Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

49. You smell like a fish

49

YOU SMELL LIKE A FISH

CAMPBELL

My face, fists, and ribs hurt. Lake water sloshed out of my shoes with every step as I limped down Main Street.

I had no hair left on my wrists from the duct tape Levi had used in lieu of handcuffs.

I’d fought for her, been my brother’s first official arrest, and gotten slapped with an eye-watering fine for destruction of public property, and Mom and Dad had paid my bail.

But I’d proven to myself and to Story Lake that I wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

And I was ready for round two.

I straightened my shoulders when Hazel’s house came into view. The porch light was on, but the sitting room and parlor lights were off. But it was just after ten and I knew there was no way she’d gone to bed yet.

I opened the gate and marched up the walk. There was an eighty-five percent chance she wouldn’t answer the door if I rang the bell and a one hundred percent chance she wouldn’t let me inside to drip lake water and blood all over her newly refinished floors.

I decided on plan B and headed around the side of the house, fighting my way through the last of the overgrown landscaping. I took a dogwood branch to the face and tore my pants on something thorny before I made it to her office window. Light poured out of it.

She was sitting behind her desk, alone, thank God. Hair up in a crooked knot. Shoulders hunched. Her fingers moving over her keyboard in a blur. Her back was the most beautiful back I’d ever seen. I wanted to see that back every day for the rest of my life.

“You gonna stand there lurking all night or are you gonna make your move?”

I spun around and found Felicity peeking over the fence.

“Are you on a stepladder?”

“I prefer to think of it as an observational platform. Why are you all wet?”

“Because I was an idiot and now I’m not.”

“Hmm. Just to be clear, you’re professing your love and not committing some weird creeper crime, right?” she asked.

I sighed and made a mental note to buy and hang curtains for every window on this side of Hazel’s house, regardless of whether she gave me a second chance.

“Yeah, and I’d appreciate some privacy,” I said pointedly.

“It’ll cost you.”

“I’ll personally take your orders and deliver them for a month,” I promised.

“Pleasure doing business with you. Nice bandages, by the way,” she said as she disappeared from view.

I glanced down at my knuckles. My mother, the joker, had restocked the first aid kit with glow-in-the-dark emoji bandages. She’d used all the poop emojis on me.

I raised my hand to tap on Hazel’s window then paused.

Shit. She was wearing headphones. That meant I was about to scare the shit out of her. Suddenly this whole plan seemed stupid…and dangerous. What if she came after me with that piano bench leg or threw her pet raccoon at me?

Swearing under my breath, I pulled my phone out of my damp pocket, praying it would still work.

Me: Turn around.

I fired off the text and waited.

She glanced down at her phone, fingers faltering on the keyboard. But instead of reaching for the phone, she straightened her shoulders and continued to type.

“Seriously, Hazel?” Muttering to myself, I fired off another text.

Me: I can literally see you ignoring me. Just turn around.

Me: Please.

Her phone screen lit up again, and Hazel thumped her head against the back of her chair. She flipped off her phone and went back to typing.

Growling, I pressed the Call button.

“For fuck’s sake,” came Hazel’s muffled yelp from inside. She slapped a hand on the phone and answered the call. “What?”

“Turn around,” I ordered.

She spun around in her chair with fire in her eyes. Her phone went flying, and she nearly fell out of her chair as she let out a haunted house scream when she saw my hulking silhouette in the window.

“Everybody okay over there?” Felicity called over the fence.

“Go away, Felicity.”

I gestured toward the window impatiently.

“What in the fucking fuck are you doing lurking in my yard, squishing your face against my window?” she demanded as she forced the window up.

“I didn’t squish my face against the glass,” I argued. “Back up.”

“No! Why?”

I heaved myself up onto the windowsill.

“Oh my God. Why are you wet?” She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like a fish.”

“Gage hit me with one in the face,” I explained, climbing the rest of the way through the window. My soggy boots hit the hardwood with a squish.

Hazel looked as if she were searching the room for a weapon.

“I come in peace,” I promised her.

“I don’t care. If everyone else got their shot at you, I want one too.”

“Well, unless you’re willing to hit me with a closed fist or you’ve got a live trout handy, you’re shit out of luck.”

She nodded. “Okay then.” She balled up her fist and drew her arm back. “You have ten seconds to tell me why the hell you dumped me, publicly humiliated me, and then broke into my house smelling like some lake monster, or else I’ll be forced to use my YouTube-researched self-defense moves on you.”

I held up my palms in surrender.

“I broke up with you because I was scared. This whole love thing is new to me. I was starting to get comfortable with it until Laura ended up back in the hospital. It reminded me of her accident. How we lost Miller, how we’d almost lost her. How she barely survived us telling her Miller was gone. I think I had a panic attack and I decided to solve everything by not being in love with you.”

She lowered her fist an inch or two.

“That’s horrible,” she admitted.

“I never got over it. She’s one of the best people I know, and I love her to death, but that didn’t protect her. I didn’t protect her. Love didn’t save her from a life without her other half, a life without any of the things she used to do. I looked at her in that bed, and I saw you.”

“And you’d rather not be by someone’s bedside. Got it. Thanks for letting me know after I fell in love with you,” Hazel snapped. She had both fists up now in a completely wrong stance.

“Laura already kicked my ass. Mom and Dad too. Everybody dies. Everybody loses the people they love. There’s no escaping that fact. No shortcut to avoid the loss. So I wanna suffer with you, Hazel. I want to grieve and be angry and be at every bedside.”

“This is the most depressing grand gesture.”

“I thought I could protect myself from the bad if I didn’t have enough of the good.”

Her expression softened incrementally. “That’s really stupid.”

“Agreed. But you showed me too much good, and now I want more. Because we’re going to have the bad. It’s guaranteed. And the only way to survive it is to hold on to as much of the good as possible.”

“Okay, slightly less depressing.”

I reached for her and captured her wrists, tugging her closer to me. “Life is messy, but I’d rather be part of your mess than watching you make one with someone else.”

“I wasn’t actually making messes with other people. I was set up. We were set up. Zoey called it Weekend at Bernie -ing because it was like forcing a corpse to go through the motions.”

“The whole town knows we belong together. I know it now too. And I’m not letting you go,” I said, pulling her closer.

“I’m not going to just suddenly trust you and take my pants off?—”

“You’re already not wearing pants,” I pointed out.

She looked down. “Damn it.”

“I’m putting up curtains. Everywhere,” I told her and lowered my head toward hers.

She opened her mouth, and I took the opportunity. The kiss was soft, laced with need. I cupped her face with both hands and kissed her thoroughly until neither one of us could catch our breath.

“Damn it! Why the hell did you have to go and do a thing like that?” Hazel demanded, breaking free. “You hurt me, Cam. A lot. I put myself out there. You have no idea how hard that was for me. And you crushed me.”

I stroked a hand over her hair. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I want you to tell me what you want. I want to make sure you get it. Even if it’s something that scares me.”

“I don’t want the idea of being in a relationship to scare my dumb boyfriend!”

“Baby, I wasn’t afraid to be with you. I was afraid to lose you.”

“Which sounds like some really stupid self-fulfilling prophecy? How am I supposed to forget that? I don’t know if I want to forgive you!”

“Good. Don’t. I haven’t earned it yet. You deserve one of those heroic grand gestures. And me scaring the hell out of you and climbing through a window doesn’t qualify.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “I mean, I guess it was a pretty high window, and you made it look pretty easy.”

“Not high enough, Trouble. You deserve more. I want a life with you. A home. A family.” Movement at the door caught my attention. “A significantly smaller indoor raccoon population.”

She squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin. “I do deserve more. So does Bertha. And just so you know, I’m way less forgiving than my heroines.”

I leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Just so you know, I will not be beaten by a raccoon. Also, I’m more tenacious than your heroes.”

“So, uh, what’s your grand gesture going to be? I could give you some pointers.”

I shook my head. “Uh-uh. I’ve done all the research I need to,” I said, hooking a thumb at her books on the shelf.

“Are you going to save my family’s Christmas tree farm and give me a herd of mini donkeys?”

“Get some sleep,” I advised. “Because when I grand gesture you, neither one of us will be sleeping for forty-eight hours.” I ran my finger around the waistband of her underwear.

She shivered.

“Still wanna punch me?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I have a feeling that will never go away.”

I grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ll see you around, Trouble.” I headed for the window, feeling for the first time in weeks like I had a purpose.

“So is there like a timeline I should be prepared for?” she called after me.

I gave her a lecherous look as I vaulted back out the window.

Me: Need your help.

Levi: You’re not getting out of the fine.

Larry: How did it go with Hazel?

Gage: She lock you in a closet with a raccoon?

Me: I’m winning her back.

Gage: You mean wearing her down?

Laura: What’s the difference?

Me: I need your help with the grand gesture.

Levi: What the hell is that?