Cam sits up and leans his back against the headboard. We have been lying on the bare mattress with no pillows, just the duvet over us.
“Why are you jealous? I love you. You must know that.” His tongue flicks out and over the split in his lip, and despite the sex we’ve just had, my insides are clenching again right now as I watch his tongue in action. “Cam, do you understand? Do you realise what you mean to me?”
He closes his eyes for a few seconds. “But he meant more.”
Blood rushes through my ears making a whooshing sound, and my heart rate accelerates. All caused by the frustration I feel at the inadequacy of my explanation. I’ve spent hours going over this in my own head and I still don’t have an answer, other than I have spent most of my life being in love with two men.
“His name’s Sean, Cam. Please don’t keep saying ‘him’. If you died, would you like me to refer to you like that?”
He shrugs. “Now you’re defending him.”
I raise my eyebrows as I look at him. “Now you’re being childish.”
He nods. “Yeah, I probably am, but I’m also being honest, and that’s just how I feel.” I don’t know how to answer. “You love him,” he states.
“Of course I love him. I’ll always love him, but that doesn’t take away from what I feel for you. If you died, would you want me to just stop loving you?” He raises his eyebrows.
“That’s twice you’ve mentioned me dying in the past five minutes, Kitten.”
Anger starts to bubble in my chest. “I’m just trying to explain how it is. I’ve never lied to you about my feelings for Sean, never, not even when we first met. Where’s all this coming from?”
He rakes his hand through his hair, shrugs, then sighs, “I don’t know, Kitten. Like I said, I’m a prick.”
I straddle his lap and wrap my arms around his neck. “Well, I love you, regardless.” He pulls his knees up and I lean back on them.
“Yeah, but as you clearly demonstrated earlier, you are a complete and utter raving lunatic. What the fuck were you trying to do to the sheets?” God, did I really do all of that? I cover my burning cheeks with the palms of my hands. “You’ve got some serious issues, Kitten. You do realise that, don’t you?” I nod my head.
“I’m so sorry for attacking you. That was wrong. I just… I’m a passionate person. What can I say?” I talk through my hands, which are still covering my face.
Cam peels them away and looks at me. “These babies of ours…” Heat instantly spreads from my heart to every fibre, every atom and molecule I’m made up from as he says those words. “They’re gonna be one crazy bunch of little fuckers if they take after us.” He kisses me gently on the mouth as a tear plops from my lashes onto my cheek.
“But we’ll love the fuck outa them, regardless,” I say to him quietly.
He shakes his head slightly. “Yes, we will,” he says.
“So much,” I add, “so fucking much.” I’m adding the F word just to get a reaction.
“Kitten, when the babies arrive, I hope you’ll rein in that mouth of yours and I’m gonna tell Ash that she needs to watch her mouth while she’s carrying them too.”
I laugh. “Yeah, good luck with that.” We look at each other again. I know that we’re probably both thinking the same thing, but he won’t say it in case he upsets me.
“What if it doesn’t work? What if we end up with no babies?” He wraps his arms around me tighter.
“Then we’ll just grow old, loving the fuck out of each other,” he says into my hair.
“You’re already old,” I tell him.
He has me flat on my back, in the middle of the bed in an instant. He looks up at me with my nipple in his mouth and bites down on it just a little too hard.
“Ow,” I protest. He releases it and kisses through my cleavage, up my throat to my mouth and looks me in the eye.
“This has been one totally fucked-up day.”
I nod and shrug. “We live a bit of a crazy, fucked-up life, but as long as I have you in it, I can deal.” He kisses my nose. “Go and pick the killer ninja pillows up from the floor, turn off the one lamp we still have working, and let’s get some sleep. I’m exhausted.” I smile and do as he says.
Curling into him once we’re settled in our bed, Cam’s snoring within seconds, the jet lag getting the better of him. I kiss his belly and close my eyes, drifting off to sleep while thinking about what a random night that was and how we both seem to have admitted to our biggest fears. I’m scared that one day he’ll leave me because of how I treated him in the past. He’s jealous of Sean and we’re both worried about the pregnancy tests happening on Monday.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I hate early mornings. I need at least two coffees inside me before I can be civil, hold any kind of conversation or retain any information.
I’ve only had time for one coffee so far this morning so Cam knows better than to try and say too much to me, plus he knows how nervous I am.
We shower and get ready, moving around each other and sharing the same space the way that only a couple who have been together a while can. Every now and then, Cam kisses or touches me as he passes me by, all without saying a word. Every touch, every brush of his lips, ignites, calms and reassures me, all at once.
As I stand and put my mascara on, I think about how far we’ve come in such a short time. How lucky I am to have been given this second chance. Nothing about us is conventional. Cameron is the man that I adulterously fucked, but refused to leave my now dead husband for. Cam has just had a baby with another woman, and the pair of us will find out today if we’ve managed to create a pregnancy to start our own family using IVF and my two best friends as surrogates. Added to this mix, we seem to have the eyes of the world on us, waiting, begging almost, for us to fuck up so they make a story out of it.
We’ve spent the entire weekend hidden away at the Docklands apartment. The Sunday papers did their worst with the story of Cam and his airport blow job. Ben had bought all the papers carrying the story and had brought them up to us yesterday. The woman involved had had her five minutes of fame and had probably made herself a few quid, but I was pretty sure now that people had realised this was old news and was something that had happened before Cam and I were together, people would just lose interest.
She was quite attractive, in a harsh kind of way, pale skin, black hair. Cam had said all he could remember was she looked like Morticia Adams and her red lipstick had been smeared all over her face when he left her on her knees in the toilet. Regardless, I’d had to have a look at her myself. I’m not sure if it’s morbid curiosity or just part of being a female; we tend to like torturing ourselves over this kind of thing. Or was that just me?
The papers had run with the story now as I was in the news because of Sean’s charity event. They had no idea Cam was actually just leaving Sydney as this story broke and the implications of the timing.
I had spoken to my family over the weekend and assured them I was okay and told my brothers that they needed to stay out of it. The whole thing took place before Cam and I were together; therefore, it didn’t involve them. I knew they’d all have something to say about it, regardless.
I make my way downstairs and make Cam and I another coffee using our travel mugs. We need to get going to Jimmie’s house. Today is the day of the ‘piss on the stick’ party, as Lennon had so eloquently put it. The kids are being dropped at school and playgroup, and then we are all meeting at Jim and Lennon’s house so we can all hear the news together. Ash and Jimmie injected themselves with drugs so their periods and most fertile times were synchronised and they could have the embryos implanted at the same time, and today we will find out if either of them are pregnant.
Sick, apprehensive, nervous, anxious, none of these words actually come anywhere near to describing how I am feeling right now.