Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

40. That’s a lot of pigs

40

THAT’S A LOT OF PIGS

HAZEL

Our public-acknowledgment tour accidentally accelerated the following morning. After an early awakening, when we discovered Bertha curled up next to Peaches in her makeshift pen, Cam took the first shower. Grumbling about “piss-poor water pressure” and “fucking Houdini raccoons,” he went downstairs to make breakfast.

I took my time pulling on Cam’s discarded T-shirt and smushing my unruly bedhead into a bun. I was carrying Peaches down the stairs when I heard a loud shriek followed by a thud and a “Fuck!”

I jogged into the dining room in time to see Zoey peeking through her hands.

“Who cooks eggs naked ?” she yelled.

“Who doesn’t fucking knock?” Cam demanded. He was holding a tea towel over his impressive array of genitalia and trying to scrape eggs back into the pan he’d dropped.

“Hi, Zoey,” I said.

She spun around and looked at me wide-eyed. “I knew you were fooling around with him. And I was fully willing to forgive you for not telling me. But I didn’t know you were ‘cook breakfast naked’ fooling around with him! And why are you holding a farm animal like a baby?”

“What’s with the screaming?” Gage asked, wandering into the room with Levi on his heels. “Oh, fuck.”

“I’ll take mine over easy,” Levi said with a smirk at Cam and his tea towel.

“So you’re like dating dating,” Zoey said over our lakefront chicken salads.

After all the screaming and naked breakfast jokes, Zoey and I had spent the morning going door-to-door at local businesses, explaining Summer Fest and asking for help in temporarily turning the town into an aggressive tourist trap. Everyone seemed surprisingly invested in beating Dominion at its own game for once, and I was getting my hopes up.

I shook my head. “It’s more like exclusive fucking.”

She pointed at me with her fork. “But you’re going to dinner tonight, and I caught you two making out after I busted him making naked eggs.”

“He has a kissable face to go along with his fuckable body.”

“Mm-hmm. And how’s the writing going?”

“Good enough that I emailed you the first ten chapters to allay my publisher’s fears,” I said smugly. “Hopefully they’ll see that writing something new isn’t the worst idea ever for me.”

“I know. I just wanted to hear you say it out loud. I already read it thirty seconds after you emailed it. Before I continue to interrogate you about Real-Life Cam, I just have to say, you’re writing like pre-Jim Hazel.”

“I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment,” I admitted.

“You let him get in your head.”

“Who? Cam? I only let him get in my vagina.”

“Jim, dummy. You let him tell you your characters weren’t angsty enough, that your stories weren’t important enough. That’s why your last two launches sucked. He got his sticky, snobby literary fingers in your head, and you started doubting yourself.”

She was right, and we both knew it. I sighed. “Look, I’m not saying I let him gaslight me, but?—”

“That’s exactly what you let him do. But Jim is in our past. You’re Hazel Freaking Hart, and you’re writing a story that resonates.”

“But it’s also like funny though, right?” I prompted her.

“Of course it’s funny. It’s funny and heartfelt and real. Now back to Cam,” she said. “You like him!”

“I do not! I mean, I like having sex with him. Lots of sex. Tons of orgasms.”

“Stop it before I push you in the lake.”

“Orgasms galore,” I teased.

“You’re mean when you’re sexually satisfied and in looooooove,” Zoey sang.

“I’m not in love. I can barely tolerate the man when he’s got his clothes on.”

“I’m just saying, you’re glowing. You’re writing at pre-Jim speeds. You’re planning a Hallmark-movie-worthy small-town festival to save Story Lake. And you’re showering regularly. I don’t want to jinx it or anything, but I think you might be happy.”

“Maybe small-town life suits me? Speaking of, I need your expertise on running geographically targeted social media ads for Summer Fest. We’ve got a fifty-dollar budget.”

“That should be enough to bring a whopping one point five people to our shindig. But I’ll do my best. Back to you and Cam dating as reported on Neighborly.”

“We’re not dating. We’re…exclusively sexing.” It had been surprisingly easy to get used to our new arrangement. The orgasms had dazzled me into submission, I supposed.

“Uh-huh. Sure. So let me just run through the facts. You’re having sex. You’re going out to dinner together. You’ve officially spent the night together. You watch delicious trash TV together. And you’ve met his entire family.”

I dropped my fork into my salad. “When you say it all together like that, it sounds bad.”

“Haze, you know I love you. You are one of the smartest people I know, but I think Cam manipulated you into an actual relationship.”

I shook my head, slowly at first and then harder and harder. “No. No, that can’t be right.”

“See you later, Miss Hazel!” chirped the three eight-year-olds as they steered their bikes back toward Main Street. They’d spotted me bunny hopping off a curb and had demanded a lesson, which had led to thirty minutes of good old-fashioned two-wheeled fun.

“Ride safe,” I called after them.

I pedaled home with the sun and a smile on my face. I’d woken up that morning to Cam’s hand gripping my thigh in his sleep, I’d gotten my words written by noon, and Chevy at the bookstore had twenty paperback orders for me to sign. We had half a dozen vendors signed up to participate in Summer Fest, and I’d managed to work my charm on Gator to get him to pull some of his old rental kayaks and canoes out of storage. To top it all off, I’d run into two readers at the bookstore who had listened to one of my audiobooks on their road trip to town.

Maybe I’d celebrate by learning to grill steaks tonight? I’d recently uncovered an ancient charcoal grill in the garage. Meat plus fire sounded easy and appropriately summery. And Cam seemed like a steak kind of guy.

I was lost in meaty thoughts when I turned onto my street and barely had enough time to react when the drywallers backed their van out my own driveway in front of me. I hit the brakes, planted my foot, and executed a perfect controlled slide, whipping the back end of my bike around and stopping inches from their rear tire.

I pumped my fist in celebration. I still had it. Another win for the day.

“Sorry, Miss Hart! We didn’t see you there,” Jacob the driver called.

“All good,” I promised.

“Uh-oh,” Jacob’s passenger said.

Cam was storming through my front yard toward us. He gave the gate a kick and sent it flying open.

“Maybe you guys should take off,” I suggested.

Jacob threw the van into reverse and floored it backward down the block.

Cam continued his angry march toward me.

“Did you see my sick bike skills?” I called out.

“That’s it,” he said, reaching my side. He plucked me off the bike and carried it and me into the yard.

“What’s it?” I demanded, making erotic mental notes about his casual display of strength.

Cam left my bike leaning against the fence and tossed me over his shoulder. “Gage!” he bellowed.

Gage wandered onto the front porch. “Nice save, Hazel. You’ve got skills.”

“Thanks,” I said, struggling against Cam’s hold. “Why is your brother carting me around like a bag of concrete?”

“You’d have to ask him,” Gage drawled.

“Keys,” Cam demanded.

“Yours, mine, or Hazel’s?” Gage asked.

“Mine.”

I gave up struggling and went with plan B. Pinching Cam’s perfectly formed ass. He growled, but that was as far as the communication went.

“Here,” Gage called and tossed Cam his keys. “Have fun with your abduction.”

Cam carried me out to the street and set me on my feet next to his truck. He handed me the keys. “Let’s go.”

“Go where? I have important things to do.”

“You already crossed everything off your to-do list,” he said, opening the driver’s door and gesturing for me to get in.

I gasped. “Were you spying on my list?”

“I was calculating how long it would take before we could get naked tonight. Then I saw you almost get murdered by a van.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“Get in the damn truck, Hazel.”

I went toe-to-toe with him. “Make me, Cam.”

“I still don’t understand how you drive this thing? It’s bigger than my first apartment,” I complained from behind the wheel as I eased the behemoth into a parallel parking spot on the street between two recycling bins.

“That’s three times in a row you didn’t hit the curb or the bins and you’re eight inches from the curb. You’re sucking less,” Cam said.

It wasn’t much of a victory, considering I’d clipped the cans with his continent of a vehicle twice and curbed the tires three times. But the man seemed remarkably unconcerned with the damage I was doing to his truck.

“Head out of town and grab the highway going south,” he instructed.

“You want me to take this cruise ship out on the highway ?”

“It’s northeastern Pennsylvania, not the 405 in LA,” he said dryly.

“I wanted to make steaks tonight,” I complained as I pulled away from the curb and accelerated at a snail’s pace down the street. “I was going to go to a grocery store and buy actual food to actually cook to celebrate my day of awesome. Instead, I’ve been abducted and forced to drive this continent around rural Pennsylvania because my sex guy hates my bike.”

“First of all, sex guy? Seriously?” Cam nudged the wheel back to the left when I got too close to the shoulder.

“What would you call you? My naked man friend?”

“Secondly, you don’t own a grill and you don’t have a kitchen. What were you going to do, light candles in the yard and hold raw meat over the flames?”

“For your information, I found an old charcoal grill in the garage,” I said haughtily.

He shifted in his seat and pulled out his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m texting. Keep your eyes on the road,” he instructed. “This isn’t the movies. You can’t just ignore the road and stare at your passenger, no matter how hot he is.”

“Somebody woke up cocky today.”

“Baby, I wake up cocky every day.”

Hmm, that wasn’t a bad catchphrase for an alpha hero. I imagined Book Cam saying this while doing the whole sexy doorway-lean thing over my heroine. Ooh. That was good. He’d nudge her chin up all arrogant-like and?—

“Haze, you’re literally fucking killing me,” Real-Life Cam said, snapping me out of my sexy reverie. He grabbed the wheel again, this time steering us away from the center lines. “Are you trying to drive like a six-year-old on her first bumper car ride?”

“Sorry. I was just…”

“Telling yourself a story again?”

“What? No,” I scoffed, refocusing my attention on the windshield and all the things outside that weren’t nearly as interesting as my sexy, cocky hero but that also didn’t deserve to be crushed under five hundred tons of metal.

“I don’t mind when you space out in conversation or at dinner or when I’m making you watch something stupid on YouTube. But there are two places you don’t get to abandon reality,” he said.

I heaved a sigh. “Behind the wheel and where else?”

“In bed,” he said wolfishly.

“Well, sir. You only have yourself to blame. If you weren’t so damn inspirational, I wouldn’t have to catalog your every move for posterity’s sake.” I fluttered my eyelashes in the general direction of the road.

“You don’t need to kiss my ass when I’m instructing you.”

“What about when you’re just yelling at me? Can I kiss your ass then?” I asked sweetly.

“Tell me where we are right now,” he demanded suddenly.

“How the hell should I know? I’m just going where you told me to.”

“You’re the one behind the wheel, smartass. This ain’t an Uber. You can’t just sit in the back seat and zone out while someone else takes you for a ride. You need to know where you are and where you’re going.”

“If I wanted to have sex with a driver’s ed teacher, I would have picked an actual driver’s ed teacher, Cam.”

He ignored my zinger. “You look like you’re choking the life out of a horse. And why are you leaning so far forward? You can’t steer with your breasts.”

“I don’t know, assface ! Maybe because I’m not having any fun, and I don’t like driving, and my passenger is critiquing my every move like it’s some kind of college final that I forgot to study for!” I barked.

He was silent for several beats, and I wondered if I’d been a little too honest for just having sex. But I was New Hazel. New Hazel said what was on her mind…at least some of the time.

“Take the next exit. Slowly ,” he said finally.

“Why is everyone still here?” I wondered half an hour later when I pulled up to the curb—without scraping the tires, thank you very much—in front of my house. Levi’s and Gage’s respective trucks were on the street, and so was Zoey’s rental.

“You wanted to grill. We’re grilling,” Cam said, releasing his death grip on the door handle and flexing his fingers.

“And that involves more than two people?” I asked.

He pointed up at the blue cloudless afternoon sky. “On a day like this, it does.”

We got out of his truck and were greeted with the satisfying scents of meat and fire. Cam slung an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his side as we strolled up my driveway, following the sounds of laughter.

“Hey, Hazel. Hey, Cam,” the neighbor from three houses down called as she jogged down the sidewalk after her toddler on his tricycle.

We waved, and something about the moment clicked in my head. It felt so…normal. So happy. It felt like a scene I’d write just before everything went to hot garbage and someone ruined everything.

“Haze! We made a picnic,” Zoey called out when we rounded the house into the backyard. She was proudly holding up a tub of what looked like some kind of off-white deli salad.

“Where did that come from?” I demanded, pointing at the gleaming beast in the yard that was definitely not Dorothea’s rusty three-legged charcoal grill. Gage, Levi, and Frank were studying the stainless-steel monstrosity like it was the holy grail. Bentley the beagle was following anyone who looked like they might have food.

Cam gave me a squeeze. “Don’t get pissed off. But that grill you found was a literal piece of shit. The entire cavity was one giant mouse turd.”

“So you stole someone’s grill? Please tell me you didn’t steal it from your parents. Your mom is probably still upset over the vases.”

“No one stole anything. This is my grill, which, like your goddamn raccoon, temporarily resides here.”

“The box is still in the driveway, and I don’t remember us driving to a hardware store to buy one,” I pointed out.

“How’d it go?” Gage called out.

“Great,” I said.

“Mediocre.” Cam softened his response by giving me a gentle squeeze.

“Sweet corn’s ready,” Pep called from the back door.

A horn honked, and I looked up to see Laura’s SUV pulling up my driveway. All three kids and Melvin were hanging out the windows. “We’re hungry! Food ready?”

“Come and get it,” Frank called with a celebratory wave of grill tongs.

We had just finished setting up all the lawn chairs when another guest arrived.

“Do I smell hot dogs?” Darius called as he wandered around the side of the house.

“Well, if it isn’t our honorable mayor,” Gage said. “What brings you to Hazel’s besides grilled meat?”

“I’ve got Summer Fest news.”

“Emilie found a way to get Labor Day canceled,” Laura guessed.

“Wrong-o, my friend. We managed to secure not one but two separate bus trips. Story Lake is officially a tourist destination Monday.”

“Really?” I said.

“One is a day-trip group out of Brooklyn that had a family-friendly winery in the Finger Lakes cancel on them. The other is a senior citizens center from Scranton.”

Everyone hooted and hollered their approval.

“Let’s eat,” Frank said.

Eat we did. And laugh. And I silently celebrated when Felicity from next door cautiously joined us with a platter of fresh watermelon.

Cam pulled me over to the grass by the back door after we waved off Laura and her family. “You know, if this were my place, I’d add a deck off the back here. A place to keep the grill. Maybe a table and chairs and an umbrella.”

“Stop having expensive ideas about my house,” I said, even as I envisioned everything he’d just said.

“I’m just saying. It’s a good spot. Right off the kitchen. Then, of course, you’d have to do a patio over there, maybe with one of those fire pits. More entertaining space plus less grass for you to mow. Maybe hang some of those string lights.”

He was painting pictures in my mind. Of cozy nights around a fire with good wine and better friends. Of dinner parties and birthdays and regular Tuesday nights. I was going to have to learn to cook. And probably garden. And figure out how to start campfires.

“Would this imaginary deck have room for a ramp?” I asked.

His face softened, and I nearly fell over at the naked vulnerability there.

“You’d do that?” His voice was a jagged rasp.

I cleared my throat. “Well, not for you , my casual driver’s ed fling. But I really like your sister, and I’d love for her to have access to my super awesome house. You know, if you ever finish it.”

“Yeah. I think we can figure out a ramp,” he said, looking at me in a way that I didn’t quite recognize. But the turbo-prop butterflies in my stomach sure felt nervous about it.

“Good. Write up one of your astronomical estimates and we’ll talk.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Cam?” I asked.

“Yeah, Trouble.”

“Are we dating?”

It was his turn to clear his throat. “What makes you say that?”

“That’s not a no,” I pointed out.

He lifted his beer. “What does it matter what we call it?”

“Cam, you know I don’t want to date. I don’t have time for a relationship.”

“Yet you keep making time for me.”

“You’re in my house for eight hours a day. That’s not making time; that’s convenience.”

“If you put on a deck and a grill, I’ll be here even more often.”

I nudged him in the shoulder. “I’m being serious.”

“What’s the fun in that?”

“I’m worried that you’re maneuvering me into dating and I’m going to wake up one day living with you, three kids, and seven pigs.”

“That’s a lot of pigs.” His voice was husky as his hand wound through my hair.

“Campbell Bishop,” I warned.

“Relax, baby. We’re just having a good time,” he promised as he pulled my mouth to his.

My argument was lost somewhere around the time his tongue slid inside, coaxing me to forget everything but the taste and feel of him.

“Get a room, Cammie,” Gage teased.

“Everyone go home,” Cam ordered, still looking deep into my eyes.