Chapter 18
Camden
I’m brewing a pot of coffee in the kitchen when I hear Ellie’s soft footsteps behind me.
“Good morning,” she says.
I turn and tell her good morning, smiling at the way Gus is following her.
She feeds him and then fills his water dish with fresh water.
“That coffee smells amazing,” she says.
“I made a whole pot. Help yourself.”
She’s about to sip from her mug when her smile fades as she looks past my shoulder. I turn and see the red bag from the sex toy shop sitting on the floor, by the door to the garage.
She frowns at it, like she’s upset. “What’s that doing in here?”
“I saw it in the trash can last night when I went to take out the garbage,” I say. “I figured you threw it away by mistake.”
She sets her coffee mug down on the counter and shakes her head. “It wasn’t a mistake,” she says quickly before grabbing Gus’s leash and calling him over. She attaches it to his collar and starts to walk off, but I stop her.
“Wait, Ellie. What do you mean it wasn’t a mistake? Did you throw your brand-new sex toys away on purpose?”
“Yeah,” she mutters, like she’s embarrassed. She won’t look at me. She’s focused on Gus’s collar, fussing with it like it’s broken, when it’s perfectly fine.
“Why?”
She stands up and tugs a hand through her long, blonde hair. “Because I don’t want them.”
“Why didn’t you say that to the girls when they offered to buy them for you?” I’m so confused.
She huffs out a breath, clearly frustrated. “It’s not that simple, Camden. I couldn’t tell them no in the moment. They wanted to get me those things as gifts, and if I had said no, it would have hurt their feelings. It was easier to just go along with it.”
I stare at her and let out a confused laugh. “Ellie, it’s pretty hurtful to throw away their gifts behind their back.”
She shakes her head and looks off to the side before looking back at me. Her eyes flash with shame and pain and something else I can’t put my finger on.
She turns to mess with Gus’s collar yet again.
“You wouldn’t get it. Someone like you wouldn’t understand,” she says in a low voice, almost like her feelings are hurt.
“Ellie, what are you talking about?”
She stands up and looks at me. “Nothing. I just don’t want those toys, okay? So throw them away, give them away, save them for when things between us are over and you can use them on your new lady friends. I don’t care.”
I lean back, feeling like I’ve been punched.
This thing between Ellie and me may be temporary and not at all romantic, but still. I don’t want to think about being with anyone else right now. Not when I’m married to her.
“Ellie, what the hell? Why would you say that?”
Pain flashes in her eyes. She blinks and shakes her head. “I have to go.”
She walks out of the house, leaving me standing in the kitchen, my head spinning. What the hell was that?
The front door opens while I’m loading dishes into the dishwasher.
I didn’t plan on being here when Ellie came back from walking Gus. She was upset and clearly didn’t want to be around me. I was going to just hang out in my room to give her space, but she came back sooner than I expected.
I dry my hands on a dish towel and start to walk off. Gus trots over to me, and I give him a quick scratch behind the ears.
“Camden, what’s this?”
I stop and see her holding the car keys I left on the counter for her on a piece of paper with her name on it.
“Those are keys to my other car. It’s your car now.”
Her eyes are big as she looks up at me.
“I know you’ve had issues with your car, so I want you to drive the SUV from now on. It’s safer.”
She starts to shake her head.
“It’s just been sitting in my garage. I hardly drive it, but it runs well, is reliable, and handles easily when the weather is bad. I want you to drive that from now on. It’s safer than your car,” I say again.
She blinks and the look in her eyes softens. “You want me to have your car? Even though we argued?”
I frown. Does she think I’d withhold stuff from her just because we fought?
A sick feeling rumbles in my stomach.
“I’ll always care about you, Ellie. I’ll always want you safe. Always. No matter what.”
For a long moment, she just looks at me. Emotion flashes in her pretty blue eyes. “Thank you.”
I tug a hand through my hair and nod. “I’ll head out,” I say without looking at her and start to walk off.
“Camden, wait.”
I stop at the sound of her voice. It’s soft and pained, and I hate it. I hate hearing her voice like this.
When I look up at her, my chest aches. She looks like she’s on the verge of crying.
“I’m sorry for getting upset earlier and for what I said. That was out of line.”
“It’s okay.”
She steps toward me, shaking her head. She crosses her arms over her chest.
“It’s not okay,” she says softly. She bites her lip. “It’s just…it makes me really uncomfortable to go to places like sex toy shops. That’s a really private thing for me, so for everyone to focus on it made me kind of embarrassed, and I reacted poorly.”
She’s quiet for a moment and plays with the end of her ponytail, like she’s working up the nerve to tell me all this.
“Throwing those toys away was a pretty rash thing to do. I feel bad about it,” she says.
“It’s okay. They’re your toys. You can do whatever you want with them. I shouldn’t have told you what to do. I’m sorry.”
Her mouth curves up in a small smile. “You don’t have to apologize, Camden. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I shove my hands in my pockets. “I, um, left the bag in the garage. You can do whatever you’d like with them.”
She nods, then looks off to the side. “Are things between us gonna be weird now because I freaked out about this?”
I smile and shake my head. “Not at all.”
She lets out a breath. “So we can just forget about it? Go back to normal?”
I nod. “Of course we can.”
An even bigger grin spreads across Ellie’s face. Something in my chest blooms. Relief that she feels better. And happy to see her happy now too.
She glances down at Gus. “Gus rolled around in the dirt during our walk, so I should give him a bath.”
“Need some help?”
“That would be great. Thank you.”
I nod once. “I’ll grab some towels.”
I walk by Gus and give him a pat on the side of his tummy. “I have a feeling this guy’s gonna need more than one towel.”
Ellie chuckles. I head to the hallway closet and grab a stack of old towels, and follow Ellie and Gus into the hallway bathroom, happy that things between us are good again.