He didn’t need anyone telling him how he’d fucked up his life. Wasted opportunities, ruined a good thing. Taken the wrong path. Blown his natural talent to bits. His father had gone there, over and over, until practically the day he died.
If Fontana Quinn had had enough of him—if she didn’tunderstand what this place meant to him, how hard it was to think about losing it, losing her—fine. Fine and goddamn dandy. But he grabbed her wrist, his heart pulling her closer even as his temper pushed her away.
See, the thing is, I’m in love with you.
And I’ll tell you as soon as I figure out how.
“Campbell!”
Startled, he turned to see Luca racing across the yard, his foster mom’s rusted Bronco already backing down the drive. She never hung around long enough to ask questions or get answers when he was doing a sleepover, about dinner, homework, bedtime. Like a decent parent would. Bugged the shit out of Campbell, the way nothing connected to the boy seemed to matter to her, but he had little experience as a parent and was scrambling every day to make it work with Kit.
So who was he to judge?
But he judged just the same.
Fontana shook off his hold and was down the stairs like a shot. He was about to go after her when she huffed a breath, cut a scathing glance over her shoulder, and let her words forge a divide as wide as the Grand Canyon between them. “Forget everything else. Your home, your family. Forget me. But what are you going to tell that lonely boy, already attached to you, when you leave?”
He sank to the top step, watched her climb into her Jeep and peel away without a backward glance. Wind ripped across the field, filling him with the smell and taste of this place—harsh sensory punishment he didn’t need.
Whatwashe going to tell Luca?
Shit, what was he going to tell himself?
chapter
twenty
Battle of Who Could Care Less –Ben Folds Five
CAMPBELL
The photograph gracingTrue Art’s back wall was stark and glorious, surging Saharan dunes stretching to the horizon, shimmers of heat traveling off the print and surrounding him, even now. The sky shone in shades of lavender and violent peach, burnt yellow at the edges. The day Campbell took the shot, he’d been alone except for a turbaned guide who spoke little English and two fragrant camels, his tripod strapped to his back, his feet sinking deeply into sand the color of tangerines—a molten sea thick enough to melt into.
The setting had been magnificent, awe-inspiring, pain and pleasure on a grand scale.
One of the loneliest moments of his life.
Until now.
He raised the glass of Syrah to his lips and took an absent sip. Glass number four, and he was truly starting to appreciate his effort.
Fontana was locking him out, shutting the door on their relationship.
Or rather, changing thenatureof it.
She inquired about his class at the children’s center when she ran into him in town, offered to pick up Kit when he had a conflict, reminded him of the school’s Thanksgiving party when it appeared he’d forgotten. She played the concerned family friend well, her interest sincere but impersonal, when he wanted to drag her into the nearest quiet spot and force her to listen to what he had to say.
I love you. I miss you. I’m not perfect, and neither are you.
Campbell scrubbed a hand over his face. Not that last one.
He hadn’t figured out the exact wording yet, but it would be good when he did. It simply took him longer. Poetry wasn’t his game, photography was.
The air still bubbled like a pot when they were together. Nothing had disappeared. He felt powerless, something no one, not even his father, had ever made him feel. He got hard when she was within reach, his heart hammering into a violent rhythm he wasn’t sure was healthy at his age. And the masturbation schedule hadn’t diminished, either.
His misery wasn’t just physical. He missed their discussions about books and music, gardening and travel, their shared laughter across a dinner table, the way she surprised him into being someone he hadn’t thought he had it in him to be.
He took an angry sip.
