Page 12 of Loving You Always
“Yeah, you’re right. You’re not in love with two guys. Just one.” Cam strode to the door, launching his next words over his shoulder like a torpedo. “Too bad he’s not your husband.
He slammed the door behind him.
So sad, so familiar, a door closing. Gone. For a moment, after the violence of their raised voices, Kerris welcomed the silence, but then it throbbed and thickened around her. Swelled in the cottage, lonely and desolate.
Not an affair. Some set of fake tits Cam had called her. That girl meant absolutely nothing to Cam. Echoes of his accusations stung her ears. He was right. She was the cheat because Walsh did mean something to her. In another life, he would have been the air she breathed. In this one, he was the magnificent thorn piercing her side, tempting her to go against the grain of what she knew was right. She was culpable, responsible for all of the convolutions in this marriage. For the circuitous hurt she continued to do to Cam, even when her intentions were the best.
Moving like an old woman, she shuffled into her bedroom and lay on the bed. She didn’t bother removing the kimono, but just slipped under the covers and went to sleep.
“If you were ready for your someone special, what would she be like?”
Walsh looked away from Shelby’s probing stare and directly into Kerris’s eyes. He smiled that slow smile she’d never seen him give to anyone else, reaching out to tangle his long fingers with hers. He pulled Kerris to him, towering over her, sheltering her. She had missed this feeling. In these few moments, she forgot about Shelby. Forgot about the world outside of these arms. There was only now. There was only them, and things were right. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but things were finally right.
Walsh whispered her name like an incantation.
Kerris. Kerris. Kerris.
“Kerris!”
“Walsh,” she muttered, still clawing her way out of the dream. She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes and pulling the kimono close around her neck.
“What’d you just call me?” Cam stood in the semidark, the lamp illuminating the mounting rage on his face.
“Cam! Oh, gosh. No. No, it’s not…not—” she sputtered, still blinking heavy sleep from her eyes.
“In your sleep!” Cam chopped a stiff hand through the air and leaned down until their noses almost touched. “And you have the nerve to accuse me of cheating? When you lie down beside me every night and dream abouthim?”
His hot, alcohol-soaked breath fanned her face. words were not crisp, but slurred, slopping around in his mouth, crowded out by anger and outrage.
“Cam, you’ve been drinking.” With false calm, she reached up to touch his face, wiping at the dampness on his forehead. “It’s been a volatile night for us both. Let’s talk about this tomorrow when we’re both in our right minds.”
Cam pushed her hand away.
“Oh, I’m finally in my right mind. I came back to talk things through. Give it one more chance, at least for the baby’s sake, but I had it right the first time. I’m done.”
He strode to the door, not looking back. The last she heard of him was the slamming door. Again. A tired déjà vu of earlier tonight. Of so many slammed doors and violent departures over the course of her life.
She sat for a moment just as he’d left her, blinking in the dim light and rubbing at arms chilled from the air conditioning. Chilled from the finality of his parting words. And then it hit her. Cam had been drinking. He was angry. He was driving away. She had to stop him.
She scrambled out of the bed, not even bothering to throw on shoes. She snatched her keys and her purse and dashed toward her Camry, realizing it was raining only when she slid on the wet cobblestones.
She pulled out onto the road, training her eyes on the taillights of the Land Rover ahead of her. She struggled to remain calm. Cam was still within sight. Irrational as it was, she felt that as long as she kept him within sight, she could protect him. She could at least be there if a cop stopped him. She rubbed her stomach and pressed the accelerator as much as she dared, needing to get a little closer.
“Hold on, little one.”
The rain came down harder now, faster than her decrepit wipers could keep pace. She squinted through the sheets of rain pummeling her windshield before finally turning her bright lights on. She grabbed her phone, glancing down to select Cam’s contact. The phone rang several times before finally rolling into voice mail.
She tossed her phone back into her purse, setting a grate over the fear and panic that burned in her belly and throat.
“Cameron Mitchell, when this is all over, I’m gonna kill you.”
Cam veered sharply to the left, avoiding something in the road. Kerris pulled her steering wheel to avoid it, too, but she immediately felt her tires spinning free of the road; she could feel the unresponsive steering wheel sliding through her hands as she spun once and then again and then again and then again. There was no last thought when she cannoned toward the tree with its menacing limbs. All thoughts were drowned out by the scream that erupted from her throat, filling the car before it dissolved into the deathly silence that remained.
Chapter Four
Kerris is in the hospital!”
Meredith rubbed her eyes, struggling to drag herself from the warmth of her down comforter and a deep sleep.