Chapter 11
Cameron
By the time we get back to the house, I’ve told Sammy about Gabe’s idea just to try to get her talking again.
She was silent when I got into the truck and sat staring out the window for so long that I started to worry about whether she was okay.
The moment on the train tracks hadn’t been new, exactly–she’s jumped in front of trains more times than I want to count–but what happened afterward. ..
That’s never happened before.
I’ve always been scared for her but I’ve never been so shaken, so terrified, that I felt like I couldn’t breathe. And I’ve certainly never shared that much of myself with her.
When I started talking about Gabe, I guess I was doing it as much for myself as for her.
And thank God she did the same thing she always does, grabbing hold of a new idea and running with it as if it was hers all along.
She was full of questions I didn’t have answers to and ideas I couldn’t fully comprehend, and it doesn’t take long for me to start regretting everything.
I’m tired and emotionally strung out and her constant chattering feels like a weight I can’t bear.
Of course, I bear it anyhow.
It’s close to dark when I pull into the driveway, night falling quickly the way it does up here on the mountain, and the moment the engine cuts, Sammy’s voice fades away.
“Back to life with Bear,” she whispers.
I look around the driveway though, frowning. We have his truck, courtesy of Sammy having stolen it, but I don’t see any evidence of him here. The house is dark and the driveway is empty but for my truck. Even Gabe is gone.
“No one’s here,” I tell her quietly. “His squad car is gone, so he must be somewhere else.”
I watch as the tension melts out of her shoulders, but still see shadows filtering across her face in the glow of the truck’s overhead lights.
“What?” I ask gently. “Sammy. Talk to me, girl.”
She looks up at me, her curls snarled around her face from the wind and her cheeks paler than usual, and for the first time, I wonder if something actually got into her head.
For the first time, I wonder if she’s actually thinking about this thing she does, where she tries to jump off bridges and stand in front of trains.
Because I’m not sure I can deal with the fallout if she is.
Sammy’s chaos personified on the best of days and almost always keeps her whirlwind blowing in a joyful, mischievous direction, but her dark moods are stormy oceans that try to swallow you.
The darkest of nights without stars or moon, nothing but pure black that drowns out any laughter.
If she starts letting that into the world...
I don’t know if she’ll survive it.
So I don’t ask her anything else. Instead, I get out of the truck, walk to her side, and pull her into my arms. She comes willingly, used to me carrying her like a child–she’s a full foot shorter than me, so it’s easy–and presses her face against my neck, breathing deeply like she’s trying to calm herself.
I very, very carefully ignore how close her lips are to my skin, and the chills rushing through my body at having her in my arms, and move toward the house and the safety I expect to find there.
If Bear isn’t here that means we have the place to ourselves, and there’s one thing that always calms Sammy down when she’s upset.
That one thing just happens to be my specialty, and I haven’t made them in weeks.
I’m stirring the batter in the biggest bowl I was able to find in the kitchen when she returns from her room, dressed in nothing but a sleep shirt, her hair messy and her face freshly washed.
“What are we eating?” she asks.
I gesture to the counter, already knowing that she’ll sit there rather than a chair if she can, and she gives me a sheepish grin. Grinning myself, I turn back to mixing, then turn on the burner and spread butter across it.
“What are we– Wait. Pancakes?”
She breathes the word like it’s the thing she’s been waiting for her whole life, and this makes me actually laugh.
“Yes, pancakes,” I say. “Only you could make it sound like those are the food of the gods.”
“What are you talking about? Everyone knows they’re the food of the gods,” she snaps. “Why do you think they’re called cakes?”
“Because they’re literally little cakes? And what does that have to do with the gods?”
She huffs like I’m being ridiculous, but I stare at her until she gives in. “Okay fine, nothing, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re the best food ever created. Cakes. Butter. Syrup.”
She makes a ridiculous cross-eyed face that’s probably supposed to indicate pleasure and I laugh, then spatter her with pancake batter.
“What about french fries? And carne asada? And scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese on top?”
She shrieks at the batter now spread across her face and smears it, which makes me laugh even harder, and before I know it I’m walking toward her, a paper towel in hand.
“You’re making it worse,” I giggle, watching as a few spatters of batter turn into a cheek full of the stuff. “Stop.”
I catch at her hands, trying to stop her, but that makes her struggle, and in the process, the entire bowl is upset, batter leaking across the counter and onto her legs, and we’re laughing like children who’ve just discovered the best game ever.
I manage to get the batter all over my hands and smack them onto her legs, and she scoops some up and spreads it across my face, and though I’m trying to catch her hands, mine are so slippery I can’t hold onto her.
Sammy shrieks and slaps her hands down on my pecs, and that’s the moment I remember I’m not wearing a shirt. Just gray sweats and slippers.
And she’s only wearing a sleep shirt, her legs bare and suddenly tangled with mine. Or maybe they’ve been tangled with mine for a while and I just now noticed.
It doesn’t matter.
The point is, we’re tangled up in each other and covered in pancake batter and the world around us is still and empty. I stop struggling with her like I’ve just been hit by a stun gun, and she stops in the same moment.
And we stare at each other like we’ve never seen the other before.
And Christ, is the girl in front of me beautiful. Masses of dark hair over a round, open face, her gray eyes dark storm clouds right now. A smattering of freckles and that rosebud mouth, normally laughing or speaking, but still right now, her lips parted on a breath I can hear in the silence.
Fuck me, what’s happening right now?
Her eyes turn molten with something, like the best version of quicksilver, and I watch them snap down to my mouth and back up.
That look does something to me and suddenly all I can think about is her.
The heat of her tiny body whenever she’s next to me, like she’s a light bulb that’s constantly turned on.
Her soda pop laugh and quick mind, and those lips that are begging me to kiss her.
The fact that I’ve wanted to kiss her since we were about fourteen, and have never had the guts, because I didn’t think she’d accept me.
Every ounce of blood in my body runs right to my dick and I nearly gasp at the feel of it, my cock stretching and growing to press against the fabric of my sweats.
I fight the urge to rock my hips, but nearly groan at the need for friction against my cock.
And fuck, this can’t be happening. I’m not standing in the kitchen covered in pancake batter with my stepsister sitting in front of me on the counter, her legs bare and wrapped around me and her lips parting like she’s waiting for me to step forward and taste them.
My feet take a step forward before I can stop them, and she turns her face up to me, heat rising up off her like she’s the fucking sun.
I can smell her now, all sunshine and wind and something darker, more musky, and I realize she’s as turned on as I am.
The scent of her goes right to my cock and if I thought I was hard before, I didn’t know anything.
I want to grab her hips and spread her for me, grind against her to relieve the deep ache in my balls.
And I absolutely can’t do anything like that.
“Cameron,” she whispers then.
Every ounce of responsibility flees my brain and I bring a hesitant finger up to wipe some of the batter off her nose. She doesn’t take her eyes off me, just stares at me as I’m cleaning her face, her eyes more open than I’ve ever seen then.
And God help me, I lean forward and let my lips trace hers, my tongue reaching out to run along the seam of her teeth.
She tastes like pancake batter and joy, and I want to sink into her and live there for the rest of my life.
Jesus Christ, kissing her feels like finding a home I’ve never known about, and my body lights up with something I didn’t even know existed.
Her breath tickles my skin and her fingers run along my chest, dancing like they don’t know where to land, and I have the thought that I’m going to lose my mind if she doesn’t settle down and actually touch me, but it’s interrupted when she suddenly jerks away.
She looks up at me with eyes both shocked and terrified, and promptly moves to put her hand down on the griddle sitting right next to her.
I catch it just in time, acting purely on instinct, and am about to tell her to be fucking careful because that’s hot when I realize it won’t do any good.
Because that’s why she tried to touch it.
She can’t control her emotions, so she uses pain and adrenaline to do it. She always fucking has. The bridge. The train. The reckless driving. They’re all tools to help her manage something she can’t process on her own. And I’ve always been there to catch her when she falls.
But I’ve never been the reason she tried to hurt herself.
And right now... Right now, I am.
I give her a look that says she needs to behave, then start cleaning up the mess we made, trying very hard not to feel guilty about what almost happened. Not the kiss. I’ll never feel guilty about that, though I probably should.
But because she just tried to hurt herself, due to the emotions that I caused.
I shouldn’t have touched her. I shouldn’t have thrown that batter or tried to clean it off her face, especially after that scene at the train tracks. I sure as hell shouldn’t have stepped between her legs and I never should have kissed her.
I don’t regret it. I’ll carry that memory close to my heart for the rest of my life.
But I’ll carry the guilt, as well. Because I should have known better than to push her emotions. I know she can’t handle them. Even–or possibly especially–when it comes to me. She’s never made any secret about that.
And it’s incredibly dangerous to make this sort of mistake with someone who can disappear like the head of a fucking dandelion when the wind turns.
I turn off the grill and set about cleaning up the mess, wondering if I can still get any pancakes out of the batter I have left, and she pulls out paper towels and starts helping me, our rhythm natural and easy.
The air around us starts to ease and her breathing grows easier, and I’m just starting to think we might salvage the night when I look up and see Bear standing in the doorway.
Because of course he is. I can’t even make pancakes with Sammy without Bear trying to interrupt.