A Missing Heart(66)

I grip my hands around her shoulders, gazing into her eyes with intent. “Do not think that for even a second. My situation with Tori has been complicated for a very long time. And I wouldn’t be uprooting Gavin. Hunter can hold down the fort for a couple of weeks at work, too.”

Cammy sniffles a couple of times. “It’s not going to be a couple of weeks. They said the hearing could take up to six months.”

My daughter has been back in my life for less than seventy-two hours, and I’m being told I already have to say goodbye. I can’t do it.

“I don’t want you to go through this alone,” I tell Cammy. “I want to be there for Ever. For you.” Her forehead scrunches, showing age lines I didn’t know she had, yet somehow making her look even more beautiful. How else do I make it clear that I’m in this a hundred percent, whether she wants to think so or not? Dammit.

I slide my hands from her shoulders up to her warm cheeks, gripping her tightly as I focus solely on her glossy eyes. “I am here. Here, meaning wherever our daughter is. Our daughter, Cam. She’s ours, and we’re going to fight to the death for her. Thirteen years is more time than any parent should have to go without seeing their child. We won’t go through it again.” She doesn’t say a word this time, doesn’t argue, doesn’t flinch. Something inside of me disentangles and comes undone as I lean in without thinking anything through, pressing my forehead to hers, inhaling all of her sweet scents—the ones that haven’t changed in all of these years. My memory has not let me down with any detail concerning Cammy, which is why I can’t stop this from happening right now. My hand slides across her cheek as my fingers curl around her ears, making my heart race a mile a minute. My chest aches with the love I still have for this woman.

“AJ,” she whispers, questioningly. “What are we doing?”

I want to tell her I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do for the last thirteen years, but I know that’s not what she’s really asking.

“You are in a bad place, and so am I. We don’t want it to be like this,” she continues.

“Why do we have to be mature?” I beg. I want to forget about today, the last year, everything except Gavin. I want to forget the past like I have spent so much of my life trying to do.

“We’re not seventeen anymore,” she answers simply.

“The moment you’re not around me, Cam, every real thing in my life is going to hit me like a sack of bricks and I’m going to crumble. Is it so wrong to want to push it off with the good in life?”

“The good?” she questions.

“You and Ever came back into my life. It’s the first good thing that’s happened to me since Gavin was born.”

Cammy takes my hand within hers, looking at me with sternness. “Good is around the corner, but let’s skip the shortcuts this time.”

“Do we run away?” I ask, knowing what her response will be.

“That didn’t work out in the first place. Running away is never the answer. Letting time run its course is, though.”

“Is it so wrong to want to kiss you?” I ask, lightly touching my lips to her cheek.

“As wrong as it is that I want to kiss you, too,” she says as her cheeks become warm to the touch. I can still make her blush. “We’ll always feel like that, I think.”

I circle my thumb around her cheek again and she closes her eyes in response. “Only until we kiss again.”

“We need to face our realities first,” she says.

“I’m scared to,” I tell her honestly.

“Why?”

“I know it’s over with Tori, Cam. I know there was not much there to start. I put all of my effort into something that wasn’t the right thing for me. Some things were never meant to be, and no one ever told me that, so I just kept trying.”

“You will always know how much you tried. You will always know the failure in front of you was not because you gave up. It will give you closure and peace in the long run,” she says.

“Why does it keep happening to me, though?”

She places her hand over my heart, and just the touch makes my pulse quicken. “Mistakes make us more perfect, and you are going for perfection, I guess.” She smiles at her own wise remark, and it makes it a little easier to accept this closeness being where it ends tonight.

A groaning chuckle escapes my throat. “That’s funny, seeing as I’m far from perfect. I don’t know if I’ll ever get even close,” I tell her.

“Well, maybe you’ve forgotten about your reputation in high school?” She says while toying with a button on my henley shirt.

“Where are you going with this? I had a reputation?” This is news to me, I think.

“Oh, AJ,” she sighs. “The rumor of how incredibly talented and perfect you were in bed was something I heard one too many times.” Really? This explains some things, but then again, not at all. Thirteen years later, it’s kind of funny to hear, though.

“Do you know how much bull that rumor was?” I ask her.

“Oh, please, you proved yourself pretty quickly during junior year,” she says.

“I must have been born with the gift of good sex-giving then because you were my first, Cam.”

Her laugh goes silent. “Oh, come on, AJ. You can’t actually expect me to believe that.”