Duke
Fuck. She’s sold the house. The anxiety I’d managed to get a lid on these past six weeks hammers to life in my chest as I turn up the driveway, only to be greeted with the grill of a huge fucking truck. Jesus.
I slam the HQ into reverse and backtrack to the road to let the guys out.
Just in time, I hope.
The second the truck clears the gateposts, I curve over the grass to get in behind the vehicle and pull up Cam’s drive. My fingers beat to an imaginary rhythm on the steering wheel as I take the final bend around the trees and see the house come into view.
With her standing outside.
Thank fuck. Small miracles do happen.
Screw parking the car properly. Screw even turning the damn thing off. I shove the door open at the same time as I wrench the handbrake on, and step out to face the music.
Clara gives me a quick wave as she steps backward, and turns for her car. Her daughter, on the other hand … I widen my stance to brace for Cam as she literally leaps the final half a metre between us.
“I heard you,” she cries, burying her face in my neck as she wraps her arms and legs around me. “I heard your echo every day, Duke.”
“You found it.” Fuck that makes me happy. So fucking happy.
Cam pulls back, her hands on my face as I hold her to me. “Why are you here?” Her eyes search mine as her mum’s car pulls away behind us.
“I couldn’t wait any longer. It’s been almost two months.”
“I know.” Her forehead touches mine as she closes her eyes. “I couldn’t call.” She pauses, swallowing hard. “I wanted to, but hell …” Cam leans her head back, unshed tears caught in her lashes as she looks to the sky. “I couldn’t bear to hear your voice again if you would have said that you didn’t want me.”
“Fuck, Cam.” I drop her to the ground so she can stand. “I do want you. But you had to be sure. I had to be sure.”
She simply smiles, her hand tracing the side of my neck as she watches it with a dreamy look in her eye. If I can give her reason to look that way day in, day out, then my future is in her hands. Where she goes, I’ll follow.
“I missed you so much,” she whispers. “It was hard at the start.”
“Babe.” I kiss the woman to bring her back to the present, soft and slow. “Don’t take yourself back there. Let’s just look forward, okay?”
“No.” She frowns. “We need to get it all out there so we both understand.”
This is where we differ. As much as I recognise that the past has shaped who I am now, I’ve realised that the future is entirely dependent on my attitude, whereas Cam places so much stock in what’s gone by, as though the failures of her past dictate the choices of her future. It doesn’t have to be like that.
“I didn’t handle things well, Duke.” She clings to the front of my shirt, her brow set in a hard line. “I got drunk; I did stupid shit.” She laughs, bitter and short. “A few nights after you left, Susie and Bevan took me to the pub to try and loosen me up. They left me there with the little brother of a girl I went to school with.”
“Cam …” If this is going where I think it is …
“I have to tell you, Duke.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Hear me out, please.”
This woman realises I know how to kill without remorse, right?
“He brought me home.”
I pry her hands off me, taking a step back. “Don’t.”
“Helped me get to bed.”
“Stop it, Cam!” I pace back to the HQ; the engine is still running. I could go. Just get in and go before she says it.
“Listen to me, Duke!” she counters. “He put me to bed, offered to stay, and you know what I said?”
I don’t want to hear it. I can’t. “If you’ve got any ounce of respect left for me,” I warn her, “you won’t tell me.”
“I said he should go because I’m in love with someone else.”
What?
“Did you hear me, Duke?” she says, her footsteps approaching. “I said I love you. I’ve known since then that there’s no getting over you, just learning how to live without you.”
She gasps as I spin and grab a hold of her sweater to pull her to me. “Tell me again. Tell me to my face.”
Cam twitches a smile, inching closer. “I love you, Duke.”
“Fuck, Cam. I’d be stupid not to tell you that I love you, too.” Her eyes fill with unshed tears as I take her face in my hands. “I knew that the second I walked back up your driveway in the dark, no light, to write you that damn note.”
“No torch at all?” she asks.
“No torch.” I trace her cheekbones with my thumbs, memorising everything about her in this moment. “I was so focused on you, on saying the right thing, that I didn’t care. Didn’t think twice about it.”
She laces her hands behind my head and pulls me to her, but it doesn’t take much; I was thinking the same thing. Her kiss has more vigour this time, more urgency, as she runs her tongue across mine. Her taste, her smell, her touch—they all overload my senses as I bring the moment I’ve thought about to life in vivid colour.
We’ve made it through the storm. We’ve followed the echoes and found each other in the midst of all that chaos.
She’s my oasis amongst the rage and anger. My safe place.
“Tell me,” I say, pulling away. “Where are you going?”
“Huh?” Her hands slip to my chest.
“The house—you sold it.”
“We sold it.” I see the regret in her gaze, and yet what makes me proud is the determination that also shines through in her words. “I bought a place a half hour from here. Smaller, but everything I need.” She smiles, her gaze lifting to meet mine again. “And you know what? I’m actually looking forward to doing the whole redecorating thing again.”
“Let me guess,” I tease. “White and grey?”
She rolls her eyes with a smile. “What else?”
I go to kiss her again, yet she pushes out of my arms, her eyes wide.
“You have to come see this. The moving guys left it until tomorrow, saying they didn’t want the heavy furniture to break it.” She beckons toward the house. “Come.”
Of course I go. I’d follow this woman into war unarmed.
Cam darts up the steps and into the house, dashing left into the living room. She points to the same wall the door is on, meaning I have to swing around to see what she gestures to.
For the first time in my life, I almost cry.
Framed in ornate white wood is a large print photograph. The picture itself is monochrome, yet it’s the depth of the black that strikes me. A white sailboat adrift on a stormy black sea.
“Do you like it?” Cam asks quietly.
I can see that she looks at me in my periphery, yet I can’t tear my eyes from the silver nameplate mounted on the mat board that edges the picture.
“The Duke and Duchess”
In the boat are two tiny figures, clinging to each other in the middle of the vessel, a royal insignia on the sail.
“Where did you find it?” I move closer, fearful that if I look away now I’m going to miss another important detail.
“I went down a bit of a rabbit hole while I was looking up design ideas for the new place, and somehow I ended up on this website for a guy who sells bespoke pieces.” She snorts a little laugh. “It cost almost as much to freight it as it did to buy it.”
“It’s priceless.” Because it’s us.
She edges closer to slip her hand in mine. “You asked me if I believed in fate, Duke. I think this answers that—don’t you?” Cam lifts her free hand to gesture to the image.
Fuck, it’s more than fate. It was a series of events that individually held no meaning, but that together, meant everything. It was the game board of our lives laid out for us to take. We were two pieces chasing each other along the path, yet never resting in the same square until six weeks ago when I broke down. All we had to do was the roll the dice enough times to make it to the end to be together.
“Where are we going to hang it?”
“We?” Her brow twitches as she looks up at me.
All or nothing; dive into the black, Duke. “Everything important that I own is in that car, Cam. I came here with the intention to stay.” My heart kicks up pace. “Hopefully with you.”
“You came back to live with me?” The panic is clear in her eyes, the worry that she’s misunderstood what I’ve said.
“If you’ll have me.”
“Duke ...” She tips her head to the side, giving me a “what do you think?” stare.
“So what now?” I slip my hands onto her waist, loving how she feels back in my hold. How the hell did I have the strength to walk away from this? How crazy was I?
“Now,” Cam says, pushing to her toes to place a kiss to my lips. “We go to bed and spend one last night here for old times’ sake.”
“Old times,” I chuckle. “It was only a couple of months ago, Cam.”
She smirks, tugging on my hand to lead me to her room. “It may as well have been a lifetime without you, Duke.”