“Exactly.” He smiled knowingly. “That’s probably why I got so into the series, when I met Eliza and she showed me the reboot.” He lowered his gaze to me now. Back in the present, returned to the here.
He went to the door and closed it slowly, then pushed me against it even more slowly. We kissed like that for a while, and I kept my eyes open, reminding myself this was Camden and not Azor. This Summer Camden and not Last Summer Camden. I realized I’d been shivering, then realized I’d stopped. Since that first true, unbound kiss at the Ferris wheel, we’d somehow already developed our own language of kisses. A knowable rhythm of soft, hard, here, there. Everywhere, anywhere.
Lost, and found.
Finally, Camden tugged me over to the bed. A little voice locked behind a miniature steel door in my brain started whimpering No wait but. I could barely hear it as I lay down on the black sheets.
Camden stretched his body on top of mine and leaned on his elbows, then paused for a moment to look at me. I took that moment to feel the excruciating safety of his weight, the warmth of his limbs mixing with the slightly different warmth of mine.
“I didn’t expect this,” he said, and I didn’t know what he was referring to. Being here like this? Us in general? Me?
“I didn’t either,” I said, which was the truth any way you sliced it.
Camden kissed my neck, then my collarbone. He moved farther down, touching me through the plaid shirt, finally unbuttoning it, tugging it off my shoulders. It felt strange to shed that layer, even though I still had the purple tunic and white top underneath.
The voice in my head was trying harder to be heard now, and I started to see flashes of Lukas. The old couch with the rip up one side. The empty wine cooler bottles standing in clusters on the coffee table, like spectators. Ditching myself for a little while in the dim claustrophobia of Lukas’s basement.
If I kept my eyes open, wide open, these flashes went away. I was here with Camden. There was only the Possible, surrounding us with hue and light.
I was waiting for Camden to lift up my shirt or slide his hand under the waistband of my leggings. But he just laid his head sideways on my belly, as if listening for something.
“Can I help you?” I joked.
“I’m a little overwhelmed.”
Me, too. “Let’s take a break.”
He sat up at the end of the bed, then pulled me onto his lap so I was straddling him. Another combination of warmth, limbs, weight. He put his hands on either side of my ribs and with a bit of alarm, I could feel how aroused Camden was. It was scary yet amazing, knowing I could do that to him. That he belonged to me in this one way.
“God, Ari,” he said, his eyes searching my face. “You make me feel . . . like I’m joining the human race.”
“You’ve been with girls before,” I said teasingly, stopping myself before adding I’ve seen you with Eliza.
“Not where I found myself doing this.” He held out one hand in front of me. It was trembling.
I grabbed it, steadied it. We both stared at our hands as if we expected them to start acting on their own.
After a few moments, Camden said, “I’m sorry about tonight.” He bit his lip. Pulled his hand out of my mine, which shrank back to my side. “It was so perfect. And then it was totally not.”
“Even the imperfect part was perfect, to me. We all have a past, Camden. If we’re going to be with each other, we can’t ignore that.”
As soon as I said it, Camden looked at my arm, then back up at me. When I didn’t stop him, he turned back to my arm. He started to slowly push up my sleeve. It was tight at the wrist and wouldn’t slide any farther.
“Can I?” he asked, and I knew what he meant. If he’d been asking to take off my shirt, it could not have been more intimate than this.
“You’ve noticed the scars,” I said, my voice catching.
“The first time we really spoke,” he said. “That day with Dani and the diving.”
He rolled up the sleeve until it hit my elbow, then turned my forearm so it was exposed. He took one finger and traced the scratches as if committing them to memory.
“They were shallow, and not anywhere near an artery,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I wasn’t trying to die,” I said. “I was trying to feel better.”
Now he just nodded. “Did you at least ice it down first?”
“With a bag of frozen peas.”
He laughed nervously. “Did it work?”
“It was like someone else’s skin I was cutting.”
Camden lifted my arm. “I know this isn’t going to make it all better,” he said, “but . . .” Then he kissed my wrist a few inches from where the scars trailed off.
I inhaled sharply. “It might.”
He looked up at me from under those giraffe eyelashes, my arm in his hand, and kissed it again. The voice behind the door stopped whimpering. He could have asked me to do anything. I would have taken on a thousand regrets just so I could have whatever he was giving.
“Ari,” whispered Camden, placing my arm gently back down. “I need you to know something.”