“I’m not going back to Texas,” she says casually and goes to slip on a pair of jeans.
Eggshells. They’re everydamnwhere.
I reach up and rub my palm over the back of my head.
“That’s fine,” I say. “I’ll go back by myself and pack and if you want to, while I’m gone you can go out with Natalie and look at apartments for us. Your pick. Whatever you want.” I smile carefully across the room at her. I want her to be happy, and I’ll do anything I can to make that happen.
Her face lights up, and I think I’m genuinely tricked by it. Either that or she’s genuinely smiling. At this point, I can’t tell much anymore.
She walks over to me and backs me up toward the foot of her bed, pressing her palms against my chest. Then she pushes me down against it. I look up at her. Normally I would be on her by now, but it feels wrong. I know she wants it. At least, I think she does… but I’m scared to touch her and have been since the miscarriage.
She sits on me, straddling my waist, and despite being afraid to touch her it’s instinct to press myself against her. She drapes her hands over my shoulders and gazes down into my eyes. I bite down on the inside of my mouth and shut my eyes when she leans in to kiss me. I kiss her back, tasting the sweetness of her lips and taking her breath deep into my lungs. But then I pull away and hold her by the waist to keep her from trying to force herself on me.
“Babe, I don’t think…”
She looks stunned, cocking her head to one side.
“You don’t think what?”
I’m not sure how to word this, but I just say the first version that comes to mind.
“It’s only been two weeks. Aren’t you still—”
“—bleeding?” she asks. “No. Sore? No. I told you, I’m fine.”
She’s anything but fine. But I have a feeling that if I try to convince her, it’ll backfire on me somehow.
Damn… maybe I do need to brave the wild and talk to Natalie, after all.
Camryn slides off my lap, but I stand up with her and wrap my arms around her back, pulling her into my bare chest. I press the side of my face against the top of her wet hair.
“You’re right,” she says, pulling away to see my eyes. “I should, ummm… get back on my birth control pills. We’d be stupid to risk this again.”
She walks away from me.
That’s not exactly what I was getting at. Sure, it’s probably for the better that we were more careful this time around because of what she just went through. But to be completely honest, I would lay her down right now with the sole intention of getting her pregnant again if that was what she wanted. If she asked me to. I don’t regret the first time at all and would do it all over again. But it would need to be what she wants, and I’m afraid if I was ever the one to bring it up that she might take it as my suggestion, that she might feel guilty about losing my Lily, and she’ll want to get pregnant again because she thinks it’s what I need to feel better.
Camryn takes the robe off and tosses it on the end of the bed and then starts to get dressed.
“If that’s what you want to do,” I say about the birth control pills, “then I’m with you on that.”
“Is that what you want?” she asks, pausing to look me in the eyes.
Feels like a trick question. Be careful, Andrew.
I nod slowly. “I want whatever you want. And right now I think for your sake, it’s the best thing to do.”
There’s absolutely no readable emotion in her eyes, and it’s making me nervous.
Finally she nods, too, and her gaze falls away from mine. She slips on her jeans and then rummages through her dresser drawer for a pair of socks.
“I’ll go to my doctor today if they can squeeze me in.”
“All right,” I say.
And as if we didn’t just have a somewhat depressing, serious conversation, Camryn comes over and smiles at me just before pecking me on the lips.
“And then you can be yourself again,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh come on,” she says, “you’ve not tried to have sex with me once since this happened.” She grins and then her eyes scan my naked chest slowly. “I have to say, I miss my sex-crazed Andrew Parrish. For the past three days, I’ve been taking care of myself a lot.” She leans in toward my lips and then moves toward my ear, tugging my earlobe carefully with her teeth, and whispers, “I did it in the shower just minutes ago. You should’ve been there.”
Shivers run down my back and all the way into my feet. Shit, why didn’t she just ask me to get her off? I’d happily do it for her. Surely she knows that by now.
I grab her face and kiss her hard while she grabs a handful of my cock. The next thing I know, I’m lying across her bed and she’s crawling on top of me. Her fingers linger around the elastic of my boxers while she looks across my body with devilishly hooded eyes.
Oh God, if she’s about to put me in her mouth…
I didn’t even realize my eyes had shut until I feel her fingers wedge between my boxers and my skin. Then she starts to slip them off, and all I see is the back of my eyelids.
My conscience rears its ugly head and I stop her, lifting halfway from the bed, my upper body held up by my elbows. “Baby, not right now.”
She pouts. She actually pouts, and it’s the perfect equivalent of puppy-dog eyes, and I sort of want to give in to her because it absolutely melts me.
“I want you to. Trust me… I really want you to.” I laugh a little with those words. “But let’s wait. Your mom will be back anytime, and I—”