“She’s married now, isn’t she?” he asked to be certain.
“She’s married,” Cami agreed.
“And how did Wayne handle these secrets?”
Her lips quirked bitterly. “He was very disappointed in both of us, he said. And he was, but I really didn’t give a damn. Shame wasn’t the reason I didn’t tell anyone, and shame has never been the reason I didn’t want anyone to know we were lovers.”
She rose slowly from her chair.
She felt as though she had aged ten years. As though exhaustion were so much a part of her now that there would never be any shaking it off.
“Cami.” He moved to touch her, to draw her into his arms, to give her what little comfort he could.
Her hand lifted imperatively, a demand that he stop as he watched a hard shudder shake her body.
“I don’t have friends for a reason,” she whispered. “I don’t have my parents for a reason.” She lifted her gaze to him and it didn’t take a frigging diary to see the pain that filled her eyes. “Because you never had to fuck me all night long, spank me, or make yourself so much a part of me that I couldn’t exist without you, or without that part that I’ll suddenly be living and breathing for.”
He heard the tears then. They didn’t fall. They didn’t fill her eyes. They were stuck in her soul, a wound that never healed, that never eased. And it broke his heart.
“Cami?” What could have happened? How could he have hurt her in such a way without ever knowing he had done so? Fear lanced through him then. Fear that somehow he had damaged her, taken from her something she hadn’t willingly given because his hunger had been so strong, so wild.
“You did the night we spent together.” He froze at the statement. “You left a part of yourself inside me that I never wanted to be free of. That I never wanted to live without.” Her voice was ragged now, torn, until he moved for her, desperate to hold her as she jerked back from him, leaving him staring at her in shock as her expression twisted in rage. “And I lost it anyway, Rafe. I lost the baby I already loved until it felt as though my soul had been seared and then ripped from my very spirit. But I was still living, I was still breathing, and I was alone. And I’ve stayed alone. That way, I didn’t lose again. I didn’t suffer again. And I sure as hell didn’t ever take that risk again until I decided to see if rumors were true and drive by the ranch.” Her breathing hitched as she held her hands to her stomach, the rage and anger in her voice ripping his soul apart. The image of complete aloneness that surrounded her, tearing into his soul. Cami should have never been alone. “Until I walked to your house during a blizzard, instead of the Phillipses’, which was closer. Until I realized I had to see you.” And there were the tears; they gleamed in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “I had to see you; I had to know if you were really home. If you were really here. And I swore I wouldn’t touch you.” Throwing her head back, she blinked desperately as she drew in ragged breaths. “I just had to see you,” she whispered hoarsely. “Now what else do you want to know, Rafe? Tell me!” she screamed then, the pain suddenly overflowing, penned up for five years, locked in a dark part of her soul where she had refused to let it escape, and now it was exploding like a volcano of rage and pain. “What the fuck else do you need to know?”
She turned to run.
Cami had never meant to let it go, to let it rise inside her until it spewed from her soul like an erupting volcano that couldn’t be stemmed.
When he had threatened to leave a part of himself that she would never be free of, he had triggered that inner helpless rage she had been able to control in the past.
“The hell you will!” Rafe jumped for her as she turned to run, to escape. “Damn you, you’re not going anywhere. You will not run from me again, Cambria. Not this time. Not now.”
He had seen the intent in her eyes, wild with the agony of a loss he had never known.
Catching her around the waist, he was only distantly aware of Logan and Crowe rushing back into the house from the front porch. Coming to a stop in the hall, they watched, surprised, not prepared as a desperate cry of agony tore from her and her arm swung with all the force in her small, delicate body.
Rafe caught her fist a bare inch from his face, staring back at her in surprise, in anger. She dared to try to strike him, even in her pain, in her rage against fate, when she hadn’t told him that together they had created a life? That she had lost that baby and suffered that loss alone and had never given him the chance to share it with her?
“You never told me,” he snarled down at her. “You were pregnant and you never told me? Why?” As he gripped her upper arms it was all he could do not to shake her, to demand, to rage along with her for the tiny unborn life he had never had the chance to know about.
The tears fell now. Staring back at him, her eyes were nearly black with the emotions, the secrets she had kept for far too long, and the tears he wondered if she had ever shed.
Jaymi had remarked several times that Cami held too much inside, even as a child. That Jaymi never knew what her sister was thinking or what Cami was doing until it was already done.
“Dad said I deserved it,” she whispered as those tears fell from her eyes, her lips trembling violently as she stared up at Rafe beseechingly. “Mom said it was for the best. That I wouldn’t want my child to suffer as you and your cousins did.” Her fingers clutched at his arms now with the same desperation that her fist had aimed for his face with. “It wasn’t for the best, Rafe. I wouldn’t have let my baby suffer. I would never, ever let anyone be cruel to my child.” Hoarse, rough with the tears that fell but the sobs she held back, her voice grated with pain and tore a hole in his soul.
“Cami. I would have been here.” How had it happened? He had used a condom. He remembered using a condom. Had it broken? Had he only thought he had rolled the latex over the violently hard flesh that was so eager to sink inside her?
She shook her head as though she had read his thoughts. “It was my fault.” She swallowed tightly. “You had drunk so much that night. After I fell asleep you woke me. You asked if it was okay. You asked if you could have me bare.” Her breathing hitched, those sobs fighting to be free. “I told you it was,” her voice lowered. “I told you it was, and I knew it could happen. I knew, and I wanted—”
She gave a hard shake of her head, lowering it and fighting to be free again.
“You wanted my baby?” he asked, baffled, as she struggled to escape. “No, Cami.” A small shake was acceptable, he told himself. Just enough to get her attention. Just enough to make her look up at him, those tears still falling, her lips trembling with such vulnerable pain it was destroying him. “You wanted my baby?”
Every woman he had ever been with in Corbin County had been damned vigilant about condoms and birth control. Not that he had been any less so. He had been determined no child of his would be raised away from his protection, and he knew no woman in that county would want to claim him as the father.
Except Cami.
“I wanted our baby,” she whispered. “I wanted a part of you to hold forever, because you were always leaving, Rafe. You couldn’t stay and I wanted to hold on to you forever because leaving before you awoke, so I wouldn’t have to watch you leave, nearly killed me.”
She couldn’t let the sobs free. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry, to release the rage and pain building inside her, because she feared the price.
If she shattered, she might not know how to put herself back together again.
“Let me go.” If he kept holding her, kept staring at her with that naked hunger, then she might not survive it. “Don’t tear at me anymore, Rafe, please. Please don’t ask any more from me. Please God, don’t ask me for more.”