I thrust inside of her a little deeper, pushing one of her thighs up with my hand.

Her eyelids become heavy and she tilts her head back.

I crush my mouth over hers, and her moans reverberate through my throat as I start to f**k her harder.

Then something inside of me grows dark, predatory. I climb onto the bed and grab both of her thighs, digging my fingers into her flesh as I drag her across the bed toward me so fast she doesn’t get a chance to move. Seizing both of her arms, I flip her body over and pin her wrists behind her back and force her on her knees. With my free hand, I touch the soft contours of her ass as it’s raised up in front of me, squeezing each cheek in my hand tight before I smack them so hard her body jerks forward. She whimpers. Then I press my hand against the back of her neck, pushing the side of her face harder against the mattress. I feel the heat coming off her flesh from where my hand has already left red marks.

She whimpers again, and I twist her wrists tighter in my hand. Reaching down with the other, I put two fingers in her mouth and hook her cheek with them while push my c*ck inside of her from behind.

She cries a little, her thighs beginning to shake, but I don’t stop. I know she really doesn’t want me to.

After I come and my heartbeat slows, I pull her nak*d body next to mine, her sweating head nestled in the crook of my arm. She kisses my chest and walks her index and middle fingers over my bicep and toward my mouth. I take her hand and kiss her fingers.

“I’m so glad that you’re you again,” she says softly.

“That I’m me?” I ask, and she tilts her head back so she can see my eyes. “Haven’t I always been?”

“No, not always.”

“When have I not been?” I’m truly confused, but I find her coyness over whatever she’s getting at adorable.

“After we lost Lily,” she says, and the playful smile that had been growing at my lips fades. “I don’t blame you for it, but after Lily you treated me like a porcelain doll, afraid you’d break me if you handled me too roughly.”

I squeeze my arm around her a little tighter and her cheek falls back against my chest.

“Well, I didn’t want to hurt you,” I say, brushing my thumb back and forth over her arm. “I still feel like that sometimes.”

“Well don’t,” she whispers and kisses my chest again. “Never hold back with me, Andrew. I always want you to be yourself.”

I grin and squeeze her arm again. “You know you’re giving me permission to ravage you whenever I want, right?”

“Yeah, I’m fully aware of that,” she says, and I hear a matching grin in her voice.

I kiss her on the top of her head and pull her over on top of me.

“Happy birthday,” she says again and slips her tongue into my mouth.

* * *

Thank God for Florida in the winter. After my very surprising—and satisfying, I might add—birthday this morning, Camryn and I spend the day practicing our new song. Well, it’s not technically ours, but to mix things up a bit we’ve adopted Stevie Nicks’s kickass hit “Edge of Seventeen.” Camryn is getting frustrated with the way the lyrics blend so fast into each other, but she’s determined to get it right. This is her song, the one she wants to sing on her own. That’s a huge step for her, because we’ve always done songs together.

And I admire her for it.

She looks so frustrated, but underneath it, all I see is my Camryn coming back to me more every day. Her soul seems lighter, the light in her eyes brighter, and every time she smiles it reminds me of when we first met.

“You can do this,” I say sitting on the windowsill with my electric guitar resting against my chest. “Don’t try so hard, baby, just own it.”

She sighs and throws her head back, plopping on the chair by the small round table next to me. “I know all the words, but I always get tripped up on those last few verses. I don’t know why.”

“I just told you,” I say. “You’re thinking about it too hard, because you start the song already expecting to mess up when you get to that part. Don’t think about it. Now try again.”

She takes another deep, aggravated breath and stands up.

We practice for another hour before we head to the nearest steak house for a late afternoon lunch.

“You’ll get it right. Don’t worry about it,” I say, as the waitress brings us our steaks.

“I know. It’s just frustrating.” She starts to cut her steak, knife in one hand, fork in the other.

“It took me a little while to get ‘Laugh, I Nearly Died’ down,” I say and bite a huge chunk of steak off the end of my fork. I chew a little bit and then say, with my mouth still full, “My next must-learn song is ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ by Bill Withers. I’ve always wanted to learn that song, and I think it’s about time I retire the Stones.

She seems surprised. She points her fork at me and swallows and says, “Oooh! Nice choice!”

“You know that song?” I’m a little surprised too, considering she wasn’t much of a classic rock or blues buff when we met.

She nods and takes a quick bite of mashed potatoes. “I love that song. My dad had it on a playlist he liked to listen to when he drove out of state on business. That Withers guy can sing.”

I let out a ripple of laughter.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, looking at me confused.

“You sounded so country just now.” I take a swig of my beer and laugh a little more, shaking my head.

“What? Sayin’ I sounded like a hick?” Her eyes are all wide, but her smile couldn’t be any more obvious.

“More like a country bumpkin. That Withers guy can sang! Oooh-weee!” I mock her, throwing my head back.

She laughs with me, though trying her damndest to hide her red face. “Well, I’m definitely with you on that,” she says, taking a swig of her own beer. She sets the glass back down on the table and adds, with narrowed eyes, “The song choice, not the country bumpkin thing.”

“Of course,” I say with a grin and finish up my steak.

The first steak we ever had together was just like she promised, a few days after I got out of the hospital after my surgery. And like that day and every steak she’s had since, she only manages to eat half. Just means more for me. When I see her give off signs of being so stuffed she’s getting nauseous, I reach across the table and slide her plate toward me.

She keeps glancing at her phone, and at one point she starts texting a reply to someone.

“Natalie on you again about coming home?”

“Yeah, she’s relentless.” She puts the phone away in her purse.

Camryn is a horrible liar. Horrible. She couldn’t lie to save her life, and right now, the way she keeps gazing off at the log-cabin-style wall, she’s definitely lying. I pick my teeth clean with a toothpick and study her.

“Are you ready to go?” I ask.

She smiles weakly at me, obviously hiding something, and then I notice the screen on her phone illuminate inside her purse. She checks the text message and suddenly she’s more eager to leave. Her smile gets bigger, and she stands up quickly from the table.

“Wait, I have to pay.” I wave the waitress over to us, and Camryn sits back down in the booth impatiently.

“Why so in a hurry all of a sudden?” I tease her as the waitress places the bill on the table, but before she walks away I pull my credit card from my wallet.

“No reason,” Camryn says.

I just grin. “OK,” I say and lean back against the seat, stretching my arms over the top and making myself comfortable. It’s a ploy. The more comfortable that I look the more impatient she becomes.

Minutes later the waitress returns with my credit card and the receipt. I jot down her tip on the store receipt and very slowly get up, put on my coat, stretch my arms high in the air above me, fake-yawn—

“Dammit, will you hurry up!”

I knew she couldn’t stand it much longer. I laugh, grab her by the hand, and leave the restaurant.

When we make it back to the hotel, Camryn stops in the lobby, “You go ahead. I’ll be up in a second.”

It’s obvious she’s up to something, but it being my birthday I just play along with her game, kiss her cheek, and hop inside the elevator. But once I’m inside the room, I’m the one getting impatient.

I don’t have to wait long before she’s entering the room holding a new guitar.

I stand up the second I see it. “Wow…”

Her smile is sweet and tender, bashful even. It’s as though a tiny part of her is worried I won’t like it.

I walk straight over to her.

“Happy Birthday, Andrew,” she says, holding it out for me.

I place one hand around the neck, the other at the body and I admire it with the biggest smile. Sleek. Beautiful. Perfect. As I turn it around in my hands to check out the backside, I notice a line of silver cursive writing along the back of the neck that reads:

He drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,

and made Hell grant what Love did seek.

A line from one of several stories told of Orpheus and Eurydice. I honestly don’t know what to say.

“Do you like it?”

I look up at her. “I love it. It’s perfect.”

She looks away from my eyes with a blush in her face. “Well, I don’t know anything about guitars. I hope it’s not a sucky brand or anything like that. The guy at the guitar shop helped me pick it out. Then I had to wait a few days to have the script put on it, which I never thought would happen because of this and that and—”

“Camryn,” I say, stopping her nervous rambling. “I’ve never had a better birthday gift.” I close the empty space between us and kiss her lips softly.

Camryn

22

Somewhere on Interstate 75—May

We’ve been on the road for months. By March, we had already grown so used to it that living in and out of hotels had become second nature. A new room every week, a new city, a new beach, a new everything. But no matter how new it all is, each time we go in it’s as if we’re stepping through the front door of a house where we’ve lived for years. I never would’ve imagined calling a hotel room “home,” or that life on the road would be as easy to adjust to as it has been for us. Sometimes it’s been hard, but everything is an experience and I wouldn’t change any of it.

But I wonder if the long winter got to me. I wonder, because I’ve caught myself daydreaming about being in a house somewhere, living the home life with Andrew.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was just the winter.

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and we’re broke down somewhere in southwest Florida on a long stretch of desolate highway. And it’s pouring down rain. Buckets of rain. We called for a tow truck an hour ago, but for some reason it still hasn’t showed.

“Is there an umbrella in the car anywhere?” I ask over the rain pounding loudly on the roof. “Maybe I can hold it over you while you fix the car!”

“It’s pitch-black out there, Camryn,” he says, his voice raised as high as mine. “Even with a flashlight I doubt I could do it. I’d have to figure out what’s even wrong with it, first.”