Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
TALLY
We get to Cam's car, and he slams the seat back as I lunge for him, my body crashing onto his.
I dig my fingers into his shoulders, pinning him against the leather while his mouth devours mine.
His kiss ignites something primal—all teeth and tongue and desperation—the kind that leaves my lips raw and throbbing for days.
He grips my hips with bruising force, his fingers pressing into my flesh, making it clear this isn't some rushed car hookup.
His hands slide to my lower back, finding that spot that's been white-hot with pain since the accident.
The same spot that turns molten when he makes me come so hard I see stars, whether it's with his wicked mouth or that long, thick, perfect cock that ruins me for anyone else.
I tear at his zipper, fingers trembling with need, and he surges up against my palm, hot and hard beneath denim.
His breath comes in ragged bursts against my neck, both of us panting like we're drowning in each other.
Still half-dressed, my skirt hiked up around my waist, I put the love glove on him and then take him inside me with one violent thrust that sends electricity crackling up my spine.
The sound that tears from his throat mingles with my own desperate cry as my body stretches to accommodate him.
I ride him savagely in the front seat of his Porsche, my hips slamming down with enough force to make the suspension groan, the windows fogging with our ragged breath as headlights occasionally slice through the darkness, illuminating our reckless, desperate claiming of each other.
He eases into a slower rhythm, his fingers working the knots in my back, each movement dissolving the pain bit by bit.
I let out a breath and rest my head against his shoulder, feeling the heat of his skin against mine.
There's a pressure building in my chest, words I don't dare release.
How do I tell him that watching his fingers dance across those piano keys broke something open inside me?
That yeah, the sex has been mind-blowing, but seeing that other side of him was what truly wrecked me?
No way. Some things, once said, can't be unsaid. So I swallow hard and stay silent.
Afterwards, I'm laying there with my head on his rock-hard chest, counting each thump of his heart against my ear like a metronome. His fingers weave through my tangled hair, gentle as a summer breeze, and I'm letting him—fucking letting him—which tears at my insides like barbed wire.
I never let a dude do this intimate shit after sex.
Not the hair-stroking, not the cuddling, not the goddamn vulnerability hanging in the air between us.
What the hell is happening to me? It's only been a couple of days, for fuck's sake.
I barely know which side of town this guy lives on.
Never let a dude past the steel-plated door I installed around my heart years ago.
So how is Dr. Perfect managing to slip through the microscopic cracks I never even knew existed, like water finding its way through concrete?
I glance back toward the club. "We should probably head inside. Don't you get, like, a trophy or something for playing that well?"
Cameron's laugh is soft, almost shy. "It's just open mic night. No prizes, just people sharing what they love."
"So where'd you learn to play like that?" I ask, tilting my head.
His fingers are still tangled in my hair, and I can tell he's waiting for me to swat him away any second.
His touch is hesitant, like he's petting a cat that might scratch.
"Got a toy piano for Christmas when I was three.
One of those little ones—like Schroeder in the Peanuts cartoons.
Instead of just smashing the keys, I tried to make actual music.
Mom noticed right away." His voice softens.
"She was good at seeing things like that.
" He pauses, looking past me. "Started lessons before my hands could even reach an octave.
After she died—I was seven—playing became everything. Helped me process what I couldn't say."
I swallow hard, thinking about Cameron's mom.
According to Celeste, Catherine was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant with Max.
The doctors told her that terminating would probably save her life, but she chose her baby instead.
She died just months after Max was born.
Cameron was seven when she passed—unlike his brothers, he was old enough to have real memories of her.
I can picture her walking him to his first day of kindergarten, cheering as he stood on a surfboard at four years old (a crazy Kensington family tradition), and bundling him up for ski lessons at five (another Kensington thing—their dad believed kids should learn scary stuff before they're old enough to overthink it). Now Cameron’s talking about how she noticed his musicality and nurtured it.
I can't help wondering if his younger brothers like Max and Ansel resent him for having those extra years with her—for knowing the woman they never really got to meet.
I put my head back on his chest. "Your playing reminds me of my mother," I say, and then immediately regret it. I don't want to open that can of worms, not with him. Don't want to tell him about how Mom's hot mess makes mine look like normalcy.
Too late.
"Your mother played?"
I nod. "Yeah." My throat tightens. "Juilliard.
IMG Artists was her agent. The whole package.
" I want to stop talking but can't. "She'd play these haunting Chopin nocturnes that would make you cry, then laugh at me for crying.
Called it weakness." I trace a pattern on his skin.
"When my dad was deployed, she'd book these fancy L.A.
gigs, drag me 3-year-old me along, make me sit perfectly still for hours.
" I swallow hard. "After Dad died, she..
. God, I still miss her music sometimes.
Even knowing what came after." My voice breaks.
“Beautiful things don't last in our family. "
I can't believe how much I'm spilling on him.
Shit I've locked away for years, never told a soul—not even Celeste and Liv.
Sure, they know the headlines—Mom's Oxy addiction, the parade of foster homes, the revolving door of rehab centers.
But they don't know how I ache for her beauty.
Not her face, though God knows that was stunning before the drugs hollowed her out.
I'm talking about when her fingers hit those keys.
That piano wasn't just an instrument—it was her goddamn religion.
She worshipped at those ivory keys, loved them more fiercely than she ever loved me or my father.
I've never told anyone how it gutted me when she lost it.
Because when those repo men dragged that baby grand across our living room floor, leaving gouges in the hardwood like open wounds—this was long after IMG dumped her —they weren't just taking furniture.
They were ripping out her voice box. And mine too.
Cameron's silent, just running his fingers through my hair.
What the hell could he say? One wrong word that sounds like pity, and I'd bite his head off.
But now I've dumped my mom's story on him—this beautiful, brilliant, talented woman who could've been anything, now just another addict with nowhere to go.
She bounces between the streets and whatever loser's couch she can crash on.
Keeps her phone, though. Always the damn phone.
I've called her a dozen times in the past few months, offering her my spare room.
She always refused. Maybe she thinks I'd cage her somehow.
Lock her in and throw away the key. Christ. What am I supposed to do with that?
His voice drops to a whisper. "Tally, I?—"
"Let's go back into the club," I cut him off, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Whatever's coming next—some bullshit sympathy or worse, something real—I'm not ready.
My throat tightens. I just handed him a piece of me I can barely hold myself, and now his eyes have that look.
That fucking look. My fingers twitch toward the door handle.
Classic Tally escape plan: shatter the moment before it shatters me.
Back at the club, something's different. The vibe's shifted between us. Cameron's eyes follow me across the room, holding something heavy I've never seen there before. I pretend not to notice, but fuck—he's catching feelings. I can see it plain as the ink on my arms.
And damn it all to hell, I’m not mad about it.