Chapter Thirty-Eight
I blink, but she doesn’t disappear. Her tanned thighs stay at eye level. Her chest heaves from her sprint. Chuck doesn’t hesitate to dance around her legs, wagging his tail and lifting his paws in his barely contained desire to jump on her.
She bends down to scratch between his ears. “Hey, boy. I’ve missed you.”
I want to respond for him. To tell her that he missed her, too. That he barely knew her, but was convinced it was her whenever we ran across any woman of her general build. That he’d fallen for her as hard as I had. But I’m in shock that she’s here, in the city, when I’d spent the last weeks wondering if she’d used my note for fire starter. Wondering if Cam had passed it along at all. I stand and look over her shoulder. “Is Cam here?”
She bites her cheek. “No.”
“Did he—” I run my hand over my freshly trimmed hair. “Did he give you my note?”
Amy takes a small step forward. “He did. And you meant it, right? You do actually love me? Still?”
My grip on Chuck’s leash tightens. “So fucking much.”
She pulls a paper from her back pocket. “I need you to read this.” She holds it out with a shaking hand. “I can’t say it. It hurts too much. I won’t make it through. But I need you to know who I really am. To know why my mom doesn’t cry over me anymore. Why I’m terrified that I love you.”
Our fingers brush when I take the paper. She kneels and presses her face into Chuck’s neck as I unfold the note.
“I’ll understand if you change your mind.” Her words are muffled in thick fur. “About me.”
Her writing is clear and precise, the words committed to paper with certainty, even though she’s pretty much trying to climb into Chuck to hide from them.
My mom told me to leave Dan after the first veto. Told me that he didn’t deserve me if he was more concerned about what I looked like in a dress, than how I felt in it. I didn’t listen. I was horrible to my mom. Said things I regret. Hurt her so deeply that she moved away from me. We barely talk.
I sided with Dan because I loved him and it cost me my friends. My family. Myself.
So I don’t trust love. It makes me weak. Stupid. And it hurts.
She presses her cheek against Chuck’s neck, a guilt-racked woman who’s shown me the roughest parts of herself even though she thinks they would make me stop loving her. This risk-taker—this woman who gave up the life she’d established on a whim, leaping with the hope she could be happier. She’s doubled over and hugging my dog, opening herself to me even when it hurts. She digs her hands deeper into Chuck’s fur, but I weave my fingers through hers and pull her up from where she’s landed. “Come here.” I lead her behind a minivan. “This is how you know about guilt, isn’t it? The night we had fondue, you told me that nothing gets rid of guilt.”
Amy’s eyes stay on her toes, but she nods.
“I’m sorry about your mom, and your friends.” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “But I’m not Dan.”
“I know.”
“And you’re not the same person you were when you were with him.”
She shakes her head.
“So, thank you for telling me. Because this is part of you. It makes you who you are. But you can trust me, Amy. Even if you don’t trust love. And I do love you. All of you. Now, and two days from now, and whenever after, so I’ll give you whatever space, or reassurance, or comfort, or—”
But I don’t get to finish. Amy launches herself at me, pushing me against the minivan with such force that the alarm beeps a warning. Her hands squeeze my shoulders. “You love me even though I hurt you? Even though I pushed you away? Made you leave?”
I cup her hips in my hands. “I might actually love you more for it, even though I hate waking up without you, and my back is aching from living on a crappy couch. Because making me leave was what you needed. You need to know who Camp Director Amy is without me looking over your shoulder, or casting a shadow over your choices.”
She steps as close as she can, feeding her hands around my neck. My fingers dig into her hips. “You said you’d give me as much time as I needed,” she says.
I swallow hard and stop fighting my fingers. They slide over her ass, gripping her flesh and holding her to me. “I did.”
She drags the tip of her finger down my neck and nuzzles against my jaw. “So come back with me. Today.”
My breathing stalls. “Are you serious?”
“I have two lifeguards down for the count and you, who can do their job, and whose mouth-to-mouth was supposed to get me through a celibate summer, but instead makes me want all the sex for as long as you’ll give it to me. Hell yes, I’m serious, Harding.”
Her chest presses against mine. Our hearts beat a familiar rhythm. “So you want me to fill in at camp? For the session?”
“No.” The minivan’s alarm beeps and she pulls me away.
I trail after her, mind spinning. “What are you saying?” She keeps walking, pulling me along behind her. I plant my feet and tug her back to me in the middle of the parking lot. “Please, Amy. You need to lay this out for me.”
“I have this idea,” she says, “for the campers who are too old to camp, but too young to be counselors. The zombie kids. I mean, there are always things to do around camp, right? Things I haven’t had a chance to get to since camps started. So what if we ran a volunteer program? Sessions where aged-out campers could come up and do minor repairs, or paint, or whatever else you think needs to be done.”
“That sounds great. But, Amy. You’re killing me. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I need you today. And tomorrow. And every day until there aren’t any more.”
I hook an arm around her back and press my lips to hers. Our mouths work together, creating sparks that move through every part of me, warming me from the inside. I run my tongue along the seam of her lips and she opens for me, whimpering against my flesh when I taste inside her. Catcalls work their way through the haze that only she and I can make, and we pull apart, breath ragged from the inferno of us together. I lean my forehead on hers and draw my thumb along her jaw.
“Is that a yes?” she says. “You’ll come back with me? Develop this new program? Run that while I run camp?”
“If you’re sure,” I say. “If you’re sure you don’t need more time.”
“I’ve had my time.” Her fingers slide up the back of my neck and into my hair. “Now I need you.”