?”

  But he couldn’t face her. Not right now. Not like this.

  “Sera...I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what exactly?”

  “I think I pushed us too fast. I’m not ready. I thought maybe...next week...but no. This won’t work. It can’t work. We should stop this right now before one of us gets the wrong idea about what is happening here.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Castillo.” Sera lost all the color in her face as her too smart mind started catching up with the conversation. “My scars freaked you out.”

  “No, of course not.” He needed to bring back the fun, easy going vibe. “We should hit the Arts and Crafts session. See what kinky things we can make today.”