secretly in love with your wife before you told her how you feel.”
I snatch up my phone. My heart comes to a complete halt, but my thumbs move fast as I unlock my screen and scramble to get to the text app.
Cam: You don’t know what you’ve done, Jamie Kincaid. But it’s not cute! Make another statement, call the dogs off. NOW!
“Mom!” I spin to my watchful crowd with what I’m certain is a pale face. “Mom! It worked.”
“What worked?” She steps forward and takes my phone. But she only gets a second with it before Soph snatches it up and reads the screen with a smug grin.
“It worked.” She takes my cell to the opposite end of the counter and plugs it in to her computer. “Jamie, come here.” She passes the phone – cord and all – and goes to work doing whatever it is she does. “Talk to her. I need time.”
My heart throbs with pain. My hands shake. Because this is the closest I’ve come since the moment I saw her terrified eyes as her car raced away.
“Umm… I don’t…”
“Ask her something,” Soph murmurs. “I’m working, but you need to open the lines again.”
Despite how mad my mom is, she stands by me, so close that she wraps her arm around mine and rests her cheek on the ball of my shoulder.
With shaking hands, dry lips, a scorched throat, I start typing.
Where are you?
Cam: No comment. But if you don’t make a statement and say that whole thing was a joke, then I will never forgive you. If you’re the reason my brother gets hurt, then I’m coming for you. An eye for an eye. Except I like Lucy. So I’m taking your eye!
“Good,” Soph murmurs. “That’s helping.” She taps at her keyboard with lightning fast speed as her husband stands at her back. Jay’s brother stands beside him. Evie and Ben stand beside them. Bean and Mac… my whole family pack into this kitchen and watch my life tumble once more. “Ask her something else. Or better yet, get her to take your call.”
And so I type: How do I know this is you and not someone who found your phone?
Cam: You’re a poor little rich boy. You think you’re God’s gift to all women. You wish you were a heavyweight, but you don’t push too hard to get there, because then you’d have to fight Ben. And no matter how much you dislike fighting Miles and Mac, you really don’t wanna fight Ben Conner.
Me: All publicly available information. Try again.
Cam: I call you Secretary, or Lothario, or Full-Of-Shit. And you call me Quinn sometimes. Make the fucking statement, asshole.
My heart literally aches with how fast it pumps. Dots float in my vision because of how fast my blood fires through my system. I’m talking to her! I’m literally fucking talking to her.
Me: Asshole was never something you called me. You lose a point.
It takes two full minutes for the dots to show up on my screen to tell me she’s typing. The dots wiggle… then they stop. They wiggle, and Soph grins. Then they stop, and she sighs.
Cam: You kissed me for the first time in your uncle’s office. You touched me for the first time in the forest outside your family’s estate. We had sex in the octagon of your family’s gym.
Me: Nope. Wrong. You lose.
More dots. Fast, furious. And then a flurry of replies.
Cam: Wrong?
Cam: What the hell do you mean I’m wrong?
Cam: I was there! I know damn well where, when, and what we did!
Cam: You stupid ass! I’m not wrong. Make the fucking statement before someone knocks on my door and does something you can never fix.
It’s her. I know it is. I knew it from her very first text, but seeing her chew me out again feels better than it should.
I should be furious. I’ve held onto my anger for years, but now I smile despite myself. I can’t help it, because I’m talking to her and it makes me want to weep.
Me: Wrong. Because what we did was called lovemaking. Not sex. Sex is so… boring.
Cam: Are you seriously arguing semantics with me right now? Goddammit, Jamie Kincaid. It’s been ten minutes since your stupid stunt. Folks will have already started searching. Do you wanna be the reason I get abducted in the fucking street?
Me: Nope. I really don’t. But I’m gonna need you to take my call to prove it’s you.
Cam: You’re out of your damn mind.