Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
And your scars.
“Cam, what’d you say?” Jo’s eyebrows snapped together. Shock pulled her mouth open. “I thought you said you were—”
“Molested.” Cam almost had to stick his finger down his throat to get the word to come back up, a shameful regurgitation.
“But…when? I don’t…I don’t understand.”
“Before I met you.”
“Before you met me? But I…I would have known.”
“Not if I didn’t tell you.”
“What happened?”
“I can’t go through everything tonight, Jo.”
Cam’s heart pummeled his chest like a punching bag. The night had cooled some, but sweat gathered on the back of his neck, on his forehead, on his scalp, dampening his hair. It was like waking up from one of his nightmares, but with Jo standing by the bed, a witness to his pathetic fear.
“No, you don’t have to tell me everything, but who did it?”
“A guy in my old neighborhood. My mom’s pimp.”
“Did she know? Your mom, did she find out?”
Cam remembered that day when Mama had finally come home to find him on the kitchen floor, pants still around his ankles, blood on his thighs. Mac only had to smack her around a little and give her that rock to make her turn a blind eye. That day and the days that followed.
“Yeah, she knew.”
“But how could she let it happen? Did she report it? Did anyone intervene? How long did this go on?”
Jo’s questions whizzed past his head like a flurry of bullets.
“I can’t do this.”
Cam stood up, grabbing his jar of fireflies and using it to guide him back up the riverbank. He heard Jo following with swift steps, but he deliberately used his longer stride to pull ahead. When he reached the patio, he unscrewed the mason jar lid and watched the fireflies go free, dispersing splotches of brightness in the dense night. He envied their freedom. He envied their light.
When he reached the patio door, the motion sensor light triggered, illuminating Jo a few feet away, staring at her jar. She met his eyes, and there was no disgust. No pity. Just questions and sadness painfully interlocked like a barbed wire fence.
Cam grabbed the bowl of neglected peaches and headed back into the house, covering the fruit and putting them in the refrigerator. He pulled their dinner dishes off the counter and started rinsing them. Anything to occupy him, to block out the quiet woman waiting at his back.
Slim arms wrapped around his chest from behind, stilling his motions. Jo laid her head against his shoulder. Her scent, the stroke of her fingers across his abs under his T-shirt, the sweet kisses she feathered across the back of his neck—all coaxed each wound-tight muscle to go lax. He covered her hands with his, dropped his head forward, and sank back into her softness.
“Talk to me,” she whispered, stroking his hand with her thumbs.
“I can’t.” I don’t want to.
When he’d escaped that hell, he had promised himself he’d never be that weak, helpless prey again. That victim. Having Jo in the same room as those memories made him feel like a fraction of himself. Made him feel even less worthy of her than he usually did.
Jo left his back and squeezed into the small space between his body and the kitchen sink. She hooked her elbows under his arms and pressed their chests together, holding his eyes captive.
“Cam, we don’t have a shot if you won’t talk to me, and I want this.”
She laid her palm against his chest, a defibrillator jolting his heart, stuttering its rhythm. Did she know she did that to him with her touch? With her smile? Walking into a room? Probably not, and he wasn’t sure he should tell her. If Jo ever knew how much she really meant to him, she’d never let him get away. And one day he might need to get away, for her sake.
“I want this so badly.” She pressed her lips against her teeth, like there was more she could say. “I have for a long time, and I had given up all hope of it ever happening. If you won’t open up, we don’t stand a chance. So I repeat, do you want this?”
The warm, damp air by the river had caused a chaos of curls and waves around Jo’s pretty face and down past her shoulders. Despite the rest he’d forced on her over the last two days, weariness still painted shadows under her eyes. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, and Cam was grateful. He loved seeing her naked skin. Taut and golden and healthy and sleek. Her bare lips were pouty and the exact hue of pink in the sunrise he painted this morning. Did he want this? With her? More than anything. In this moment and before he had even admitted it to himself, more than anything.
So what was he going to do about it?