She hated the water.
Chapter 29
Her inner office-supply ho quivered.
Piper spent a horrifyingly long few seconds trying to remember how to swim. But then there was a splash next to her, and suddenly she was being held against another body.
“Okay,” Cam said. “I’m moving crazy up to the top of the list. Because what the actual fuck, Piper.”
“I wasn’t quite ready to let go!”
With a sigh, he swam her to the dock ladder and gave her a not-so-gentle shove up. She climbed to the dock and flopped onto her back, staring up at the sky before realizing he hadn’t come up after her. Sitting up, she peered over the side.
He was gone.
Like . . . gone. There was no sign of him as far as the eye could see. “Cam!” she yelled.
Nothing.
Oh, shit. She’d killed him. Fear clutched deep in her gut. He was drowning. Dear God, he was going to die and it was all her fault. She got to her feet and was just about to jump back in when he surfaced. He tossed his hair from his eyes with a single shake of his head and lifted a hand out of the water.
He had her journal.
He tossed it at her feet as he effortlessly pulled himself up onto the dock and flopped down at her side.
“Are you insane?” she demanded.
He was drenched, but the look he slid her was one hundred percent dry. “I believe the words you’re looking for are thank you.”
“Oh my God.” She thought he must be furious at her, but when she took a closer look, he was laughing.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s not funny. I thought I killed you.”
“I’m like a cat, I’ve got a few lives left.” He rose to his feet, vanished into the marina storage locker, and came back with two wool blankets. Wrapping one around her, he encouraged her to sit back down.
“I can’t believe I made the mistake of telling you to toss the journal into the lake.”
He wrapped the other blanket around himself and sat next to her. “I’ve made more than a few mistakes of my own.”
She stopped in the middle of trying to dry off the journal with her blanket and looked over at him in surprise. “You have?”
He let out a mirthless laugh. “Hell, yes. Many. I failed Rowan, and in some ways, my dad too. Finding out he needed me was just another nail in the coffin. Or so I thought. All of it felt like a noose around my neck at first. But I found a relationship with my dad that I didn’t know I needed. And then there’s Gavin and Winnie, who are family now too. Gavin, who lives unapologetically as he is, owning his mistakes and trying to make right what he can. I admire the hell out of that, Piper. And Winnie . . .” He shook his head with a small smile. “Twenty years old and made of one hundred percent bravado and sarcasm. She’s going to be one hell of a mom when she finds her sea legs, but she won’t be in it alone. She’ll have all of us.” He drew a breath. “I’ve fallen for all of them. And there’s something else I fell for too. Someone.” He looked at her. “You.”
She sucked in a breath. “What?”
“I love you, Piper.”
She shook her head. “No. You can’t.”
He gave a small quirk of his lips. “I know you like to control . . . everything. But not even you can tell me how or when or what to feel.”
“But . . .” Boggled, she shook her head. “Why?”
“Why do I love you? Easy. Your energy fuels my soul.”
She blinked. “My bad attitude, you mean? That fuels your soul?”
He smiled. “Your everything. You’re the calm in the storm.”
She stared at him. “Now I know you’ve lost it.”
“I mean every word. I love how you treat people. My dad, for instance. And Sweet Cheeks.”
“She’s not a people. She’s the anti-Christ.”
“You know what I mean. You give respect and dignity, even when it’s not always deserved. I love how you can always make me laugh, especially when I need it most. I love how you kiss me. I love how you just gathered me in and added me to your core unit.” He shook his head. “That means a lot. Actually, it means everything to me.”
There was no air. Why was there no air? “I got into U of C,” she said inanely.
He smiled. “Good. Congratulations. They’re lucky to have you.”
“Cam . . .” She closed her eyes because he was so amazing and gracious and kind. And supportive. She didn’t even know how to tell him how much that meant to her. “I can’t be the girl who changes her plans for the guy,” she whispered.
“I know.” His hand covered hers. “But I can be the guy who changes his plans for a girl.”
Her eyes flew open. “What?”
“I could move to Colorado. With you.”
“But the DEA . . .”
“I’ll figure it out, but I’m not living for my job.”
“But you’d have to move.”
“Moving around has always been all I know,” he said.
“But you wanted to stop having to do that, you wanted a home base.”
“You’re my home base.”
She stared at him. He made it sound so simple. “You can’t do that for me.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” she repeated, nowhere near calm. “Because you need to be here with your dad and Winnie and the baby. I’m not going to ask you to choose.” Her breath caught on the word, because in her experience, people didn’t choose her, not for their endgame.
“Piper.” He took both of her chilled hands in his warm ones now. “I want this to work. I’m willing to make this work, no matter where we live. We’re the core, and yeah, right now it needs to be about you, and that’s okay.”
“But what about you?”
He gave her a smile. “I’ll get my turn. Just tell me what you’re thinking.”
She was mostly thinking that Jenna had been right. Emmitt had been right. Her siblings too. They all knew that life was where you made room for it, and so was love and acceptance. She blew out a breath. “I was fine before you, you know. Just fine.”
His smile was unapologetic. “I wasn’t.”
She brought their joined hands up to her chest and pressed, then lifted her head. “Okay, yeah. Fine. Neither was I.”
His smile spread and she shook her head at him. “I actually thought I had all the answers, but I didn’t have any. Turns out you had them all.”
“If you really believe that,” he said on a dry laugh, “you don’t know me at all.”
But that was the thing—she did know him. Better than she’d ever known anyone. “You’ve got this way of drawing people in,” she said. “And inspiring trust. And love.”
He arched a sardonic brow. “Not in everyone.”
“You drew me in,” she admitted. “I trust you.” She hesitated. “I know losing Rowan was the hardest thing.”
“Yes. So would be losing you.”
Heart. Melted. She came up on her knees and put her hands on his shoulders. “I love you too, Cam. I have for a while. I was just scared.”