Page 6 of Heart Throb

CAMILLA

He’s my godfather, not my knight in shining armor. That’s what I tell myself to make it more palatable. You can fall for the knight, you can’t fall for your godfather.

But that’s what I find myself doing. Somewhere between the rides home at night and the way he takes care of this stupid little trailer. In between watching him cook me late-night dinners and telling me about his day. In the middle of listening to his stories about my father from way back in their youth to the moments when he startles me by asking me about myself.

In the hours that I spend on the road putting one step in front of the other, I swear that Griffin is nothing more than a father figure to me. A real one, given who my actual father was. He takes care of me and our house. So much so that the trailer actually starts to feel like a home. I start looking forward to coming back at the end of my day. I even start dreading going to work. I don’t lock myself in my bedroom the second I arrive. Even when Griffin isn’t there, I spend time in the living room enjoying the new vibe that he’s created.

Somehow I always come back to our first conversation at the kitchen table. Whether I’m lying in bed late at night or halfway to work on an idle Wednesday morning, I hear his words ringing loudly in my ears. “I don’t want your body or your anything.” And for some reason, those words make the hair on my arms stand up.

When Tucker wanted me, it made my skin crawl. When I thought he was going to put his hands on me and take me without consent, I wanted to vomit. Especially because I’d never been touched, teased, or taken by a man before. But Griffin didn’t even want to try. He pushed me away with the vehemence of a man who didn’t even want to give it a shot.

For a few days, it gave me a complex. I examined myself in the mirror and questioned if there was something wrong with me. Guys like a blonde, right? A girl with a big rack? A tiny waist? I had all those things. Walking everywhere kept me in shape. I was attractive, right? Or was I just fooling myself?

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know why Griffin wasn’t interested. Forget falling for the knight, forget falling for my godfather. I wanted to know what made me so unappealing.

Griffin and I had gotten into an unspoken habit of him picking me up from the golf course. It started one evening a couple of weeks ago. He offered to pick me up and who was I to say no? Then he showed up the next night and the night after that. Now it was part of our nightly routines.

But tonight when he rolled up to the circle drive, I open his door and fling myself into his front seat with attitude and a question on my lips. “Why aren’t I attractive, Grif?”

His car shoots forward a few feet. I think his foot slips off the brake at my abruptness, catching him off guard. “Oh, um, well,” he stutters as he gets the car back under control. Griffin gives the car a full 360 view before pulling out. There is no one around. The club closed an hour ago and the only people remaining are staff members who are slowly trickling out. “Did someone say you weren’t attractive?” He finally asks as he makes his way down the circle drive.

He sounds genuinely confused. “Would it bother you if someone had?” I ask. “Would you be upset?”

Griffin drives in silence for a minute or two. The headlights from his car bounce off the trees of the winding road that leads to the highway. The music from the radio filters through the car speakers as I wait for him to respond. “Everybody has a preference, I guess, and I can’t fault someone for that. But you aren’t unattractive, Camilla. You’re a beautiful young woman. If you aren’t that man’s type, that’s fine, but you will find someone else. You’ll find someone who adores and appreciates you a hell of a lot more than that fool. I guarantee it.”

Now I’m all sorts of lost. Why doesn’t he want me then? Why doesn’t he want my body? Why doesn’t he want anything from me? “Why aren’t you dating anyone, Griffin?”

He flashes me a quick glance. I only catch sight of it because we pass beneath a streetlight. “I don’t know. Haven’t found the right one, I guess. I’m too picky.”

My eyes trace the stubble along his jawline before traveling lower. He wears an ill-fitting top to hide his thick figure. On more than one occasion since moving in, he’s joked about having a dad bod even though he has no kids. Griffin is strong and muscular, likely from his long days spent finishing drywall. He’s a good-looking man; there is no reason for him to be single. “Do you think I’m attractive?”

This time, he doesn’t look at me. His knuckles tighten on the steering wheel just a fraction. “I don’t know if I should be the one answering that,” Griffin mumbles.

That should be answer enough. I should be satiated with that response. But I’m not. The curse of being a teenager is that you need constant reassurance. “Okay, but I want you to. Do you think I’m attractive, Griffin?” We’re going to be at the house soon. I wonder if he’s holding out for the trailer. Once we pull into the driveway, he can jump out of the car and hightail it inside. “This is important,” I add, just to tug on his heartstrings.

“Camilla,” he groans.

I could let him off the hook. I could tell him that it doesn’t matter. But for some reason it does. After all that stuff he said about helping me follow my dreams and after all he’s done to make my shitty trailer feel like a home, this matters. It probably matters more than all of that, actually. “Griffin, just humor me. Just, for a minute, pretend that I’m someone else if that makes you feel better. Pretend I’m some other girl.”

Griffin hits the brakes unexpectedly, startling me. “Camilla, I don’t want to think of you like some other girl. This isn’t difficult because of who you are. Well, it kind of is. It’s difficult because you’re eighteen and I’m forty. It’s difficult because I held you in my arms when you were a baby. It’s difficult because I’m kind of like a father to you now that your own father is locked up in prison. It’s difficult because you are beautiful. You’re beautiful and intelligent and kind and all the things that a man like me would look for in a woman. But I can’t look at you like that for all the reasons I just mentioned. It’s wrong, Camilla. It’s crazy. It’s—”

“It’s perfectly okay,” I cut him off. “We aren’t related, Griffin. You aren’t my dad no matter how hard you try to fix up the trailer and cook me dinner. You were friends with my dad, sure. You watched me grow up. But that was it. You didn’t raise me.”

He shifts the car into park and looks at me with a pained expression on his face. “I wish I would have though, Camilla. I could have saved you from all that shit you went through. You didn’t deserve that.”

I reach across the center divide to stroke his cheek in the moonlight. I feel the prickle of his stubble against my hand and it brings a smile to my face. “Coulda, shoulda, woulda. We all wish we could do things differently, Grif. We all wish we could change the past. We all have regrets. But the only thing we can change is our future. You told me that. Our past does not define our future, remember?”

Griffin reaches up to cover my hand with his. His brow knits together and he sighs heavily. “Every time I look at you, I see my failures. I see a woman who shouldn’t have to be this brave all the time, who shouldn’t have to be working herself to the bone this early in life. I see a woman who I should have helped years ago, but I was too scared to speak up for because of her father. I see my fears, Camilla. I see everything I did wrong.”

“Stop.” I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to swallow down the idea that this man could have saved me. When I was a kid, not a day went by that I didn’t think those thoughts. Anyone could have saved me. The women at church, my teachers, concerned citizens, and yes, even Griffin. I was the girl that slipped beneath the cracks, until I wasn’t anymore.

“I don’t see it that way; I can’t. I don’t look at you and see someone who could have saved me. I look at you and see someone who made me stronger. I look at every person who could have spoken up for me and see someone who strengthened me. Because if I were to hate all of you for letting me stay in these conditions, I wouldn’t have time for anything else. I grew from my struggles and now you have to do the same. You need to take your guilt and shame over what you didn’t do and you need to grow from it. Go out and volunteer. Help someone else. Do something good for someone. Don’t look at me and feel bad, look at me and feel empowered to help someone who can’t help themselves.”

Griffin gently pulls my hand off of his cheek, but only so that he can entwine his fingers in mine. In the darkness, emboldened by the moonlight and my speech, he leans over to press his lips to mine. “You’re the strongest person I know,” he whispers against my cheek.

I used to think that it was exhausting being strong all the time, but eventually, muscles grow, and carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders becomes a little easier.

“I think you’re gorgeous.” Griffin leaves a trail of kisses along the line of my jaw. “You’re beautiful, exquisite, sexy.” The headlights shut off. The windows fog up.

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