Chapter 36 Emily
EMILY
Saturday night, after a whole day of mind-blowing sex, had me feeling very mellow.
It helped that the kitchen smelled like garlic and butter, which was probably my favorite smell in the entire world. Well, second favorite. First place currently went to whatever soap Cam used, but I wasn’t examining that too closely.
“Hand me that oregano?” He nodded toward the spice rack.
I grabbed it and moved closer, watching as he added a pinch to the pot. “You’re very serious about this sauce.”
“It’s my mom’s recipe. If I mess it up, she’ll know.”
“She’s recovering from knee surgery two towns over. How would she possibly know?”
“Trust me. She’d know.” He tasted it off the spoon, made a satisfied sound. “Okay, that’s good.”
I returned to my cutting board, smiling. The silence that followed was comfortable, broken only by the sound of my knife on the board and the gentle bubble of sauce on the stove.
It gave my mind the chance to roam and where it landed led to, “Can I ask you something that’s been bugging me for a while?”
He flicked me a cautious look, then went back to stirring the sauce. “Sure.”
“How does the owner of one of the biggest franchise companies in the state end up in Esperance?” I scraped the tomatoes into a bowl. “Seems like a pretty specific choice.”
Tension edged his shoulders. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You’ve got the business, you could live anywhere. But you picked this neighborhood. This house.” I rinsed the knife under the tap. “It’s just got me curious.”
He was quiet for a moment, his attention back on the sauce. When he finally spoke, his voice was measured. “I wanted something different for the girls.”
“Different from what?”
He turned the heat down under the pot, then leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. “It’s a long and boring story, so I’ll give you the TLDR.”
“Okay.”
“When Nat and I first met, we were perfect on paper. We both wanted the status and the money, the luxury cars and the big house. We spent our twenties working towards that. Me with the moving business, Natascha with her influencer brand. She turned it into a money machine so damn quick. She was amazing at it. Is amazing.”
“Yeah, over three hundred thousand followers is phenomenal.”
“It is. So it was great for a while. We were happy.”
“What changed?”
“The girls.”
“Oh, of course.” Stupid me for not realizing that.
“Fatherhood just hit me differently than I’d expected.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Suddenly I’m holding this tiny person and all I can think about is how I want to be there. Not at work fourteen hours a day. Not traveling for franchise openings. Just there.”
“And Natascha?”
He picked up his wine, took a sip. “She struggled with being a mom at first, but once Audrey got old enough to be in photos, everything shifted. Because now motherhood wasn’t taking away from her career. It was enhancing it.”
“I see.”
“Yeah. The mommy influencer thing isn’t just a hobby for her. It started out fine. A few cute pictures. But then the brand deals started coming in.”
He stirred the sauce again, buying time.
“Suddenly my daughters weren’t kids anymore. They were props. Props in matching outfits who had to smile on command or risk ruining the aesthetic.”
I could hear the frustration creeping into his voice.
“I pushed back. Asked if maybe we could dial it back a bit. She looked at me like I was speaking another language.” He picked up his wine again, drained half of it. “From her perspective, nothing had changed. She was doing exactly what she’d always done. I was the one with the problem.”
“But you kept pushing,” I guessed.
“Yeah. And we fought more and more until we were both miserable.”
“How long did that go on?”
“Couple years. Then one night we had a massive fight because the girls got offered a commercial. I said absolutely not. She said I was being ridiculous. And then she just...” He paused, like he was choosing his words carefully.
“She said maybe we wanted different things now. And that we should think about what that meant.”
“She asked for the divorce?”
“She brought it up first. Yeah.” He met my eyes. “And I felt relieved. Which told me everything I needed to know.”
“And then what?”
“I let her keep the house and we split custody 50/50. For a while it worked really well and I felt like we’d struck a pretty good balance with the girls. But after about six months, things started to shift.”
“How do you mean?”
“Our custody arrangement includes first right of refusal.”
“What’s that?”
“If one of us needs a babysitter, we have to offer the other one first, before anyone else. Turns out, Nat needed a lot of babysitting done. I never said no if I could help it. It was when my custody time went from 50/50 to 70/30 that I decided to change things up. I want the girls to have as normal a childhood as possible, like my parents gave me. Which means a normal house in the suburbs, normal schools, all that.”
“That’s awesome.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, suddenly looking exhausted. “It’s good in theory, but it’s not quite turning out how I wanted.”
That made me frown. “No?”
He shook his head. “Because Nat has such a small window of time with the girls, she needs to capitalize when they’re there. So it’s all make-up, outfits, photo shoots. All the shit I was trying to get them away from.”
“That’s not awesome.”
“No, it’s not. I think they’re tired of it. Audrey’s started refusing to smile for photos. Alice hates the dresses. Nat bribes them with ice cream, but I’m not sure how much longer that’ll work. I think the girls are miserable and I have no fucking clue what to do about it.”
Knots of anxiety curled in my stomach and I turned away, rinsing the knife again, just for something to do.
“I’m worried that if I put my foot down, she’ll change our arrangement.
At least right now it’s only every other weekend and the one or two weekdays.
It seems manageable. But then I wonder, maybe I’m being too rigid about all this.
A little make-up doesn’t really matter does it?
Nat thinks I’m being too controlling and that I’m the problem, but the girls… ”
The smell of the garlic suddenly seemed cloying. The lights too bright. Memories swarmed in, almost overwhelming me.
“You have to stop it,” I said, my voice shaking a little.
“You think?”
“When I was a kid, my mom got me on the pageant circuit. I didn’t love it, but it wasn’t the worst. Until I started winning.”
He was watching me so intently that I almost wavered. But no, Audrey and Alice deserved for him to hear my take on this, so I dragged in air and pushed on.
“Because everything ramped up. More shows, more outfits, more… everything. I fucking hated it. To this day, the smell of hair spray makes me dry retch.” Okay, back up. This is getting way too deep. “I asked my dad to make my mom stop. You wanna know what he did?”
“Tell me.”
“He patted me on the head and said, ‘your mother knows best.’ Like fuck she did.” I had to drag in another breath. “So trust me, Cam. You’re the only thing standing between your girls and a lifetime of therapy they’ll be too scared to start.”
Fuck. FUCK.
I gripped the edge of the counter, willing my heart rate to settle.
Without a word, he reached over, wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled me to him. I went, stiff as a board when he wrapped his arms around me.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally, his voice rough. “That you went through that.”
“It’s fine. I survived.”
“Surviving and being okay are two different things. Thank you. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“You’re welcome,” I mumbled against his shirt.