Chapter Thirty-Two
Lemon
“You snore.” I slap my hand over Oliver’s face, just as my eyes fly open. “Oliver!” I’d forgotten I’d moved to the tent. My thighs are still wrapped around his, and my head on his chest.
“Lem?”
“The one and only.” I hide my face in his arm “The hammock was tangly.”
“Oh? Is that all?” He tickles my sides.
“Stop it! Okay, okay.” I sit on my knees and push him back down. “I also got scared a bear might eat me.”
“And you needed me to keep you safe?”
“Well, I figured at the very least if it slashed through the tent, it would have a choice between you and me, and there’s a lot more of you. You’d be tastier.”
“Brat.” He flips me over and lowers his face to the apex of my thighs. “You’re tastier, I assure you that.”
He blows against my center, and I want him, fuck do I want him, but wait…
I lift his chin. “We never cleared the air last night. I’m sorry for not cluing you in on my decisions about the show. What I decide for our relationship also affects your girls, and that wasn’t fair of me. It’s been just me for so long. I’ll have to get used to that.”
“So, you’re staying?” He grins, moving back up my body.
“I’m staying.” I kiss him. It’s everything I want and need when I’m with this man.
“I was wrong, too, Lem.” He shakes his head. “I was wrong not to trust you. I promise I’ll—”
“Help! Daddy, help!” Cami screams through the campground, her voice somewhere downriver.
Downriver!
“Oliver, my hammock! It got snagged on the bank last night. What if she tried to get it?”
I scramble to my feet, not bothering with pants. The sleep shirt from last night will have to do.
Nothing matters more than Cami.
“I see her! Wrapped around that tree.”
The hammock twists around her sandal strap, tossed and turned by the rapids threatening to tug her under.
Oliver sprints ahead, falling over his feet in haste to the river’s edge, to the same tree branch that snatched up the stupid thing I should have stored in the backpack last night instead of thrown.
This is my fault.
And it could cost Cami everything.
“Daddy!” She hiccups. Water sloshes into her mouth and she coughs it up, pulling herself farther up the branch that bows beneath her weight. “Heee-eeelllp!”
“Grab my hand, Two Bits! There you go, there you…Two Bits!”
“Ahhh! Daddy!” Cami’s foot slips farther down the branch. “Daddy, I’m falling!”
“Hang on!” My heart races as Oliver scrambles the bank, scanning and assessing the risks. Everything in his position at Perkins Global should have prepared him for fight or flight, yet he looks hopeless.
“I’m not small enough to get between those two branches. We could pull her in from the base and hoist her up the rocks to the bank, but—” He attempts the squeeze, but the branch cracks beneath his weight.
Bark crumbles in heavy chunks to the water below, and a horrifying thought passes between us of what could become of the little girl that holds our hearts.
His eyes turn red, tears of frustration streaming with his labored grunts. His attempts to shift his weight in any way that could save his baby. “I-I can’t get to her, Lem!”
“I can.” I nod. “I can jump from this ledge and land on the wider part of the base. It’s rooted to the bank.”
“No! Lem, it could break. You could—”
“Oliver, I could save her!”
“Ahhh! Daddy!”
He tenses with each scream.
“You’ll be swept through the gorge if you miss.”
But all I see is Cami. The loud one, the proud one, the first one to hug me, and she feels like home.
“I love a good adventure.”
And then I jump.