I walked down the aisle and over to him. He was holding a glow-mesh halter top in one hand. Figures. I peered at his other hand. It was a leather miniskirt.
I breathed out sharply through my nose and shot him an apologetic smile. “Yeah, I’m not wearing the skirt so you can just put it back.”
He shook his head and kept going through some cardigans. “Rules are rules, Ellie. You have to wear whatever I choose for you.”
I crossed my arms, the pile of clothes bunching up. “I am not wearing a skirt.”
He kept on as if he didn’t hear me and the click click click of hangers being slid past were driving me insane. I bundled my clothes under one arm and put my hand on his to take the skirt away. He wouldn’t budge.
“Seriously, you know I’m not wearing that.”
He sighed and turned to face me, his dark brows coming together to create a deep groove between his eyes. “Why not?” He sounded like his patience was being tested, which in turn made my patience feel tested.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You know why. I have scars, Camden. Still have them.”
“So?”
I fought the urge to raise my voice. “So? So I don’t feel like wearing something that’s going to humiliate me.”
“We used to humiliate each other all the time. You’re trying to make me look like a cross-dressing Tom Selleck.”
“That’s different. And we had our own rules back then. You knew how I was, so you’d only dress me in pants or long skirts.”
His lower lip moved back and forth as he studied me. “I thought you’d have gotten over it by now.”
My eyes nearly bulged out of my head. “That’s not exactly something you can get over, Camden.” The absolute nerve of him. “I’m not like you. I can’t just get over every shitty thing that gets thrown my way.”
He focused on me intently. “I don’t get over everything.” His voice had dropped a register or two and flowed out of him like a snake.
I broke away from his gaze and took my hand off the hanger. “Well, so then you know. Look maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. I mean, we’re twenty-six years old and playing dress up…”
I took in a deep breath and turned to face the changing rooms. My face looked back at me from the mirror. I didn’t like that view either.
Suddenly I felt him behind me and his arm going around my waist. He turned me around and pulled me to him, then embraced me in a hug. All our clothes and hangers dropped to the floor, and over his shoulder I saw the cashier getting off her stool to look over at the clatter.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m being an insensitive jerk.”
He squeezed me tight enough to make breathing hard. I patted him lightly on the back, not wanting to see this side of him, not over something like this.
“It’s fine,” I told him, trying to sound breezy and not at all caught off guard. “I just get a little touchy over it. It’s…it’s something I’m working on.”
He held me in a pause of silence. I heard the buzz of the dim overhead lights and the rustle of the newspaper as the cashier resumed reading.
“You’re still such a brave girl, Ellie,” he said softly, sadly. “It’s too bad.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant it was too bad I was brave or the situation was too bad. While I was mulling that over, he let me go and scooped up our clothes. To my relief, he stuck the skirt back on the rack and focused behind him where the women’s pants were. In seconds he had plucked out a pair of skin-tight, orange leopard-print leggings. Insanely tacky. It was perfect.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After the antics at the thrift shop were over and we walked away with a hideous mix of materials, our next stop was to pop into the grocery store and stock up for our meal. Thankfully, we were only wearing our crazy outfits for dinner and didn’t have to go into the store looking like total lunatics.
Camden decided on filet mignon which he wanted to grill on his new barbecue, with a side of asparagus. You couldn’t get a sexier meal than that, unless you threw in some oysters. To Camden’s brazen credit, he did check at the seafood department but they didn’t have any. I decided to supply the wine and picked up two bottles of deep, bold reds.
“Do we look like alcoholics if we have two bottles?” I asked him, holding them both up, one in each hand.
His eyes sparkled. “Hold on, stay like that.”
“Like with wine in the air?”
He put down the grocery basket and came toward me while I stood frozen. I was like a statue of the world’s most enthusiastic wino.
He pressed himself against me, leaving barely any room between us, and with those searing baby blues trailing from my eyes down to my lips, he cupped my face with one hand. I closed my eyes, gripping the necks of the bottles extra hard, and felt his lips press against mine. They were soft, warm, and sweet. It felt like I didn’t have a hard bone in my body, just this lightness and sunshine.