Open Your Heart (Kings Grove #4) - Delancey Stewart Page 0,68

dad would be pleased if you stayed. Even if he doesn’t care about the promise.”

“And you? What do you care about?” I’d seen the way he cared for his sister, the careful way he looked out for her. I’d heard him talk about his dad, I knew he cared for him too. I was even certain of Cam’s feelings for the dog at this feet. But I needed him to tell me he cared about me.

Cam watched me with wary eyes for a long minute, then dropped them. “I want to tell you to stay,” he said. “I want to tell you a lot of things.”

“Then tell me,” I said, my voice almost a plea.

He shook his head. “Wouldn’t be fair to you. I can’t ask you to stay here for me when I can’t promise—”

“It’s a great opportunity.” I cut him off. “I’d have to have a really good reason to turn it down.” Maybe he’d been about to say we had a chance. Maybe he might have been about to tell me we could try. And as much as I wanted to leap across this pen full of puppies and fling myself into his arms, I could see the hesitation in every line of his body, and I couldn’t put my life on hold if he wasn’t willing to try. I couldn’t put my entire life on hold for maybe. “I would like a puppy though. If the offer still stands.”

He watched me for a long minute, saying nothing, then crossed his arms over his chest. I tried not to appreciate the way the corded muscle bulged beneath the rolled up sleeves of his shirt, the way the ink flexed with it, begging my fingers to follow those dark lines. I forced my feet to stay planted, commanded my gaze to drop to the puppies. “I’ll be sorry to see you go, Harper. And of course you can take a dog.”

There it was. He was going to let me go.

Of course he was.

Chapter 17

CAMERON

Tuck and Harper took over the pre-filming for Maddie’s movie, working through the shots they could get prior to the big event. I’d planned to be involved, but Tuck kept waving me off, telling me they had it handled, and I regretted letting him bunk with her in the house again. I could see the lights on up there late into the night, and pictured the two of them getting closer, pictured Tuck stepping in and offering Harper everything I couldn’t.

I’d practically begged her to stay when we’d been standing outside with the puppies.

Well, maybe that was an exaggeration. But I’d hinted that she should. That maybe things would be different if she weren’t leaving.

At least that was what I’d really wanted to say. I’d been thinking about what Maddie had said, about what Harper had said herself. That maybe I was letting fear get in the way of what I wanted—that the idea of losing someone again was too hard to allow the possibility of getting close.

And now I was losing her anyway. She was clearly avoiding me, and maybe that was for the best.

Part of me wished she’d never come to Kings Grove, that she could have just stayed where she was in New York, and I could have just stayed up here in my monochrome bubble. Instead, she’d jumped into the center of my world and cast her rainbow light on everything, reminding me what life could be like, that there was more than just getting through the days. Surviving.

I spent most of the next weeks with Maddie, running last minute errands for her and trying to assure her that everything would work out. The deck and plumbing were finished at the outpost, and while the retractable walls were still not functional, the forecast was good and we didn’t expect to need them for the reception. The ceremony itself was going to take place in the grove, so there wasn’t a lot of prep required there.

The night before the wedding, I’d planned to go down and pick up Dad, bring him back to walk Maddie down the aisle, but Maddie and Connor stopped by just before I was going to head down.

“I called him,” Maddie said, tears running down her cheeks. “He can’t come, Cam. They connected me to his room only after I begged. They warned me. He didn’t even know who I was. There’s no way it would be fair to bring him up here and force him into an