Crazy Eights (Stacked Deck #8) - Emilia Finn Page 0,92

“I can’t be what you need, but I can’t move on either.”

“You’re enough.” I leave her lips, and go back to her throat. “Dammit, Q. You were always enough. You just had to accept what I was trying to give you.”

“I can’t.” She studies my abs, my chest, my shoulders. She doesn’t go lower, but she hesitates around my pecs. Like my growth over the last four years surprises her. My hard work inside my own gym comes unexpected. “Hopes and dreams, Jamie. They’re lies. They’re all lies that stupid people tell themselves so they can get through another day of the monotony they hate.”

“No, it’s not.” I shake my head. “I love you, Cam. And I can’t undo that, no matter how hard I try.”

Her lips stop. Her hands. Her heart. “Cam…” Her breath races between us, hot, potent, intoxicating. But the possession she had a moment ago strips away. Gone, so the only thing that remains is another memory.

“Cam…” Dropping her head back, she looks up at the starlit sky and laughs. Except it’s not a ‘ha-ha’ laugh, but the kind that precedes a complete mental breakdown. “Cam was never real, Jamie. She was a lie.”

“She’s right here in my arms.”

“Cameron was a made-up name,” she argues quietly. “It was all a lie.” She scoffs cruelly. “You haven’t figured that out yet?”

“The name may be as fictional as Special Agent Andy Cruz, but I’m still standing here, I’m still right in front of you. It’s not the name,” I plead. “It’s the heart.”

“Yeah. Except,” she unwraps her legs from around my hips and slides back to the ground. “When shit was hot and heavy, and you were declaring your feelings, you said Cam. You want that girl back, you want that love back. You want what we lost back, but it doesn’t exist anymore.”

Sad, she shakes her head and exhales. “It’s impossible, Jamie. Even if the names had stayed the same, we’ve changed over these years. We have, our hearts have, our actions have. I’ve moved on.” She pats my chest, and moves out from between me and the car. “I went to you as a virgin. You want that unspoiled girl back, but she doesn’t exist.”

Then, to dig the knife in further, to twist it, she points down her trim body and flattens her lips. “This girl has been around the block. Dozens and dozens of times. What you had before and what you’d get now… are not the same thing. Let’s go.”

She moves around the SUV and opens her door. “I’m starving. And I’m not really interested in yearning for a guy I once loved. There are a billion more in the world, and they all come with less emotional baggage.”

Quinn

Time Goes On

We stopped in a hotel last night that was much the same as the run-down place from the night before. Jamie plans ahead, books these roadside places, pays over the phone or online, has the room opened and the key left on the table. And because of his forethought, he never has to walk inside a reception space with a bruised face and a girl handcuffed to his arm.

Solid plan for him. But it provides me with no chances to escape.

The one time I could have run, I ran back to him. Because I’m a sucker. And now we know what happens when I think with my heart and not my head.

Fuck him for still having that power over me.

My objective has always been to keep Will safe. To protect my single ally, to keep the enemy away. But because of Jamie, Will is now all alone back home, and every minute that passes, I’m taken further and further away from my brother, making it harder for me to return.

I need to get back home, to walk into Zeus’, and to find out what the hell Evan McGrady’s connection is to what’s going on with my brother.

It seems too random, too much of a coincidence. It all seems too horrible, and if it’s all true, then I have a whole lot of thinking to do. The soul-searching kind, the ‘what the hell have you been doing with your life’ kind. And I’m not sure I’m ready for that kind of heaviness.

“Bubbles?” Will’s voice rumbles through the car speakers. “You there?”

“Yeah.” I’ve been cuffed to Jamie’s wrist again, but I sit on my side of the car, lean against the door, and stare out into the passing trees as they whip by. “I’m here. I’m