to lose him. Cam was rarely in a bad mood, and when he was, I could usually tease him out of it. Not this time. I didn’t have a plan, or the time to formulate one.
“Cam!” I shouted as he strode through the breezeway connecting the garage and house. I nearly tripped on my shoes to keep up. Kicking off the death-trap heels, I followed him into the house. “Dammit, slow down!”
Thankfully, he stopped to deactivate the alarm. He swung around to face me. “What, Raina?”
“We need to talk.”
“You’re not going to talk your way out of this.”
“I don’t want to talk my way out. I want to fix this.”
“Fine.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I want to get married. You don’t. What else is there?”
Patience, Raina. “My view on marriage hasn’t changed since you asked me a few months ago. I’m not sure why you asked me in public, of all places.”
“Few months?” He gave me an ugly look that curled my stomach. “I asked you a year and a half ago.”
I racked my brain. When he’d asked, it had been a few days before Thanksgiving . . . the year before. Damn. “Okay, so it’s been a while, but we haven’t had a formal discussion about it since then.”
“Not from my lack of trying. My God, woman, what do you think we’ve been doing this whole time? We bought a fucking house together with how many bedrooms?”
“F-four.” I cleared my throat. “Four bedrooms.”
“We’re using one bedroom. What did you think we would have three extra bedrooms for?”
I shrugged. “An office for me—”
“Your attic is the office. Still have three rooms left.”
“You’ve always wanted an exercise room, and then your man cave. Th-that’s two rooms. The third is for guests.”
He shook his head and laughed, but it wasn’t a warm, fun Cam-laugh. It was alien, scary, hard. I didn’t know this man in front of me.
He wagged his finger at me, pacing the floor. “You know, my friends said you were playing me. That you were flighty as hell. Told me to get out while I can. But what did my dumb ass do? Buy a damn house with you.”
“That’s not dumb, Cam. Like you said, we’re investing in our future.”
“We don’t have a future!” He waved his arm about the room. “We can never make this house a home because you’re too damn scared that you’ll be hurt again. So, your dad left you. You aren’t the only child that grew up fatherless. Stop using that shit as an excuse and fucking grow up.”
I snapped my head back. “Grow up, huh? So, what, we can be married for five to seven years and then start hating each other? Oh, and have kids and use them as leverage or hurt them in the process? You see what’s going on with Kara and Nikki. Do their marriages seem like fun and fucking rainbows?”
“Married or not, you can’t avoid conflict. I don’t know why I have to tell a radio therapist this shit. Dig deep and give yourself the advice you like to dish out.”
“Fine. I’d tell me to find a man who isn’t stuck on the idea of marriage because it’s a piece of fucking paper. An expensive piece of paper. God! Why can’t you just be happy with what we have?”
“Because I love you. I want to marry you. And if, God forbid, something happens to me, I want to make sure you’re taken care of. Because I want to have kids and raise a family with you.” He was yelling by the end, a vein throbbing in his neck. Like a balloon losing its helium, his body folded and then slumped against a wall.
“Cam . . .” I reached for his face. He slapped my hands away, and pushed off the wall.
“I can’t—I can’t do this. We can’t do this.”
Fear quadrupled my heartbeat. This was it. I knew the day would come, but not like this.
“You’ve gotta go.”
“W-what?” Water drowned my lungs, swooshed through my chest, and clogged my throat.
“You need to leave. Be gone by the time I return from my trip. Three days is plenty of time.”
The dull headache from earlier had turned into a full-on migraine. A tingle shot through my fingers and gave way to numbness. “But I helped you with the down payment and the mortgage for months.”
“I’ll give you the money back. I’ve been setting aside the money. Silly me, I thought we could use that for our wedding.”
I reached