Page 38

chapter

eighteen

Karma Police – Radiohead

CAMPBELL

He knew this was more.

Home .

Not the house or the fields surrounding the Rise. Not his condo in Atlanta. Not anything as tangible as acres of land or goddamn photographs.

Being wrapped in Fontana’s arms—or rather, her in his —was starting to feel like home.

An unparalleled notion for a man who’d spent the last fifteen years in transit.

The slightest hint of twilight blue, not far from the color of her eyes, mingled with the dusky pitch outside the window. Dawn was almost upon them, and Campbell admitted to a sensation uncomfortably close to fear.

But not for the usual reasons.

He didn’t want to let this woman go.

“I can hear you thinking up there,” she whispered into the void.

He twisted a strand of her hair around his finger, lifted it to his nose, and inhaled—pure magic. Lemons and honeysuckle, earthy, her . “This haircut is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

She tried to look up, to catch his eye. But he shrugged, keeping her cheek pressed firmly against his shoulder. “Tammi,” she said.

He sighed, feeling one of those damn blushes cook his face. “She show you that picture?”

Her cheeks plumped in what had to be a smile. “There might have been a picture.”

The urge for a smoke hit him. Sex and memories made the craving for nicotine hard to wrangle.

“A couple of hours before the picture, I had a fight with my dad. Baseball tryouts, I think. I don’t know.

He was always so angry. Just another knock-out punch of a day.

Justin took the shot, screwing around with my camera.

Probably trying to make me forget about it, about him. ”

He closed his eyes, focusing on the warmth of her breath against his collarbone, the solid deliciousness of her leg draped over his waist, her body molded to his all the way to his ankles.

She traced circles around his nipple, tugged lightly at his chest hair, and he knew he had to have her again before they crept downstairs for breakfast. “I just remember that time…being gray and soulless.” He let out a dry chuckle, more reflex than humor.

“Sounds like teenage angst, doesn’t it?”

“What seems a lie is a ramshackle need, waiting to be born.”

He pulled back just enough to let those baby blues of hers tear him apart.

She smiled, ducked her head. “Bradbury.” The finger circling his nipple paused, then reversed direction. His cock stirred beneath the sheet as pleasure—more than just for her body—rushed through him .

“I like to read. I didn’t make it to college, not like you.

Two-year tech degree, landscaping. Took some classes in architectural design.

That’s where I met my friend Lainey. I told you about her.

She’s coming to visit soon. Anyway, with books, I didn’t need a class.

I didn’t need anyone. Escape in pages is easy.

” She pressed a kiss to the sensitive spot between his neck and shoulder, sending goosebumps racing across his skin. “I’ll show you my collection sometime.”

Hand whisking down her back, he tucked her into him. Another ten minutes, maybe a half hour. Just the two of them against the world. “You are, Fontana Quinn, a constant surprise.”

“No need to be surprised. I told you I was very flexible. Yoga works wonders, Atlanta.”

Rolling her to her back, he loomed over her, a smile taking over his face. “Yoga is my new best friend.”

“Let’s take your old truck out, find a quiet spot, and I’ll climb on over to the driver’s side and show you how I can fold up like a map.”

Leaning down, Campbell seized her lips before he could say something meaningful—a sentiment, a prayer, a wish —he couldn’t take back.

“I've never seen someone so naturally beautiful,” he said when the kiss went deeper than he thought he could handle.

And though his words were bigger than any kiss could be, he meant every one. “No artifice. Just you.”

Fontana blinked in that way women did, weighing whether this was truly a compliment or a subtle way of saying she didn’t worry enough about her looks. As if anyone but God could do better. “I take it little artifice is not your type?”

He settled back until his chin rested on the curve of her breast, plump and warm against his Adam’s apple. She was stunning and tried less than any woman he’d ever known to play it.

He couldn’t help but be fascinated .

Some of the pleasure burned off her gaze, like the sun killing fragile, early-morning mist. “I’ve never asked. I mean, if you’re involved with anyone.”

He rolled to his back, keeping contact with her body.

Shoulder, hip, thigh. If she was going to ask probing questions, staring at that crack in the ceiling he really should fix might be a good plan.

“There was this woman, on and off last year. Mostly off. Nothing special. She was nice, but”—he let his hand rise and drop to the mattress—“just nice.”

She rose to her elbow, hair shrouding her face. Tossing it back, she locked those stormy, desperately blue eyes on his. “I know what this is. It’s okay if ‘Nothing Special’ is still around.”

Anger sparked, lighting a fire in his belly.

“What is this, exactly, Fontana? Since you’re so sure, because I’m confused as shit.

” He pinned her with a challenging look.

“Really. Enlighten me. It’s not like you don’t have good old Henry sniffing around like a dog in heat.

‘Nothing Special’ doesn’t want to marry me, and I’ve heard Bowman has looked at rings. ”

She blew a fast breath through her nose, like a racehorse about to leave the gate. “Forget Henry. I’m not your type. You’re leaving. I know next to nothing about?—”

“Oh, no. Fuck, no.” Campbell caught her wrist as she tried to scoot off the bed. “You know more about me than anyone on this planet. Don’t hang that on this , whatever it is.”

Jerking from his grasp, she snapped, “Right back ‘atcha, Atlanta.”

“What more—” Then he got a good look at her face, and the lightbulb went off. “Ah, okay. Never gonna give up, are you, Miss Quinn?” With a sigh, he rose, unconcerned if she stared at his ass on the trip to his desk and his dick on the way back.

They were in the bottom drawer, tucked inside a yellow envelope, one he supposed he kept because the color screamed caution .

He hadn’t looked at them in years, but he carried them everywhere.

It didn’t take a shrink, just a self-assessment from a photographer with a BA in Art, to tell him what that meant.

When he reached the bed, he tossed the envelope to her.

Her eyes weren’t committed to anything below his waist, and it hit him again just how interested she was in him . How this, whatever it was they were doing, wasn’t just physical.

Although physical he could handle—the rest scared the life from him.

She sat cross-legged, the wrinkled sheet covering just enough to keep him sane. The photos, once spread out for review, were dog-eared, their white borders marking them as mid-‘70s throwbacks.

He perched on the edge of the bed, his back to her.

He didn’t want to look at those goddamn things or watch her expression dissolve when he told her.

“My first camera. A used Nikon. When you loaded the film, it got caught on this little dent in the winding mechanism and the edge peeked into every photo. That’s the black triangle you see in the upper right.

” Pinching the bridge of his nose, he pushed back his body’s cry for nicotine.

Scotch. Something . “I fiddled with that camera all the time, trying to fix it. Marked every photo I took until I got the Leica.”

“And these?” It was a whisper, as if her words were made of glass. Or he was.

He hummed an answer, realized it was his biggest tell, and shook it off. He glanced over his shoulder—because he couldn’t not—and found her head bowed, her gaze searching the pictures of his mother as if a key to a treasure chest were locked inside them. “What do you think?”

He watched her throat catch, her eyes darting to his before flitting away.

“Don’t hold back,” he said. “You wanted to know.” Damn her .

“She looks haunted. Despondent. Lost.”

Propping his elbows on his knees, he dropped his head to his hands. “Bingo.”

“You couldn’t have known, couldn’t have seen.” Her hand skimmed his back, thumb tracing each tense knot in his spine. “You were a boy, a kid.”

“Fon, I saw everything through that viewfinder.”

“But—”

“Two weeks.”

She crawled across the bed, wedging herself next to him. When she took his hand, he let her. When she tilted his head so they could look each other in the eye, he let her do that, too.

The formidable urge to allow everything inside him to spill out consumed him, a waterfall of repressed emotion crashing over him in a bed still tangled from their lovemaking. “She died two weeks later. And I wasn’t surprised.”

He swallowed hard, lowering his gaze to their linked hands, finding solace in the mystery of her. “They said it was an accident, but I’ve always wondered.”

Silence fell around them. He loved that she didn’t rush in, didn’t try to solve what couldn’t be solved.

In the distance, a blue jay called, a sharp reminder of how little time they had left before he had to get breakfast going for Kit and John Nelson. Everything settled over him like a blanket, the scent of her, of them .

Her essence tangled in his sheets, draped across his skin. Enveloping. Devouring.

“So, no more photos of people,” she whispered.

Campbell squeezed her fingers. “No more photos of people.”

Tilting his chin, she leaned in, pressing her lips to his. Her tongue lingered at the edge of his mouth, drawing him into her orbit. When she eased him back onto the bed with a whispered, You're not alone, he let her take him—mind, body, soul.