Page 68 of Letting it Ride

I’m not sure how to answer that. This has gotten so serious so fast. All of a sudden, too many emotions are rushing through me, and I don’t know which ones to trust. I like Cam. More than like him, actually. So much that it scares me.

I want to tell him everything and to know everything about him. I’ve known him for so long, but it feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface of who he really is.

And I don’t even know the right answer. Is thereone in this situation? If I say the wrong thing right now, are we going to be over?

I look down at my lap, away from his prying gaze, and shrug. “Someday, maybe.”

He places two fingers below my chin and tips my face upward, so I have no choice but to meet his gaze. “It’s not a quiz, Addie. I just—” He swallows, and I realize this is as hard for him as it is for me. “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. That we talk to each other. I want to be honest with you.”

This might be digging too deep, but I need to ask. “What happened with your last girlfriend?”

Now it’s Cam’s turn to look away. He stares at the picture on the wall for so long that I start to wonder if there’s more to it than a simple seascape, but finally, he swallows hard. “She cheated on me.”

My heart squeezes, hurting for him. “I’m so sorry, Cam. That’s so hard.”

He shakes his head, still not looking at me. “There’s more. It was a messy situation. It was while we were on a break, so I can’t exactly expect her to stay loyal when we’re not together. But it was complicated. I’m not ready to talk about all the details just yet, honestly.”

He trails off. I’m itching to fill in the silence. I channel my social worker sister-in-law, queen ofletting people sit with their silence, even though it’s killing me to wait.

“That’s why I was in such a bad mood at Holly and Maddox’s wedding. Why I was so thrown to see you show up on the cruise instead of Maddox. I was ready to wallow in my pain, to do whatever I had to do to get her off my mind. I promised myself I wouldn’t let myself fall for anyone for a long time. Maybe ever.”

“I…” I’m not sure what to say. I’m not entirely sure what he’s saying, what it means for us.

He shakes head. “I’m not done, Addie. I need you to hear this. When you showed up on the ship, I shouldn’t have been such a dick. It was never about you. It was all my shit. All the times I pushed you away, it was because of my issues. But I care about you. I have for a long time, and this past week it’s turned into more. At first, I thought I needed to keep you away from other guys in order to protect you. But it was to protect me. Because I don’t want you with anyone but me.”

It makes sense, now. The way he was so closed off, how he needed time. I’m not upset about him pushing away other guys; none of them were the ones I needed. It was always him.

“It’s okay, Cam,” I say, and I mean it. I want to kill Ellie for what she put him through, but at the sametime I almost want to thank her, for letting Cam go so he and I would have a chance.

We curl closer and closer together as we talk through the twin’s naps. He tells me about his first love, a girl named Shannon from back in college. I feel a stab of jealousy when he tells me how they were one another’s firsts, and I tell him about the college boyfriend that I lost my virginity to.

I tell him about the stress at work, about having to tutor to make ends meet, and how it’s been almost two years since I’ve really dated anyone. How I stretch myself thin sometimes to make other people happy, thinking that seeing them content will make me happy, too.

When he asks if it works out that way, whether I’m really happy when I go out of my way to serve other people, I’m not sure I have an answer.

We talk more about Ellie—not all the details, and I don’t push—but about the hold she had on him. How hard he tried to make it work, even down to babysitting a house plant that Ellie named Agatha. Which is a dumb name, if you ask me. I only admit that when Cam tells me that Ellie was the one who named it.

It seems like I’m getting to know a new side of Cam, and I wonder how much he shares with Maddox and his friends.

“Come here,” he says, after I tell him about how I’ve grown up worrying that I’ll never live up to Maddox and Josie, that the years between us made them idealized in my mind, and how far ahead of me they’ve always been with their lives. He pulls me close and brushes a kiss across my lips.

“Waahhh!” A shriek comes from the direction of the guest room, amplified by the baby monitor. We jump apart as the screech increases in volume.

“Shit. They’re up,” I say with a wince, standing and heading in that direction.

“Sounds like just one—” Cam breaks off as the second cry starts. I love his optimism that somehow one of them might sleep through the wail of the other.

I direct Cam as I lift James out of his crib and hand him to Cam, then pick up Leo. “Check his diaper, and then we’ll get them something to eat.”

“They just ate,” he mutters, putting James on the changing table. He remembers to keep everything covered this time, which is progress, but the sight of Cam with baby pee dripping down his cheek will live forever in my memory.

I change Leo, and we carry the twins to the kitchen and strap them into their high chairs.

“This is… a lot,” he says, putting the tray in front of Leo.

“Twins is definitely a lot.”

He looks over his shoulder at me. “I want kids. Don’t take that the wrong way. I think it’d be fun. But one at a time, preferably.”

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