Chapter 14
T hat was my breast. What?
“Mmm,” Campbell said. His lips were near my ear, close enough that I could feel the vibration of the sound. And that wasn’t all. Lower, like pressed against my butt, I also felt something large and steely hard that I was almost sure—
I gasped with a quick, sharp sound as surprise and pleasure spiked. Yes, that was a hand on my breast, a hand gently massaging. It was Campbell’s hand. He thrust his hips and squeezed with his fingers and I moaned, unable to stop myself.
He was asleep. I knew he was asleep, and he wasn’t aware when he put his leg over my hips and drew me even closer. He wasn’t aware when his hand slid beneath the tank top I’d made, so that now I could feel the callused skin on his palm rubbing against my nipple. I moaned again. It was exactly what I’d been dreaming about—except, in my dreams, he had been awake and not in some half-unconscious state so that he was unaware of what he was doing.
It felt so good that I arched my back, pushing my breast more firmly into his hand and pushing my butt more firmly against his erection. It was only there because it was morning and it was some type of animal-brain response. I knew that, but I still wanted to believe that in some way, I’d been a part of it. I also knew that this had to stop and I needed to remove myself from the situation. It was the right thing to do, but I couldn’t. I breathed harder and my hips jerked, and I stayed where I was.
And just then, noise started up again, like that cacophony of screaming from the night before. But this time, I also heard a male voice yelling, a voice that sounded familiar and was loud enough that he could have been in the room with us.
“You’re not fit to wipe her ass!” it bellowed. “Fuck off!”
“What?” Campbell asked. I turned my head to look up at him just as his eyes flew open in shock. “Brenna—holy shit!” He yanked his hand out from under my shirt and wrenched his body away from mine. Shame swept over me.
We looked at each other in horror and then, almost simultaneously, we both spoke: “I’m sorry!” No, I didn’t believe in apologies, but this had been dreadful and I did feel incredibly apologetic for letting it happen, for participating by not waking him.
We looked at each other for another moment and then both of us rolled out of the bed. Campbell grabbed a pillow and held it in front of himself, and we stared more. I felt a new wave of humiliation start in my face and wash down, making my heart thud. He had only been interested in me when he was imagining someone else, and now? Look at his reaction!
The voices rose again from somewhere in the house. “Shut the hell up, you bitch!”
I threw open the bedroom door and ran out, both away from him and to find the source of the problem. The argument was happening downstairs, and the sounds had been echoing up the stairwell. All the people here, besides me and Campbell, seemed to have gathered in the living room.
“I don’t want to hear another word out of your rude mouth,” Dion told one of the women. He had his arm around Carrington. “Jealous wench.”
But that girl laughed. I saw that most of the friend group was giggling, holding their hands over their mouths and totally amused. A few were also capturing the moment on their phones.
Campbell’s voice, louder and deeper than their sounds of delight, cut through. “What’s going on in here?”
“These women are nasty!” Dion told him. “They’re insulting your sister.”
“About what?” I asked.
“About Carrington’s choices,” someone volunteered, and they giggled again. I had a flashback to one of those terrible moments in school when I’d known that everyone was laughing at me, maybe because of the weird hat I’d sewn and proudly put on despite my big sister warning me against it. In this case, I wasn’t at the center of the circle of derision, but I knew the feeling.
“What choices are you talking about?” Campbell asked the group, and the hilarity increased.
“Me,” Dion said. “They mean me. That’s why they’re laughing, because they don’t think I’m shit. And fuck all of you,” he told the women.
“He didn’t even go to college,” I heard someone murmur, and another voice stage-whispered, “Ask him what he drives!”
“What I’m going to drive is my foot up your ass,” he told that girl.
Carrington hadn’t spoken yet, but she was bright red. Her hair stuck up, too, in weird ways, like she’d been rubbing it hard into her pillow. Was that Dion’s t-shirt she had on? Oh…
“Get out,” Campbell said. He pointed a finger around at the group. “Get out, all of you.”
“We’re leaving tonight,” one of the women told him.
“You’re leaving now. Do you want me to pack your shit? I’ll put it out the windows.”
“I’ll grab some garbage bags,” I volunteered.
They took possible damage to their possessions seriously, at least seriously enough to go upstairs to gather their things. A few were still giggling and more seemed peeved about their vacation ending early. But they were finally gone and that left the four of us, Campbell, Carrington, Dion, and me, in the living room. Dion looked defiant, his arm still around her shoulders.
“I could have handled them,” he announced.
“What the hell happened?” Campbell demanded.
“Bro, you know what happened…”
I stepped in as realization came over Campbell and he looked, suddenly, as if murder was on his mind. “Everyone’s an adult,” I reminded him. “Your sister can do what she wants, even if it might be a bad idea. Terrible.”
Carrington was suddenly roused to action. “I’m getting dressed,” she said, and disappeared.
“Dion, how could you do this?” I asked him. “I thought you were a changed man!”
“I have changed!” he told me. “She’s not just…” His eyes flicked to Campbell. “It’s not just sex.”
“I mean that literally, how ?” I pressed. “You told me that you couldn’t get an erection, remember? You pointed to your penis and said that it wasn’t working!”
“Why are you two talking about his erections?” Campbell asked me. “Why in the hell is his penis in your mouth?”
We stared at him.
“I meant, the word,” he said, shaking his head. “I meant, why are you discussing his penis—what the fuck is happening here?”
“I like her,” Dion said. “I like Carrington.”
“You took advantage of my sister, you piece of shit,” Campbell told him. “She’s at another low point and you jumped in to use her. You get the hell out, too.”
“That’s not true,” Dion said. “Yes, we screwed, but…”
I thought that Campbell would go for blood. “We don’t need to discuss it,” I stated loudly. I put my arms around his waist, like Addie had done to me back when my siblings and I were kids and trying to kill each other. “You and I should go home to Detroit, and let them deal with the mess here.” And it was, I noticed, a real mess, and not just in an emotional sense. Apparently, the party at the bars last night had continued as a party in the living room and on the deck, and those areas were cluttered with what seemed like a hundred empty wine and liquor bottles, half-open bags of chips, glasses, more glasses, and more glasses.
“I’m not leaving,” Campbell said. His chest heaved and I could feel his heart pound. He was absolutely furious.
“Yes, we are,” I stated. “Dion, you go, too. Get out of this room right now.”
He ignored that and started talking again, which wasn’t helping at all. “Just because your sister and I were together four or five times—”
“Go!” I ordered. He did, but it took me a while longer to convince Campbell that we were also going. First, he wanted to supervise all the other women, hurrying them out and also checking their rooms to see what damage they had done.
“They always break shit, rip it, ruin it,” he told me. “They just cause destruction and they don’t care.” He shoved open the door to one of the en suite guest bathrooms. “Move out of the way so I can inspect the shower!” he barked at the woman who was at the vanity, busily scooping up piles of cosmetics. It was like he had morphed into the meanest summer camp counselor in the world.
But eventually, they were all gone, although they did leave some property damage behind them. Dion and Carrington hadn’t emerged from her bedroom yet, and I didn’t have much inclination to try and establish a détente. The house was even more of a pigpen since the guests’ hurried departure, and I didn’t want to approach that, either.
“Let’s just go,” I said sharply, wishing that I was large enough to carry Campbell out, like Nicola had done to us until we all grew and passed her in size. She was still strong, though, and you didn’t want to cross her.
He shoved his own belongings into his bag and left the house without another word. I had never seen him this way, angry but also not speaking. I packed more carefully but just about as fast, and before I joined him in the driveway, I did walk a few steps down the hallway that led to Carrington’s bedroom.
“Dion, we’re out. Get a ride with her,” I called, and the door opened partway. Carrington stood in the gap, more dressed and much better groomed than the last time I’d seen her.
“He’s really mad?” she asked me.
“Your brother? Yes,” I said. “Yes, because you’ve let him down repeatedly. You wouldn’t talk to him, then you invited a bunch of mean women to ruin your house, and now you’ve taken up with a guy who—”
“Watch your mouth, Brenna,” Dion said, yanking the door open further.
“Who are you?” I asked incredulously. This was not the same person who had whined about vacuuming and disappeared early from the gallery four or five days out of the week, after also arriving late. “Dion, I’m so disappointed. I thought that you were working on becoming a better person, but you’re still the same guy who had ‘whore’ written on his back in permanent marker. Campbell offered his house and we brought you up here because of the threats and your stolen car—”
He shook his head and cut me off. “My car didn’t get stolen,” he announced. “I loaned it to my mother, my real mother, because the repo men took hers. She owes a lot of people and they’ve been after her, so she’s hiding.”
I held up my hands in confusion. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t want to explain,” he told me. “Your family has its shit together so you wouldn’t understand.”
“ My family?” I pointed at myself. “Me?”
“You complain your ass off about them and act like you hate them, but they love the fuck out of you,” he said. “So no, you don’t get it.”
I stared at him. “What about the other part? Did you really have to get out of Detroit this weekend because you were getting threats? Or was that also a lie?” I asked.
“I did get them, because of my mom. They were calling me at the gallery before, and now they have my cell. I wanted to get away.” He mumbled something.
“He’s sorry that he misled you,” Carrington translated.
“Yes, you should be, but I don’t think you really are,” I said angrily, and he only shrugged and refused to meet my eyes. “You two deserve each other.” For some reason, they weren’t offended by that. She looked up at him and when I stormed off down the hall, they were smiling.
Campbell wasn’t smiling when I found him outside. “One of those women hit a tree on her way out. She’s blocking half of the driveway and demanding help.”
“Holy Mary! She can go to the front door and ask her host for assistance,” I said. “Let’s leave by going through the woods. How does your car do at off-roading?”
We did manage to get past the accident, where she had really messed up her really nice convertible. The driver and three passengers were all split in different directions, holding up their phones and trying to get a signal where there wasn’t one. Campbell, being angry but still a very nice person on the inside, slowed down and told them that the front door was unlocked. They could use the house phone and try to get a tow truck, he said.
“Knock hard on the bedroom door until Dion comes out to help you,” I suggested. “I’m sure that he’ll want to step in, after you made fun of him this morning. Smart move.” We roared off toward Detroit.
We covered quite a bit of ground but neither of us said a word as we did. I was totally lost in a web of confusing thoughts and memories. Had it been just last night that he’d eaten the piece of peanut butter fudge from my fingers and then kissed them, saying he was getting the last bit of sweetness? Had it been this morning that I’d woken up with him touching me, which I had permitted and enjoyed although he hadn’t been aware of what he was doing? And what was Dion up to? Had his whole “changed man” routine been total bull? I hoped not. Because I didn’t like to admit that I’d been wrong, but I didn’t think that Carrington was as tough as I’d previously assumed.
“That was an incredible way to start the day.”
Campbell had startled me with those words, because my thoughts had twisted back around to when I’d woken up this morning, and I was secretly reliving those brief moments. Was he also remembering how incredible it had been?
“She knows—how many times have I told her that those women are snakes?” he fumed. No, his mind wasn’t in the bed. “They’re not her friends. You know what I’m going to do when I get home? I’m going to get in touch with all the people who reached out to me, all of my real friends who offered support. I ignored them because I was ashamed and I need to thank them.”
“That’s a good idea.” I thought that maybe I should post a similar message in our sibling group chat, something to let everyone know that I appreciated them. Dion might have been right about how I complained, but he was wrong when he’d said that I hated my family.
“Carrington swore that she didn’t participate in the fraud with our father,” he said next, which I already knew because I had eavesdropped. Sugar, I felt bad about that, too. “She said that she noticed something going wrong, but neither of us did anything about it.”
“Well, on much smaller scale, I probably should have turned in Alecta over her drug dealing. I probably also should have called the guy in the building next door to tell him that she and Chic had been stealing his mail for years, hoping that there might be a check they could cash. I just told him to lock his mailbox, and I never said anything to the police about the drugs.”
“It’s better to be honest.”
Ok, yes. “Dion and I heard you and Carrington talking about everything. We listened,” I admitted. “You yelled and I got worried…I don’t know what I thought she would do, but I wanted to be there to help if you needed it. I heard her swear that she didn’t know about your dad.”
“I was pretty sure it was you and Dion standing outside the door. I saw your shadows moving and I heard some scuffling.”
“We fought a little because I wanted to go in when Carrington slapped you. We shouldn’t have listened. I’m sorry,” I apologized again. It was true that once you started doing that, it was hard to stop—except I wanted to say it and I wanted him to know that I felt it.
“My sister and I don’t always get along, but if Dion hurts her…” He let the threat trail off. “She’s probably looking for comfort because she’s scared out of her mind that we’re going to jail.”
“But that’s not in the realm of possibility. Right?”
“You know what my lawyer said last week? She said she believes that my father is going to prison for a serious stretch, and she’s fairly certain that I’ll be indicted. She’s not sure why they haven’t already done it. I’ll be facing time, too.”
“No,” I said, fear constricting the word. “No, because we’ll leave. You know what? I read all about Laos where Alecta went, and it turns out that they don’t extradite to the United States. We could live inexpensively and also, French is big there! We could do great,” I told him. “You won’t go to jail.” If anyone was listening, I had just given away my plan, though.
“Brenna, I won’t run away from any of this. I won’t drag other people into it, either.” He paused. “Maybe that’s what Carrington was doing, grabbing onto him for support.”
“I think it was mutual grabbing,” I said. “Dion was acting really weird, very authoritative, which isn’t like him at all. He usually leaves the women immediately after, but it didn’t seem like he wanted to bolt away from her.” But that stuff was all secondary to a possible prison sentence for Campbell and he was shaking his head, like he didn’t want to hear it anyway. “What is your lawyer suggesting that you do?” I asked.
“What can I do except to say no, I’m innocent? My actual defense is that I was too stupid for my dad to trust me and allow my participation. I guess that’s better than being a smart criminal, like him.”
“Maybe it took a while but he did get caught, so how smart is that? I think he’s the idiot. He has two kids who are great or, at least, one definitely is. Instead of appreciating you, he made you feel like you’re not good enough. You are,” I promised. “You’re so much more than good enough! You may have noticed that I’m a little bit critical so I’m very aware of the flaws in others. Well, I can tell you that your flaws don’t matter at all. You can’t parallel park for crap, but who cares? You’re awful at cooking, but you’ve already learned a ton and you’ll only improve! I think that you’re wrong about why you dad didn’t involve you in his crimes. It isn’t because you’re not smart enough. It’s because he knew that you’re a good person, and you wouldn’t have participated! It’s just like he didn’t tell you about paying off the ref in your hockey tournament when you were a kid.”
“It’s a little bigger than that.”
“It’s the same,” I insisted. “He didn’t admit to it then because you wouldn’t have been ok with it. He doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong, but you do. Despite himself, he ended up with a wonderful son. A smart, moral, wonderful son.”
“Thank you for saying that.” He paused. “I didn’t realize that you’d noticed how I can’t park.”
“I notice a lot,” I said. I noticed all kinds of things about Campbell but none of them made me love him any less. If anything, I felt even—
Oh, holy Mary. I loved him! I put my hand over my mouth because I’d almost said it out loud, talking to Cleo again. Oh, no.
“My dad explained why I wasn’t in on what happened at the hockey tournament,” he said. “He didn’t tell me about it because he thought I couldn’t keep it secret.”
I removed my hand in order to answer. “He knew you’d tell because you’re a fair, decent person.”
“I don’t know,” Campbell said. “I’d like to think that’s true, but I was so afraid of him at the time that I might have kept my mouth shut.” He seemed to think about it, looking back through the years. “No, I would have told my coach. He was a better father to me than my real dad was.”
“I know you were thinking that Ghregg might take off and run from this. Are you sure that you won’t consider it, too?” I asked. “I’ve heard that Laos is beautiful in the summer.”
“Really?”
“No, I haven’t heard that,” I admitted. “But if there’s a serious possibility of you going to jail, then we are out.”
“We are out,” he repeated, and then he said it again, emphasis on the first word. “ We are out.” It got quiet in the car and it stayed that way for a lot of miles.
I sat there wondering if I should say anything regarding what had happened that morning in our bed. I looked at his hand resting on the gear stick and I thought about how it had caressed my breast, gently but also firmly, and how his fingers had played with my nipple. I started to breathe hard, and I cleared my throat.
“Yes?” Campbell asked.
“Well…” Nicola would have told me to talk it out, and I was going to. “Well.” Here I went.
“Hold on,” he said suddenly, and shifted around as he took his phone from his pocket. “Let me see who’s calling, if it’s Carrington…no, it’s my lawyer.” Rather than put it on speaker so that I could have heard something secret that I didn’t want to know (even if I really did), he pulled off the road into a little clearing among the pine trees. They smelled so good with the windows down.
“Hi, Anett. What’s—” He stopped speaking abruptly and I could hear her voice through the phone, the words sounding urgent. “Ok,” he said in a pause, and he repeated that several times as she talked for a moment longer. Then he said, “See you soon.”
“What?” I asked immediately, when he’d hung up. “No, you don’t have to tell me.”
“I don’t know what I would say. I’m not sure what’s happening except I need to get to her office in Detroit as fast as possible.”
“Then let me drive, because I’m better at it and my name won’t matter to anyone if I speed and get a ticket.”
He looked at me briefly and got out. We switched places and holy Mary, it was a long way back to his house in an almost perfect silence. The beautiful engine hardly made any sound at all, just a well-oiled purr as we went along the roads. We did make a lot better time with me behind the wheel, but those were some of the longest hours of my life. I actually breathed out a sigh of relief when I turned into his driveway, and I noticed that there were no news trucks waiting. Whatever had happened, whatever his lawyer needed to discuss so desperately, the local stations hadn’t gotten word of it yet.
I jumped out and went to the back to get my bag, but then I stopped. “Will you be able to tell me what’s wrong?” I asked. “Because I’m very worried.” I was currently worried about a lot of stuff, but that was the top of the list.
“I don’t want to be like my sister and glue my mouth shut, but I don’t want to put you in a position to get into trouble along with me. I don’t want to drag you down.”
“What?You’re not!”
“Brenna, about this morning—”
“You know, we don’t need to say anything about that.” As the silent miles had rolled past under the wheels, I had lost my nerve. It was too humiliating and it needed to be buried, dead and gone forever.
“We don’t need to say anything?” he asked. “I think we do. I do.”
“No,” I told him. “It’s over and done with now. We were tempting fate by sleeping in the same bed, with you so…virile.”
His eyebrows shot up and his jaw dropped a little. “Virile?” he repeated.
“You’ve been with at least ninety women,” I explained. “That’s virility. It makes sense to me that you would have gotten confused by my presence.”
“Ninety? How did you come up with that number?”
“Sophie did,” I said. “She researched the social media posts you’ve appeared in, and it’s at least ninety. It’s no wonder that you would, inadvertently in your sleep, think that I was one of those many, many different girls. You were only acting on instinct.”
“Like I’m a horny animal?” he asked. “What the hell are you saying?”
“No, but repetition means something!” I answered heatedly. “Why do you think people practice the piano? Or slap shots?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about anymore.”
In my anger, I spelled it out. “I’m talking about you feeling me up in my sleep while you had an—”
“I’m sorry about that. I’m very, very sorry,” Campbell said. “I didn’t mean to, and I wouldn’t have acted that way if I’d been aware of what I was doing.”
I felt my face spark into burning heat, like I was a Brenna matchhead. “That’s exactly what I was saying, too. You wouldn’t have done it if you’d been aware that it was me, and not one of the ninety women that you were with before. You don’t need to be sorry about it.”
He stared. “I don’t?”
“No, because I’m understanding,” I answered. “I understand completely.” I understood that he wouldn’t have put a hand on my boob if he’d been awake, and I understood that I should have woken him up rather than lying there and enjoying it, pretending that it meant something else. “Let’s forget about it, especially since you have other things to worry about right now.” I hoped that soon, we would learn that they weren’t important or concerning things, after all. And I really needed to forget about this morning, although I could still almost feel his hand caressing…
“I’m glad you’re ok with it,” he said, like he was carefully choosing the words. “Thank you for being understanding.”
I didn’t deserve thanks, that was for sure. “It was—I should have—let’s not talk about it,” I answered confusedly. “Let me know what happens at the lawyer’s office, if you can.” Then I rushed to my car, threw my bag into the passenger seat, and raced out of his driveway and back towards the safety of Detroit.
But as I sped, even though there was no need to anymore, I got a call. I nearly drove off the road when I freaked out as I tried to answer, sure that something had already happened to Campbell.
Then I saw who it was. “Sophie, I swear—”
“This is important enough to interrupt your weekend away,” she announced.
“I’m not away. I’m at Ten Mile heading home right now.”
“Why?”
“What do you want?” I asked her back.
“I have news,” she said. “Granger heard it, because he’s been doing some checking for me.”
“Addie’s husband works for you now?” Granger knew all kinds of stuff, so I didn’t doubt that he would have been able to find information that the rest of us hadn’t heard yet. But him working for my sister? No.
“No,” she admitted. “It’s more like he’s dong me a favor by checking on things, because I asked him to. For your benefit, not for mine.”
“What’s for my benefit?” I asked impatiently. “Quit with all the lead-up.”
“Double G extra H Ghregg Bates is pleading guilty to all charges.” She paused. “Are you there? Brenna?”
“I…what? Why would he do that? What does this mean for him?”
“It means prison and restitution,” she said. “It’s a good thing you already visited their vacation cottage, because I’m pretty sure that’s going to go. He’ll have to pay back a lot and I don’t know exactly how many years he’ll be sent up the river, but it’s not going to be a slap on the wrist and it’s not going to be country club jail, either. That’s what Granger says.”
My heart was pounding. “What about everyone else?”
Well, it appeared as if the people currently under indictment were now going to rush to get their own deals—
“What about if they haven’t been indicted? What about Campbell?” I asked, cutting to the chase.
“According to Granger’s source, they’re not going to pursue any additional co-conspirators.”
“He’s not a co-conspirator!”
“I’m saying that it looks like he’s in the clear, Brenna! Holy Mary, don’t take my head off.”
There was a long pause.
“Brenna?”
“Mmhm,” I answered.
“Are you ok?”
“I’m glad,” I said, and the words emerged semi-normally. If I hadn’t been talking to one of my sisters, it probably would have been fine and we could have hung up, but Sophie definitely caught it.
“Why are you crying?” she asked, but I wasn’t able to say anything else. “Ok, come over here. We’ve been working in the yard all weekend and I need a break. You’ll be a good excuse. Come or I’ll tell Nicola about this,” she said briskly, so instead of going home, I went to my sister’s house.
“By the way, I gave you good news,” Sophie announced when I arrived. “I have no idea why it made you upset.”
In the time it had taken me to drive over, I’d gotten myself back under control. I only shrugged, though, and then…
“You’re crying again? How bad was the weekend?” she asked, and she grabbed my arm and pulled me into her living room.
She gave me some toilet paper to wipe my eyes and blow my nose, and I told her everything, every gory detail about the turquoise bikini, Dion and Carrington, and what had happened this morning.
“He felt you up in your sleep?” she asked loudly. Her husband Danny, who had been walking through the living room, stopped.
“What? Who did what to you?” he asked.
“I was awake,” I admitted, to my shame. “If he’d been awake too, he wouldn’t have done it.”
“Why?” she asked. “What’s wrong with your breasts?” She bent down slightly to peer at them.
I also looked down. “No one is interested in them,” I said. “No one ever has been. Campbell only is when he’s unconscious, even though he could have had all of me whenever he wanted.”
“That’s bullshit,” Danny told me. “That guy is into you.”
“What?” I shook my head. “No, he’s not. You should have heard him apologize for what happened this morning.”
“As he should have,” he agreed.
“He’s had a lot of women,” Sophie, ever so helpful, pointed out to her husband. “Why isn’t he going for her while he’s awake?”
“Maybe he’s thinking that he doesn’t want to pull her into his mess,” her husband answered, and I thought of how Campbell had said almost the same thing.
“No, that’s not it,” I stated. “We knew each other before the mess even started, and he didn’t want me then, either.”
“Well…” Sophie bit her lip before she continued. “Sometimes people don’t mesh, not like a couple. Maybe you two are better as friends. That’s not a bad thing,” she reminded me. “It’s great to have friends.”
I nodded.
“Bren, don’t cry.” Then Sophie, who might have hugged me once in my life before today, opened her arms. Yes, it was great to have friends, and it was very lucky to have sisters.