Crazy Eights (Stacked Deck #8) - Emilia Finn Page 0,3
remember her laying on my chest and sighing. “Ugh. That’s so sweet it makes me wanna puke.”
I remember her words. Her playful grin. Her teasing eyes.
“Shut up,” I answered. “And yes. Because this is where we said we love each other.”
“Oh, so you’re not marking the place you touched my vagina?”
My cock doesn’t grow now like it did that day. Her words then were a filthy aphrodisiac, but the memory now makes me almost ill.
“That too. But mostly the love thing.”
“C-Q,” she read out loud as I carved. “Plus J-K.” Then she sighed. “For. Ever.”
“And ever. And ever. And ever.”
Too damn bad CQ is false. A lie. A fucking ache between my ribs.
I remember sliding the blade back into place and turning to meet her eyes. Dirty denim, dancing with playfulness and what I could have sworn was love.
“We have three-hundred-and-sixty or so phone calls to make after this week. I’m gonna be seriously pissed if you miss any.”
Pissed.
I said I would be pissed, but that’s not really the emotion that overwhelms my senses on a day-to-day basis these days. Sure, I’m pissed, but it’s barely a fraction of the heartache I feel, the agonizing worry, the grief and sorrow. Anger can barely stand up to the longing I feel, the loneliness.
Most of all, I feel confusion. Because right here, carved into this tree, is proof she was real. But the words ‘Cameron Quinn doesn’t exist’ play through my mind like a bad song on repeat. There are only so many times a man can be told something before he starts to believe it.
Which is why I’ve come out here today, because last night, I lay in bed and wondered if I made her up. Maybe she was a figment of a lonely man’s imagination. A wish, a request, a plea. I had to come back to this tree today, to the initials carved into the wood, to prove to myself that I’m not crazy. To prove that my heartache isn’t for nothing.
I lay in place for only a few minutes, and think back to better times, but then I get up again, because I might have abated the worry that I’m crazy, but in its place is the ache from the fact she’s not within my reach.
I trade one pain for another. And fuck, they both hurt.
“Come on, Annie.” I step toward the snoozing dog and kneel down to pat her ears. “We can go home now. Let’s go see your babies.”
I wait in silence while she lifts her tired body and makes her way to her feet. Then I hug her face to my hip as we walk.
Away from Cameron Quinn’s ghost.
Away from my own memories.
And away from the pain that makes it hard for me to breathe.
Someday, I’ll find her again. But I can’t honestly be sure if I’ll make her pay for stealing my heart, my wallet, and my watch, or if I’ll beg her to be mine. To take away the ache. To give me a chance to prove I could make her happy, if only she’d stay in one place long enough.
Part 3, I Guess
Victoria – Four Years Later
“Hey, Tori.” Lita pokes her smiling face around the tiny partition that separates her workstation from mine. “We’re up in ten. How’s your shoulder?”
I rearrange the heat pack I put on it just a few minutes ago, and grit my teeth as I roll my shoulder to test how loose the joint is. A week ago, I was in this very building, working, and I messed up a part of my routine. I was falling, so I reached out, grabbed on to the silk rope I’d been hanging from, pleaded for my face to not meet the floor, and because of that, it felt like my shoulder was being torn from its socket. Like the actual limb was being torn from my body.
But hell, I’m nothing if not resilient. Pups who were born to fight for their turn at the teat have no choice but to be.
“It’s fine.” With my right hand, I work on my lipstick and stare into the mirror. “I’m warming it now. But I’ll be ready in a minute.”
“Wait, you missed a bit. Here…” My friend and coworker steps around my table and bends lower to take the lipstick from my fingers.
Lita is beautiful, exotic, wild, and daring most of the time. Or at least, she was, until she started dating her latest boyfriend.