Be With Me(84)

He opened the passenger door and blinked when the overhead light came on. She didn’t move or acknowledge him as he slid in and shut the door again.

His heart clutched as he looked down at her slight form. She looked vulnerable. Lost. He swal owed the knot lodged in his throat and struggled with what to say. How to say it.

Final y he opted to say nothing at al . He reached down, hooked his hands underneath her arms and gently tugged her upward until he could pul her into his arms and against his chest.

Her body shook as a sob escaped her.

He hugged her tightly and buried his face in her curls.

“I’m sorry, love,” he whispered.

For the longest time, she huddled against him and didn’t say anything. The longer she took to speak, the more worried he became.

“I knew this would happen,” she final y whispered.

“It’s not fair, Cam. I can’t choose sides. How could I?”

“No one wants you to choose sides, Reggie darling.” God, he hoped he hadn’t just lied out his ass. He would have never thought Hutch would pul the stunt he had, and now he was stuck here speaking for both Hutch and Sawyer.

“Not in so many words.”

Her voice was muffled by his chest, and he adjusted her position, sliding her head back so he could hear her better.

“What was I supposed to do, Cam?”

The ache in her voice made him ache. She sounded smal . Tired. Utterly defeated, as though she’d spent the last several hours beating herself up for something she couldn’t control.

“It’s not up to you to fix this,” he said softly. “This is Hutch’s problem. He crossed the line. He has to make things right with you and with Sawyer.” She sighed and wilted further into his arms. “I was fooling myself. This couldn’t ever work,” she said sadly.

He halted the protest, the denial that wanted to burst out of his mouth, his heart. Instead he drew in a steadying breath and prepared to try and fight.

“It wil work, Reggie.”

She pushed away to stare at him in the dark. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you. It’s not fair to run to you when I have problems with Hutch or Sawyer. It wouldn’t be fair to go to them if I had a problem with you.”

He reached out to touch her face. He needed to touch her. To make that connection. His fingers were trembling so bad that he curled them into his palm and simply rested his knuckles against her cheek.

“Why? Reggie, you’re being too hard on yourself.

It’s not up to you to be al things to us. How can you expect to be the rock with no one to ever confide in?

Talking to me about a problem you have with Hutch or Sawyer isn’t a betrayal.”

“It’s not fair,” she said stubbornly.

“Why isn’t it? We talk about you. We’re a unit. A f**ked-up, twisted kind of unit, but we’re a unit nonetheless.”

“What the hel do you say about me?” she demanded.

He smiled in the darkness at the irritation in her voice.

“Oh, just about how stubborn you are. How infuriating you can be. That we worry about you. And that we miss you.”

She leaned back into his arms. “I don’t know what happened tonight, Cam. I thought I’d final y gotten through to Sawyer.”

She broke off and went silent.

“And?” he prompted.

“I shouldn’t discuss him with you.”

Cam sighed. “See? Stubborn. That characteristic weighs heavily in our conversations about you, Reggie darling.”

She huffed against him.

He rubbed his hand up and down her shoulder.

“What did you mean about getting through to Sawyer?”

She lay there for a long time, and he could feel the battle raging inside her. Loyalty was strong in her, and she’d always been loyal to him, Hutch and Sawyer. In her mind, confiding in him about one of the other two was a betrayal. It was choosing him over them.

They had been right in realizing that she’d never choose between them and that their only chance of a life with her was convincing her to belong to al of them. Only now Hutch was doing his best to f**k everything up.

Despite his best effort, anger swel ed within Cam.

It was irrational. It didn’t serve anything, but it stil pissed him off that with one fit of temper, Hutch had risked everything. Not only his relationship with Reggie but Cam’s and Sawyer’s as wel .

“He held back,” she final y said. “A year ago he held back, and then when we made love again the other night, he wouldn’t . . .”

She seemed to struggle with the right words, and Cam thought back to those encounters to try and see what she was seeing. In both instances, Hutch and Cam had been the only ones to actual y take her. He frowned. Both times Sawyer had used her mouth and nothing more. Until today.

“He didn’t penetrate you . . . vaginal y,” Cam offered, stumbling over the damn word like a moron.

“He’s afraid of hurting me,” she said quietly.

“Sawyer’s rough around the edges. No secret there.

And I think he feels guilty because he’s had frequent sexual encounters with other women.”

Cam frowned again. It made sense in a twisted Sawyer kind of way. To be honest, he’d never evaluated Sawyer’s performance during sex. Just wasn’t high on his list of priorities, but now that Reggie had brought it up, he could see her point.