The Story of Me (Carnage #2)(55)
“I needed to know you were okay. I needed to know if all the things you said on the phone last weekend were true. I know you were bolloxed and f*cked-up, but you don’t just say that kinda shit. No one says that kinda thing without there being some truth in it.” He tilts his head forward so his forehead rests against mine. “You told me on the phone that you had told someone you loved me, that you’d always loved me. Then Sunday, when you were straight and sober, you told me you cared, that you’d always cared, that you still care. I just… I wanted to see you. I wanted to hear you say those things to my face.” He says no more, and I know he’s waiting for me to speak. He leans his head back into the pillows.
“I never gave us a chance, did I, Tiger? I was so obsessed with Sean that I couldn’t see what was happening right in front of me.” He deserves my honesty, even though I’m not sure if it’ll do any good now. I’m feeling drunk and brave, so I decide to tell him anyway. “I was attracted to you from the very beginning, Cam. Right from the start, you were the first bloke who made me want: made me want to be kissed, want to be touched, want to be f*cked, the first one since I’d split up with Sean. But then when you found out who my dad was and got on the turn, I thought it was because you’d realised I was ‘that’ Georgia, the one they wrote about in the paper, the underage whore who broke the poor boy from Carnage’s heart. That’s why I threw the drink over you.”
He gives a small laugh. “Fuck, I’d forgotten about that.” He leans over and picks the hotel menu up from where I’d left it on the bedside table the night before. “You hungry?” I nod. “I’m starving, what’s good?” he asks.
“The burger with the lot,” I reply. “I had one last night.” He tilts his head and looks at me.
“You were here, in your room last night, ordering room service?” I nod, mainly because I’m struggling to form sentences. “I was a few streets away in my hotel room, doing the same.” I make do, do, do, do noises, attempting to sound like the theme to the Twilight Zone.
“Spooky,” I whisper to him, and he slaps me over the head with the menu.
“Don’t take the piss, Kitten; it’s not nice.”
I sigh a big sigh and shake my head at him. “Cameron King, when are you gonna realise I’m not nice?”
He looks at me almost reverently as he tucks my hair behind my ear. “You’re nice; you’re just too hard on yourself, and you worry too much about what other people are gonna think or say.”
I ignore him. “Anyway, listen, you have to listen to my story. I need to tell you all of this.” No matter how hard I try, I slur nearly every word, and I can see Cam’s trying his best not to smile. “So, yeah, anyway, because I thought you thought I was a little whore, I decided to act like one. All those blokes, the different ones I used to bring into Kings every week or so, I was just trying to piss you off. I was just like… ‘yeah, well, you think I’m a whore, then I’m gonna act like a whore; just watch me. Just watch me, King, you f*cker.’ And for six months, six whole months I did. And all the while, I wanted you to stop me; I wanted you to say something, to tell me to stop, ask me to stop, but you didn’t. You didn’t say or do anything, so I just kept bringing them in, week after week after week.”
He picks up the hotel phone and presses a button. “Keep talking. I’m listening.”
I give him a wink. “Good-looking and a multitapletasker, a multiple, a multitasker, wow.”
He wiggles his eyebrows up and down. “Baby, you’ve felt nothing till you’ve felt my fingers,” he wiggles his middle finger at me, “my tongue,” he sticks out his tongue and moves it suggestively, “and my cock,” he gyrates his hips, “all in action at the same time… Shit, sorry, no not you, love.” He bites his bottom lip as he tries not to laugh at the person who’s just answered the phone. “Shit,” he mouths to me. “Yeah, can I get two burgers with the lot, one with no pineapple.” My heart stutters; all these years and he’s remembered I don’t like pineapple. He winks at me as he talks. What is this? What am I feeling here and where am I going with this? My head is swimming, drowning in the questions I’m asking myself right now. “Yeah, a side of wedges, some aioli, some sweet chilli sauce, a large jug of iced water and a bottle of Wild Turkey, Rare Breed if you’ve got it… That’s right, cheers.” He puts the phone down.
He folds his arms behind his head and leans against the headboard, his long legs stretched out in front as I sit cross-legged beside him on the bed.
“So, all you wanted was for me to rescue you. Is that what you’re saying?”
I nod. “I think I was but I wouldn’t… couldn’t admit that to myself at the time.”
“Why?”
I think about this for a while; my long conversations with Jackson have helped me come to a conclusion, and I concentrate hard on explaining myself clearly to Cam. I don’t want him to think this is just drunk talk. I want him to know this is me being honest.
“I was so in love with the idea of being in love with Sean that I couldn’t see past it. I wouldn’t let myself accept that I was attracted to you, but at the same time, I so desperately wanted you to force me, to make me see it.” God, this feels so good. Sitting here with him, with Cam and after all these years, finally explaining myself to him. It just makes everything so much clearer. “When you spoke to me that night in the wine bar, when that bloke shoved me at the bar and we ended up in your office—” His eyes are closed as he interrupts me.