Chapter 12 #5
“You don’t deserve to cry, Emory. You also don’t deserve to have me admitting I love you in a rant to your evil aunt.”
Emory made a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh. It was an almost childish sentiment, but it resonated with Emory’s lion. Good and evil. So simple, even if in reality nothing was ever quite that black and white.
“She is pretty evil, huh?” Emory said, stroking his fingers back through Cameron’s hair.
Cameron nodded, pressing his face even harder into Emory’s pec. Emory heard Ronan’s words echoing in his head, and he heard his father’s and mother’s voices, too.
He cupped Cameron’s cheeks and waited until he looked up at him. “You have absolutely nothing to apologize for, Cameron. Thank you for defending us and the family we’re going to create. You, me, and more love than any of my bitter, and yes, sometimes evil relatives could ever comprehend.”
Emory drew in and then released a long breath.
This was it. He knew it, his lion knew it, and in just a second, Cameron would know it, too.
It shouldn’t be intimidating, since Cameron had already said it first, but he could still feel his hands shaking where they were clutching Cameron’s back.
If his fated mate could be brave enough to face down his entire family, he could damn well do this.
“I love you, Cameron Klein,” he said with utmost certainty. “More than anyone or anything on this planet. The only thing I felt hearing you say you loved me was joy and relief that I finally get to say it, too. I love you. I love you so much.”
Cameron sobbed and ducked his head, pressing his forehead to Emory’s mouth. Emory pressed a kiss to his heated skin and then dragged his lips down, skimming over his wet cheeks and brushing across those two freckles until he found his mouth.
Cameron threw his arms around Emory’s neck, still holding the coconut. Emory pulled him impossibly closer, and Cameron straddled him, wrapping his legs around his back as they continued to kiss.
“I love you, Emory,” Cameron whispered against Emory’s mouth.
“I love you, honey.”
Emory sealed their mouths together, as all of his swirling emotions crested and slowly settled into a near peaceful state. His lion sat down, curling his tail around his feet as Cameron’s sweet energy flowed around them.
Of course, because Emory could never truly know peace, his lion only allowed him a few more kisses before he tilted his head and warbled in curiosity.
“Cameron?” Emory asked slowly, and Cameron pulled back and tilted his head in question.
Fondness exploded in Emory’s chest, and he kissed those two freckles he loved so much. “Well, first,” he said, unable to contain his laughter. “That probably isn’t a habit you want to pick up from my lion.”
Cameron stuck out his bottom lip, stubbornly tipping his head the other way, and Emory kissed him again. “Alright, as you wish. What I was going to ask was, is there something special about the coconut?”
Cameron bit his lip, and his cheeks turned even redder than they already were from crying. “Oh, uhm…so, I told you I’m an octopus?”
Emory blinked. “Yes?”
“Amphioctopus marginatus?”
Emory scarcely remembered hearing those words on New Year's Eve. He hadn’t remembered them long enough to look them up, but he assumed it was a species of octopus.
“I’m a, uhm…coconut octopus,” Cameron said.
A memory of an adorable octopus hiding inside a coconut shell immediately came to mind. The image looked strange, though. It wasn’t like looking through glass at an aquarium, which was how Emory usually saw octopuses. Instead, it was like he remembered peering at it through goggles.
“That’s the kind that likes to live in coconut shells, right? They—I mean, you—like to form dens with them and… Aren’t you one of the smartest octopus species? You can use tools and camouflage yourself, and you build cities with—”
“Pretty things and coconut shells, yeah,” Cameron said, his blush intensifying.
Emory grinned widely at him. “Is that why you like pretty clothes?”
Cameron rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t tend to think our inner animal determines that much about us but…
it definitely is why I like to—” He gestured at the pile of clothes he had been hiding in.
“It’s also why I’m sort of obsessed with coconut shells.
My parents had to stop keeping them in the house because I spent half my childhood running around naked, wearing them on my head, or shifting and hiding in them.
I once hid for almost a full day. Scared the shit out of them,” Cameron said with a soft laugh.
“Why don’t you keep them around now?” Emory asked, grabbing for the shell. Cameron clung to it for a moment but then released it, his hands flopping down into his lap.
Emory examined the shell before placing it on Cameron’s head. Cameron let out a startled huff and reached up to adjust it.
“When I left home, I was dead set on having coconut shells in my dorm room, no matter what my parents thought was best, but my octopus would make me strip naked and hang out in my dorm with just the coconut shell on my head, and my roommates got tired of it real fast.”
A loud, surprised laugh exploded out of Emory’s chest, reverberating around the closet. He was thankful this wasn’t yet another thing Thomas had ruined for his mate. Cameron smiled softly, tipping his head down, causing the shell to flop over his eyes.
“You are quite possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Oh, honey, I love you so much. You’re perfect,” Emory said, emotions overflowing in his chest and leaking out of his eyes as more obnoxious tears.
Cameron peered up at him from under the edge of the shell. “Why are you crying again?”
Emory shook his head and pulled Cameron back into a hug. “I’m just overwhelmed, honey. That’s all.”
Cameron’s fingers tangled in Emory’s jacket. “Overwhelmed…by me?”
Emory wrapped his arms tightly around Cameron, crushing him to his chest.
“I could never be overwhelmed by you. Just by my love for you–and this rather awful week if I’m being honest.”
Cameron squirmed, and for just a moment, Emory considered never letting go. He just wanted to hold his beautiful mate in his arms for the rest of their lives and never have to leave the safety of the dim closet.
When Cameron squirmed again, he finally let go, and Cameron pulled the coconut shell off his head, setting it aside. He hesitated, his fingers skimming over Emory’s letterman jacket and then over his discarded underwear.
Emory’s back gave a very insistent twinge, and he accepted that they’d probably had more than enough floor time for the day. He grabbed the jacket, Cameron’s clothes, and the coconut shells and led Cameron out to the bedroom.
He placed the items and his sweet omega on the bed and decided to ignore his back for a few more minutes. His lion chuffed happily as Emory kneeled down in front of Cameron and slowly dragged his panties up his slim legs. Cameron eyed him, a swirl of emotions clouding his crystal blue eyes.
Before Emory could reach for the rest of his clothes, Cameron grabbed the letterman jacket and pulled it around his shoulders. Emory brought the coconut shells over to his suitcase to delicately pack them inside. When he turned around, he found Cameron in tears again.
“Oh, honey…”
“They were so mean to me,” Cameron sobbed, and Emory let his alpha instincts kick in. He sat down next to Cameron and swept him up in his arms, pulling him firmly onto his lap.
“I know.”
“I-I tried to be nice. I even tried to be c-confident, like your m-mom said. But… they were just so mean,” Cameron sobbed, and Emory’s lion cried right along with him.
Emory had never seen Cameron cry like this before. Through some of their toughest conversations about Thomas, Cameron had only shed a few angry tears, and he never shed a single tear over his biological parents. This week, he’d seen Cameron cry more than in the entirety of their relationship.
“I know, my love, I know. I’m so unbelievably sorry I didn’t protect you.”
Cameron clutched Emory’s letterman jacket around himself, his arms shaking with the force of his grip.
“I thought if I could get through it, they’d say what they wanted to say but vote yes, and we could go home.
But…then Ronan and I walked in, and I heard what Leslie was saying about my gender, my family, and my fertility, and…
I’m sorry. I really tried to hold it together for you and your mom, but—”
“Shh, it’s okay, love,” Emory said, not even trying to temper his use of the new endearment.
He was madly in love with Cameron, and he was going to say it as much as he damn well pleased.
“You have absolutely nothing to apologize for. It was on us to protect you, and we didn’t, and I’m so, so sorry.
We will find out how she overheard that conversation with my mother in the first place, and something will be done about it, I promise. ”
“It seems you’re having about as much fun up here as I had downstairs,” Ronan drawled from where he’d apparently come to lean against the doorframe of Emory’s bedroom.
Cameron pulled a sheet over his legs, and Ronan raised an eyebrow. “It could be worse,” Cameron said with a sigh. “I was naked with only a coconut shell on my head two minutes ago.”
A sort of manic grin spread across Ronan’s face. “You’re a coconut octopus then?”
“Ding ding ding,” Cameron said with little enthusiasm. Emory cocked his head in confusion.
“Ronan has been trying to guess what kind of octopus I am,” Cameron said with an exaggerated eye roll.
“You can sprint around on your tentacles, right? Like run really fast, but underwater?” Ronan asked with that same exhausted yet somehow wild energy emanating off him.
Cameron smiled bemusedly. “My species can, yes. Why do you and Emory know so much about coconut octopuses? We’re not incredibly common.”