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Tuck came backthe next day and showed up at my house with his camera, ready to work. I stood in the door for a moment after he knocked, swallowing down my jealousy and my questions, and then I let him in.
“Dust is going to be an issue up here,” he said, shaking his head. “It reminds me of that shoot out toward Death Valley. The future western thing?”
I laughed. “I remember that one. Weren’t you hooking up with the Mae West character?”
“What I do in my free time is not your business,” he said, pretending to be offended. “After all, I’m not quizzing you about what you’ve been doing in your off time, am I?” he wiggled his eyebrows and it was obvious he was talking about his room mate.
I blew out a frustrated breath. It’d be easier to just talk about Harper and get the topic out of the way than it would be to endure suggestive questions the whole day. “Nothing’s been happening there for weeks,” I said. “Actually kind of thought maybe you’d been—“
“I’ll cut you off right there,” Tuck said. “It was clear there was something between you when I arrived. I wouldn’t step in the middle of that any sooner than I’d walk into a pond full of crocs.”
“Very Aussie reference,” I pointed out.
Tuck grinned. “You like her. She likes you. There’s no room for a third, even if you are mucking the whole thing up.”
“Yeah,” I said, agreeing and hoping maybe we were done with the topic. Relief lightened my limbs as I stood to get the plans Harper had printed out. Knowing she and Tuck hadn’t been involved banished some of the dark thoughts I’d let myself entertain.
“Yeah, so when she gets back, you’re gonna take a stand, right? Let her know?”
“She’s got plans, man. I’m not getting in the way of that.”
“Plans change, Cam. That’s part of life. You switch directions to pursue new opportunities. That’s how I ended up here, in the mountains with you. Hell, that’s how I ended up in Hollywood.” He shook his blond head, hair falling into his eyes. “My whole life has been about shifting plans, catching the next wave.”
“Well, it’s not for me to decide.”
“You have to let her know there’s a choice to be made. In no uncertain terms.”
I dropped my eyes, studied the knotted pine floor between my feet and listened to the chaotic antics of the dogs all around us. It was time to find them homes. “I don’t know. I mean…”
“Jess,” Tuck suggested.
I raised my gaze to meet his, seeing both the answer and the question there. “Yeah, I mean… I feel like it’s wrong on some level, like it’s a betrayal of her.”
“She loved you. Do I really have to say ‘she’d want you to be happy’? You know this.”
Puppy number two jumped up into my lap then, sending the papers I held scattering to the floor where numbers four and five eagerly investigated them. “I’ve got to divest myself of some dogs, man!” I was grateful for the distraction as I lifted number two down and bent down to get the papers.
“Well, I’ll take two of them,” Tuck said. “If you don’t mind them being in the big house.”
I shook my head. “Clean up after ‘em.”
“I’ll choose when we get done today,” he said, grinning as he watched them romp around the room that had basically become a doggy play pen. “But we’re not done. You need to talk, and I know there’s no way you’ll go see someone qualified, so talk to me. I’m like a sponge. I’ll just absorb everything you say, suck it all away.”
“Weird analogy,” I told him.
He waved a hand, indicating I should continue.
I took a deep breath and found that I did want to tell him, actually, that I had something to talk about, something I’d been holding onto for a long time. “Jess and I weren’t happy,” I finally said, the words leaving me like a poison I’d been holding inside.
He looked surprised for a split second, eyebrows climbing, eyes narrowing. “You put on a good show.”
I nodded. “We got married too fast. It was an impulse. But when we got together, after the romance had settled and we were just living together, married…” I trailed off, remembering the disappointment in my wife’s eyes every day as I failed to live up to whatever her expectations of me were. “I think she was getting tired of me. And then she got sick.”
“Oh man,” Tuck said.
“And life became about that.” I wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, rubbing it for a minute as I thought, as the guilt and the love and the sadness all pooled inside me. “I let her down. In so many ways. And then she died.”
“You know it’s not your fault,” Tuck suggested.
