The Story of Me (Carnage #2)(129)

He ends the call and passes the phone back to me. “I’m sorry, George, but I f*cking hate seeing you like this. He should’ve been with you today. After everything you’ve been through, he should’ve been with you.”

I sit down at my desk and wait for Ben to arrive without saying another word. Luckily, Marley is out of the office; otherwise, I’m sure he would also have something to say.

I look up as I hear Lisa, Lennon’s receptionist, shouting twenty minutes later. Len ends the call that he’s on and gets up from his desk.

“Wait here,” he orders. Really? Does he not know me better than that? I follow him out.

Cam is making his way around the entire floor, opening office doors and calling my name. He sees me as he backs out of the office next to Len’s.

“Kitten, I’m so f*cking sorry. She set me up. She f*cking set me up and I fell for...”

Len hits him so hard, I see stars. He turns around to me and says, while shaking his hand, “Get him the f*ck out before Marley gets back and does some real damage.”

He walks past me into his office, and I’m amazed Cam is still standing, and once again wiping blood from his lip.

“I deserved that,” he says quietly, his eyes locked on mine.

“Yes, you did,” I reply. “Wait there while I fetch my bag.”



*



We drive the ten minutes it takes to get to the apartment in silence. I want to be calm and I want to be reasonable when I hear what he has to say. That’s the plan anyway.

We stand in opposite corners of the lift on the ride up and I let him take my hand in his while we take the ten or so steps to the apartment door. There are four apartments on the top floor, one in each corner. Each of them a penthouse with a roof terrace.

As soon as we step inside and the door closes he pulls me to him.

“It was the wrong thing to do. You needed me. I should’ve been with you. Come in here and sit down. I need to tell you what happened.”

I follow him to the kitchen and sit on a stool. I watch him as he pulls a bottle of wine and a beer from the fridge. He pours wine into a glass and sets it in front of me. His eyes haven’t met mine since we left Len’s office, and I have this horrible panicky feeling in the pit of my belly and my chest for some reason. I don’t know if it’s being caused by the fact that I’m trying so hard to remain calm or because I’m expecting him to tell me something I don’t want to hear.

He drinks his beer, draining the bottle in a few swallows, then reaches up into the cupboard where he keeps his bourbon and pours himself one of those into a whisky tumbler over some ice.

He leans back against the sink, crosses one leg in front of the other and finally looks at me.

“The baby was absolutely fine when I got there this morning. The doctor had just seen him and he was fine, temperature normal. Then he asked if he could speak to me on my own.” He takes a swallow of his drink, the ice clinking as he tilts the glass. “Have you eaten, Kitten? You look terrible. You’ve got no colour in your cheeks.”

I give a small laugh and wrap my arms around myself, suddenly feeling cold. It’s a warm June day outside and the air con has clicked on in the apartment.

“Just tell me what you have to tell me, Cam.” He frowns as he looks at me. He really has no idea how much I’m hurting right now. He rakes his hand through his hair, then over his beard. It’s something he does when he’s stressed or trying to think.

“You’ve every right to be angry, but please believe me when I tell you I’m sorry. I should’ve been with you today. You should’ve been my priority.”

I shake my head. “No, Cam, Harry should’ve been your priority. You were worried. I totally get that and do not have a problem with you being with your son. What hurts is you spending time with her, not being available when I called you because you were out walking in the sun with her.”

He frowns and shakes his head. “I wasn’t out walking with her, I took the baby out for a walk to get away from her.” He moves towards me and leans forward on the other side of the kitchen bench. “I didn’t tell you this because I didn’t know how you’d feel about it, but I asked the nurse who looks after the baby if she could find out how Tamara got pregnant. Whatever you might believe, I have never had unprotected sex with her and it’s frustrated the f*ck out of me trying to work out how it happened.”

“And did you?” I asked, wondering where this is going.

He nods. “When I had to go in the wank room at the fertility clinic, I asked them how long sperm usually live for once you shoot your bolt.” I raise my eyebrows at this.

“And?”

“Inside a woman, three to five days, out in the open, a couple of hours.”

“Right… And?”

“Well, then the nurse, you know, Wendy, the funny one? She tells me a story about how her mate got pregnant on purpose by using a syringe to suck spunk out of a condom her boyfriend had left in the bathroom bin and injecting it up into herself.”

I suddenly feel hot and my heart begins to race. I know my mouth is hanging open as I shake my head. “She didn’t... I mean, where did you… What did you do with the condom the last time… It was in Ibiza wasn’t it?”

He nods. “Yeah, the thieving f*cker robbed me, took my wallet and my watch. And, it turns out, she took the f*cking condom with her, too.” I close my eyes for a few seconds while I try and push the horrible anger down inside me. God, I want to punch that bitch’s face in right now. “And it wasn’t the first time. Wendy, the nurse, has become really pally with her the last few weeks. I did a bit of research, found out she was a bit behind on her mortgage and needed a new car so I helped her out on that score. Just a little bit.”