Page 52 of Savage Lover

I try to sit up. Camille pushes me back down, saying, “Relax.”

I’m lying on some kind of shitty thin mattress, right on the floor with no bed frame beneath it. The tiny room smells damp. But it also smells like soap and gasoline—like Camille herself. I see a stack of paperbacks in the corner, and a couple of potted plants. Those, at least, are thriving.

This is her room. The most pathetic little room I’ve ever seen.

Camille is kneeling next to the bed. She has a bowl of warm water in front of her, rusty with my blood. She wrings out the cloth, darkening the water even more.

“Did that Samoan hit me?” I say.

“His name is Sione,” Camille informs me.

“Fucking hell, I’ve never taken a punch like that.”

“I’m surprised you have any teeth left in your head,” she says.

“Eh, strike that. I think Dante hits that hard. When he’s really mad.”

“You seem to bring that out in people,” Camille says.

I could be wrong, but I think there’s a hint of a smile on her face. She’s probably enjoying this. Seeing me get my just desserts for once.

“How’d you get me back here?” I ask her curiously.

“I dragged you,” Camille scowls. “And you’re not light, by the way.”

“Lighter than a transmission,” I say, grinning.

“Not by much,” she replies.

We’re silent for a minute. The quiet is broken by the patter of raindrops on the glass roof. I look up, watching each of the raindrops burst against the glass. Soon there’s too many to count. The patter turns into a steady drumming sound, that ebbs and flows in a soothing way.

“I love summer rain,” Camille says.

“You must like this room.”

“I do,” she says with a fierce kind of pride.

I look around the room again. It’s dingy and tiny. But I can see why she would like it—it’s a tiny capsule of complete privacy. A space that belongs only to her. Half outside, half inside. In the rain, and yet sheltered.

“Why do you always do that?” Camille asks me.

“What?” I say.

“Why are you so violent?”

I can feel myself flushing. The heat makes my face throb all over again, especially in the places I was hit. My ribs are groaning. Sione might have broken a few.

I want to say something cruel, to punish her. She has no right to judge me. To ask questions.

But for once, I keep my temper. Camille pulled me out of that party. She dragged me all the way back here and tried to clean me up. She did that—not Mason or Bella or anybody else. She didn’t have to help me. But she did it anyway.

I look at Camille. Really look at her, in the dim, watery light. Her skin glows like it’s illuminated from the inside. The humidity has turned her hair into a wild halo of curls, all around her head. Her dark eyes look huge and tragically sad. I see the pain in them.

I know the reasons she should be miserable—she’s poor, her mother abandoned her, her father can’t keep this shop together, and she’s trying to raise her delinquent brother all on her own.

But all that never seemed to bother her before. Why is she finally falling apart?

“What happened today?” I ask her. “Why are you so sad?”

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