The Letters (Carnage #4)(10)

“You all right now?” he asks, and for some reason, his concern touches me deeply and tears sting my eyes. He’s so good to me, so unbelievably good for me. The emotion of the moment suddenly overwhelms me. My face crumbles as I let out a sob, wailing, “I love you,” as I launch myself against his chest.

He holds me tight for a few long moments, running his big hands over my back, arms, and scalp.

“Thanks for putting up with all my shit, Cam. Don’t you ever get sick of it? You must. I get sick of myself sometimes.” I eventually look up at him and ask, “Don’t you ever think about trading me in for someone without a shit load of issues?”

His eyes dart all over my face. “You don’t have issues, babe. You just have a past. We all have one. Ours, yours and mine, is just a little more traumatic than most.” He gives a small smile and then a quick peck on the lips. “That’s why we work. That, and the fact that I love you. No one will ever love you like I do, and I’d never want anyone to love me like you do.”

He pulls his knees up, and I lean back on them and look over his face.

“I read a few of them,” he says matter-of-factly.

Shit!

“The letters?” I know what he’s on about, I’m just trying to work out how I feel about that. He nods his head slowly, eyes darting all over my face, assessing my reaction.

“Are you pissed off with me?”

I’m not, not at all. I’m just not sure how I feel about it.

“Cam, shaving and leaving your whiskers everywhere, leaving the milk out of the fridge, or not putting your seat belt on before you pull away are things that piss me off. You reading those letters doesn’t. It makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable though.”

That’s the only way I can think to explain how I feel on the subject, uncomfortable.

Cam has a small box of memories from his first marriage: wedding photos, birthday and Christmas cards he and Chantelle sent each other, her wedding and engagement rings. I’m a woman, so of course I’ve been through it. I’ve looked at the photos of the pair of them. She was beautiful. I know she’s dead and no threat to me, but I still had to look. I’m not sure if it’s a woman thing or just my warped little mind, but when I saw it in amongst his things when we first moved in together, I couldn’t help myself.

“Yeah, they made me a bit uncomfortable, too,” he admits.

“Then why’d you read more than one?” He shrugs his big shoulders.

“Morbid curiosity I suppose.” Ah, so it’s a human thing then, or is it just us two?

“Yeah, I get that. I’ve looked at the photos of you and Chantelle more than once.” His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. Oops, I assumed he knew this.

“It’s just human nature, babe. We’re wired to be curious,” he says after a moment.

We once again both quietly contemplate each other’s admissions.

“So?” I ask.

“So?” he repeats.

“You’re okay with it then? For me to keep going through this box?”

“Would there be any point in telling you no, Kitten?” I give him a big cheesy grin.

“Absolutely none, but I’ll only do it while you’re around, I promise.”





CHAPTER 5


Georgia

I’ve got this thing about looking at the moon lately. It makes me feel connected to you. Because I know, with one hundred percent certainty, that during your lifetime, you’ve looked at that same moon. It’s all I’ve got right now, G. The moon, the stars, and the sun. Even the air that I breathe, I take in great gulps and wonder if there’s even a remote chance that it’s maybe air, that at some stage, you’ve breathed. Is that even scientifically possible I wonder?

I know I don’t bother to post these letters to you anymore, but still, I continue to write them. They help me sort shit out in my head. You could always help me sort shit out, you always gave me a different perspective, a different way of looking at things. I’m an over thinker, and I analyse everything. But you, G, just go with your gut. You react on your first instinct, all guns blazing. I hope that hasn’t changed. I hope you’re still the Gia that loved me so passionately. Is it loved or love? Do you think of me at all? I could ask your brothers and Jimmie but it still hurts so much G. I’ve tried to move on but there’s nothing there, there’s no connection, not like we had. It makes me panic sometimes, makes me doubt that the way I remember things is just my imagination prettying it up. Did we really love each other that intensely? We were so young, was it even possible to feel the way I think we did at such a young age?

I wish you were here to answer all of these questions. Perhaps if I had answers, it would give me some closure. It’s been almost three years. Are we different people now? Has too much time passed, has too much life happened to make what we had ever work again for us? Coz I do believe that, G. It will happen. I don’t know when or how, but I just know that our time will come. We will talk, we will work things out, and we will live, laugh, and love the way we used to. So, whatever tense you might be using, I’ll stick with the present. I love you, Gia, and until the day you come back to me, until then, I’ll keep looking at our moon and breathing in our air.

Sean and Georgia. Georgia and Sean. The way it’s meant to be.