Chapter Thirty-Three
Still standing by the shelves in his living room, Cam pulls his hands from his pockets to reach for Anika’s shoulders.
His hands hover before he lets them land, and a slow smile of reminiscence breaks his lips apart.
She studies his mouth, wanting it on her but also desperately wanting to hear the words his lips are about to form.
‘Where have you been, Anika Lapo?’ he asks gently, that quizzical look back on his face, his face close to hers.
Anika takes a step back in her bare feet. ‘I don’t know, man. I’ve been about.’
‘Nah,’ he says almost immediately, then pauses, tilting his head. He still reminds her of that curious sixteen-year-old boy, but he’s all man now. ‘Something is different. Like you said earlier.’
Anika isn’t sure this is the line of questioning she wants to get into right now, but she speaks without thinking.
‘I was waiting. I was bound up, just waiting for my life to start for thirty years. And then …’ She looks over at Cam.
‘Several weeks ago, they told me something was wrong with me. Like, seriously wrong.’ She’s hesitating, she knows it – even with the protections she’s written on every page of the diary.
Cam’s jaw tenses ever so slightly. ‘They?’
‘Doctors. My bowel nearly perforated.’ She nestles one hand against her stomach.
‘That can mean lights out,’ she clicks her other fingers, ‘like that. You can be gone. Dead.’ The word echoes with startling finality in her brain and she almost thinks she sees Cam flinch.
On the exhale of a huge breath, she adds, ‘But then the concept of death set me free.’
His movements are slow motion. One leg moves back a little to better support him as he leans away slightly, his arms folding over one another. Thoughts churn visibly, but all he says is, ‘Yeah?’
Anika nods. Steel supports her back as she straightens it.
‘The thing is, I … I rejected it.’ Her hands swipe through the empty air.
‘I took control of my life from that second on. I refused to just let life happen to me. Now I have a place where I can make every intention clear and …’ Anika pauses.
She wants to tell him about the diary, but she stops herself.
Cam is perhaps the only person she would ever tell, because she feels like he might understand, and yet the confession doesn’t come. ‘Now I’m good. I’m better than good.’
‘You took control,’ Cam says. No question mark in his tone. He drinks her in and she feels more fully seen than she’s ever felt before. Even without her high heels her legs tremble for a moment, but she doesn’t break eye contact.
He moves closer to her again. ‘Life has done its best to make me feel helpless too, you know,’ he says, despite Anika’s statement.
And it’s because of that – the way he sees through the layers of what she’s said – that she is scared that he does see her.
That Cam sees more than she could ever have thought.
Deep, deep down into the tiny fragment inside her that continues to be deathly afraid in spite of everything.
The part that is still locked in fear that she could lose everything at any time, because it almost happened before and she wasn’t anywhere near ready.
The part that is so desperate to remake herself in a better light while she has the chance.
‘That night. Everything that happened in the park … Losing Zay. That changed me.’
It unnerves Anika to hear Cam say this. He turns his face to the side, but his eyes remain locked on her, wordlessly asking if she knows what he means. She does.
‘I guess you get that, from what I wrote in the screenplay and everything.’ He shakes his head.
‘What a fucking jumble that all is, still. Here, you know?’ he says, pointing to the centre of his chest, then to his temple, one cluster of fingers on each.
Then, slowly, so slowly, the glimmer of a smile twinkles in his narrowed eyes in the dim light.
‘But there are other moments, too. Like when it was just the two of us in that little room earlier that night.’ He ponders, shaking his head again at the wooden floor beneath their feet.
‘I try to cling on to those moments for dear life.’ He huffs a wry laugh at the last words.
‘The way I tried to play off that kiss after it happened …’ His grin diffuses some of the tautness in the atmosphere.
Not all, but some. ‘Man’s heart was doing the can-can, the bogle, shaku, everything. ’
They both laugh more. Cam leans one arm on the fireplace that they’ve drifted over to and Anika cocks one hip in a challenge as he tilts his head again, watching her.
‘The “we’re just friends” chat afterwards stung, though,’ she tells him offhandedly.
Cam reaches towards her face, one finger tracing the curls that lurk above one ear. ‘We are still friends, though, yeah?’
She just nods. His whole palm moves to rest against her jaw, cupping it.
His eyelids are still lowered as he examines her lips.
Anika tries to seize the moment, rising up on her tiptoes to the height she’s just forgone, ready to push her mouth against his once more, but Cam holds her away.
Their eyes connect – hers almost indignant, his steely in a way that she’s never seen before.
‘The thing is … I want to do things to you that aren’t that friendly.’ His fingertips move, tightening slightly against the back of her neck. ‘We’ll be OK if we do that, yes? I don’t want to lose you again, Anika Lapo.’
‘Yes.’ She licks her lips. ‘We will.’
Cam’s fingers twist slowly into the hair at the nape of her neck and pull just enough to tilt her head back.
Her mouth opens into a gasp and he covers it, hungry, his tongue delving straight towards the waiting wetness of hers.
She sucks in air and reaches up to grip his biceps as they flex, his hand still in her hair directing the movement of her head.
At her touch Cam relents, and Anika regrets it.
I want more. They’re both silent, panting hard.
There’s a question in his expression again, one that Anika answers with a single nod.
‘Turn around,’ he says, his voice sounding impossibly deep.
He moves to stand behind Anika, gently taking each of her hands and splaying them on the mirror nailed in above his fireplace.
She looks into her own face, her eyes and hair still as wild as he told her she was earlier.
Even in the warmth of the room in the late summer night, bursts of her breath fog against the mirror’s surface, and her gaze strays to Cam in its reflection.
His body is cocooned over her, his hands pressing hers lightly into the cool glass to hold them there.
She shuts her eyes as he takes the two tiny gold hoops in her earlobe into his mouth, sucking until she whimpers.
Then his tongue moves to trace the shell of her ear and she shivers, rising up again onto her tiptoes.
The action forces her bottom into Cam’s groin and she gyrates, feeling his solidness against her, desire enflaming.
He grunts, one hand moving down to grip and still her waist’s movements.
Cam begins to kiss her neck, now controlling the movement of her hips by ever-so-fractionally grinding his into hers.
Then his hand moves from her waist slowly around to her stomach, his palm flat against it.
He caresses her at the spot she indicated to him earlier, when she told him about what happened.
As he does, Cam kisses her cheek deliberately, holding his hand still and communicating without words an emotion that makes tears begin to form along Anika’s lower lashes.
Their eyes meet again in the mirror and he waits for a moment before moving her backwards even more so she’s flush against him.
His fingers find the buckle of the belt she’s used to cinch in her waist and he deftly undoes it, all the while making his way down her neck with his lips, pulling aside the neck of her T-shirt dress with his teeth to gain better access to her shoulder, biting along it with tight little nips.
The sensation makes another gasp escape Anika’s lips.
Cam kisses her skin more softly. The hand on her stomach inches lower, lower, and Anika tries to tilt her pelvis towards the promise of his fingertips, but his movements pause again as he gathers her gaze in the mirror. She sees his eyes glint with intention.
He growls into her ear. ‘Do you want this?’
Anika nods, huffing in frustration but loving every moment of it.
‘Can’t hear you.’
For all her boldness in the diary, Anika can’t maintain eye contact.
Smiling a little, she lets her eyelids lower.
‘I want … I want you to touch me,’ she says, her skin on fire.
A second later, she moans as his fingers scramble slowly against her abdomen, pulling the fabric of her dress up to allow him access.
They inch down over her cotton pants, circling right where she needs them to.
The pressure is totally different to Hattie’s slim, precise touch, but that is barely a memory in Anika’s head right now.
She moans louder, leaning back against Cam – it feels like he’s all that’s holding her up.
His erection pushes against her and his groan, an octave lower, echoes hers.
His fingers increase in pace, moving in circles that grow more rapid with each squirm she makes against him.
She’s on the edge of an orgasm when he pulls his fingers away and steps back.
Anika’s eyes fling open and she frowns. He chuckles at her clear irritation.
‘What—’