Slashed (Extreme Risk 3)

I wanted to take this slow, wanted to give her whatever she needs from me. But as I stand here staring at her, noting how fragile and broken and terrified she looks, I can’t help but pull her into my arms. Can’t help but bury my face in the juncture between her neck and shoulder. Can’t help but tremble myself as I pull her closer and closer and closer.

“I’m sorry,” she says as her hands clutch at my back. “I’m so sorry I walked out on you, so sorry I sent you away, so sorry you had to hear about the baby from Z.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, rubbing my hands up and down her back. Everything’s okay as long as I can hold her and protect her and love her.

“It’s not okay. It’s really not okay. I should have at least given you some warning—”

“Some warning would have been nice,” I tell her, pulling back so I can look into her beautiful green eyes. “Considering Z told me while we were both balanced on a roof. I nearly fell off.”

“Oh my God!” she squawks, pulling me closer. “I swear to God, once of these days I’m going to kill him.”

“Don’t do that. We might need him someday.”

“For what?”

“He’s the one who told me to stop being a pussy and get my ass over here and tell you how I feel.”

She freezes against me then and her eyes, when she looks up at me are so wide, so vulnerable, so hopeful, that she almost breaks my heart. How can this day be real, I can’t help wondering. Cam looking at me like that, holding me the way she is, and a 1620? It doesn’t seem fucking possible. For the first time since I woke up in my bed this morning, miserable and alone, I can’t help wondering if maybe I’m still dreaming.

I think about pinching myself, just to be sure, but then she’s asking, “How do you feel about me?” in a scared little voice and suddenly I can’t think about anything but making her understand.

“How can you not know?” I demand. “Everybody knows. Z, Ash, even Tansy and Ophelia. They’ve known forever.”

“Known what?” Her hands tighten on my back until her nails are digging into my skin. It’s just the pinch I need to prove to me that this is real. That it’s happening.

“That I’m crazy about you. That I am absolutely, completely, head over heels in love with you and I have been for years.” I take a chance, press soft kisses over her forehead and down her cheek. When she doesn’t push me away, I get a little bolder, kissing her jaw, the corner of her mouth, the spot on her chin right below her lips. “I know I’ve been an ass. I know I haven’t trusted you. I know I’ve been jealous and stupid and awful and I’m sorry.

“And I’m sorry, so sorry, that this is happening to you—that I didn’t take care of you when you trusted me to. I want you to know that whatever you decide, I’m here for you.”

The words are tumbling over themselves now, shooting through my brain and falling out of my mouth before I can censor them. Before I can so much as try to make myself look like anything but a lovesick moron who would do anything, be anything, for her.

“I know being pregnant messes up your career,” I go on. “I know you’ve worked so hard for this season and I’ve just taken it all away from you. And if you decide you want to have an abortion”—I stumble over the word, hate the feel of it in my mouth, hate the sound of it hanging in the air around us even more—“if you want to have an abortion, I’ll be here for that, too. Whatever you want, whatever you need. I’m here. If you want me.”

“If I want you? If? There’s nothing on this planet I want more than you, Luc. I love you. I think I’ve loved you for a long, long time, even when I was too blind to understand that that was what I felt. You’ve always been my favorite, always been the person I wanted to tell my secrets to. Always been the person I thought of first when I woke up and last when I went to bed. And now you’re the father of my baby. I get that it’s a lot. That this isn’t what you saw for yourself right now. And if you don’t want the responsibility of being a father already, I get it.”

“Have you not been listening to anything I just said? I love you, Cam Bradley, and if you let me, I’ll be here for you no matter what you decide.”

“I know. I believe you. But you mentioned me getting an abortion and I’ve decided I’m not going to do that. Yeah, it’s going to screw things up for my career for a while, but it’s just a year. And even if it was longer, which I don’t think it will be, it’s just a career. We’re talking about a baby, our baby. And I want to have it.”

Pure, unadulterated joy explodes through me at her words. I told her that I would be behind her if she had an abortion, and I would have been. I would have done everything I could to make it easy for her even if it wasn’t what I wanted. But now, knowing that she feels the same way that I do? That she wants our baby as much as I do?

I don’t even have words to describe how I feel.

Except I have to find them, don’t I, because she’s looking confused and uncertain and like she doesn’t know if I still want her if she comes with a baby. Like it would even be possible for me to not want her.

I need her like I need water, like I need air, like I need the feel of the snow crunching beneath my board.

“I want the baby,” I tell her as I pepper her face with kisses. “I want you and the baby and the life we’re going to build together. I want it more than I can even begin to tell you. You’re everything to me, Cam. You always have been. You—”

This time, she’s the one who kisses me and it’s slow and sweet and hot, so hot, that it’s all I can do not to take her in the middle of Z’s front porch.

She must feel the same way because she hooks her fingers in my belt loops and pulls m

e inside, making sure the door slams shut behind us.

“I have so much to tell you,” she says as she presses another long, lingering kiss against my mouth. I capture her tongue, suck it deep into my own mouth.

“I have a lot to tell you too,” I manage to gasp out as I back her across the foyer and up the stairs. “Later.”