Instantly, I feel bad. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize . . .”
“It’s hard for you to think about things like this. It must be. You were just at a place where people were giving their money away, offering trips to Paris. I’m destroying myself so I can keep a roof over my head if I get laid off at some point.” He smiles a broken, wobbly smile. “I don’t blame you for thinking the way you do. You’re right, actually. But sometimes being right doesn’t fix things.”
“Can I at least come watch you?” I ask, my hand on his forearm on his Joey tattoo. “Let me be there. I want to be.”
“There’s no way.” His response is immediate and with a flourish of finality.
“Why?”
“Imagine the wildest, most about it people you can think of. Now put them all together in a room where the purpose is fighting. What do you think you have?”
When I don’t answer, he does it for me.
“Mayhem. You have mayhem.”
As if the conversation is over, he climbs out of the ring, taking a few seconds to recover from the movement in his ribs. He helps me out, kisses my forehead, and after I slip on my heels, he leads me out the door.
Dominic
SHE COMES OUT OF HER bathroom wrapped up in a giant white towel. Another is wound around her head like a turban. She smells fresh and clean and looks like my Cam all stripped of the fancy shit that I love, but that’s not her.
She’s this: simple and sweet and innocent. She’s everything I’m not and I want to protect that about her. Yet just by being with me, it brings out things in her that shouldn’t be.
Hateful, like she was tonight when she saw me with Hannah. Damn, that makes a man feel good to see his woman want him, only for her, that bad. But she shouldn’t even fuck with the idea of being second to someone else. Not even for a moment. It’s impossible.
Careless, like she is when she shows up in places she shouldn’t be.
Conflicted with her family because they think she can do better.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, I look up at her. I know I’m switching into fight mode. It happens a day or two before fight night every time. I’m touchy, cross, more than a little ill-tempered. It’s exacerbated by the text that sits on her phone a few inches away—a text that offers all the things I can’t provide.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, going into her closet. She rummages around and comes out a few minutes later in the yellow number I love for bed.
“You got a text,” I tell her as she climbs onto the bed. I don’t move, just sit facing the doorway. “I was lying there and it went off. Thought it was mine and picked it up.”
I give her time to read it, process what I’ve seen, before I look at her. “I don’t care who that bastard is, I’m going to dismantle him.”
“He couldn’t whip his way out of a wet paper bag,” Camilla sighs, sinking back in her pillows. “So if that makes you feel more like a man, go for it. Just know if I wanted to beat him up, I probably could.”
“That was Barron, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Exhaling a long, shaky breath, I look at the doorway again. “He really asked you to Paris.” It’s not a question, although I questioned it before. I know it’s true because I read the text. “Some dumb shit asked you to another country.”
I could never take her to another country. I can barely take her out of this county. Who is she hanging out with where invitations to France are tossed casually around and why did this Barron Monroe think she was fair game?
“As you can see, I told him no. Which is more, I might add, than you told Red.”
“Damn it, Cam,” I growl. “I needed the help.”
“She looked handy all right.”
I twist around the best I can. “I’ve known her for years.”
“I’ve known Barron since we wore diapers. Does that make a difference to you? Barron also didn’t touch me tonight—”
“You better hope he didn’t,” I say through clenched teeth, the mere thought of it making me want to come unglued as I turn to look at her.
There’s a shift between us that wasn’t there before tonight. I don’t know what caused it or how to fix it, only that I won’t be sleeping and I won’t be saying anything that will be helpful tomorrow. And by the look on her face, she won’t either.
Standing, I grab my shirt off the floor and pull it over my head.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“Home. I have a bunch of shit to do and I’m not going to sleep anyway.”
She sits up, her gown barely covering the tops of her breasts. “I’m sorry, not about Barron because I can’t help that. But I am sorry about the Red stuff. I need to let it go.”
“Yes, you do.” I bend over and give her a simple kiss. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She starts to say something, but I keep walking. It’s probably better than me sticking around. We’re both irritable and it’ll end in a fight. There are no two ways about it.
Camilla
“Here they are in green,” I say, holding up a pair of yoga pants. “I think she said she has them in a grey now too.”
Joy and I search the racks of Halcyon, looking through Ellie’s new arrivals. Her business is really picking up, and she and her business partner, Violet, have hired a couple of people to help them. They especially need it now that Ellie’s going to be a mama.
“I didn’t know you were here,” Ellie squeals, coming around the corner from the back. “Why didn’t you tell me you were stopping in?”
“It was a last-minute decision,” I tell her. “We were having lunch down the street and decided to come in for yoga pants.”
“I love hers,” Joy gushes. “I need them in every color.”
“There are a bunch in the back that we haven’t put out yet. Let me go see what’s back there.”
She disappears, leaving the two of us milling around with a few other customers.
“How are thing with Dominic?” Joy asks.
“Good.”
“And the lie detector reads that’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie. They aren’t bad. They’re just . . . not as great as they have been.”
“What’s going on?”
I shrug again, flipping through a rack of shirts. “I’m mad that this little gym rat keeps hitting on him. He’s mad that Barron asked me to Paris.”
“Barron Monroe? Ew.”
“I know,” I sigh. “I’d never go. But it’s enough to make Dom frustrated and ready to kill.”
“Pardon me for saying this but that would be . . . oh my God.” Her eyes bug out as she looks over my shoulder. Just as quickly, she goes back to the rack of clothes. “Who in the hell is that?”
Looking back, I laugh. “Hey, Nate!”
“What’s up, Priss?”
“You know him?” Joy hisses. “Introduce me.”
“Nate, this is my friend Joy,” I say as he gets closer. “Joy, this is Dom’s brother, Nate.”
He stutter-steps as he takes her in, a slow grin splitting his cheeks. “Nice to meet you, Joy.”
“Same here. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Is that so?”
“Not really,” she giggles. “But isn’t that what people are supposed to say?”