AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tuck’s easy smile remained, but Cam’s dropped from his face, and it occurred to me he wasn’t happy to see me. The idea stung like a slap. He’d been dismissive when I’d said goodbye before going to Austin, and now he looked almost upset to see me again. I swallowed hard, pushing down the hurt.
“Hey you,” Tuck called up. “We’ve got a ton of film to show you.”
“Oh yeah?” I started down the stairs. Though Cam hadn’t said a word, his eyes stayed on me the whole way down, and when I stopped in front of him at the bottom, I couldn’t help staring into those piercing blue eyes for a minute, trying to see what was going on behind them. My heart leapt at the attention, but I reminded myself that I’d just gotten back from solidifying my plans for the future. A future away from Kings Grove. Away from Cam. It didn’t matter what my heart thought. Cam had made it clear that the distance wasn’t something he thought could be overcome.
“Hey,” Cam said before dropping my gaze.
“You guys have been working?” I asked, following Tuck into the living room. I was relieved. I’d hoped they would, but hadn’t been sure they’d actually do it without me there. The wedding was right around the corner.
“Your scene list was a big help. We got a lot of the intro material and some shots around the Inn.”
“Oh.” My voice was a little flat. I’d wanted to be there to help with those. “Good.”
Tuck seemed to sense my disappointment, and he chucked my shoulder. “You weren’t around, sweetheart. We needed to get a few things taken care of.”
“Of course,” I agreed, realizing that having one foot already in Austin meant I wasn’t going to be fully present here either.
Cam seated himself on the couch and I took a spot at the other end as Tuck slipped the card into a huge laptop and popped it open, squeezing his large body between us. He hit “play” and though the shots were rough and cut abruptly from one to the next, the images themselves were perfect. Wide soaring views of the forest, the valley below, the bright incredible sky and the Inn.
“These are amazing,” I said. “I want to visit that place, and I’m already here.”
Tuck grinned, looking proud of himself, but Cam was distracted, and his mouth formed a doubtful line as if he had something to say but wasn’t willing to say it. I watched him, and when our eyes met again, he sprang up suddenly. “Better go take care of the dogs.”
I stood too, without planning to. “Can I come?” The words were out before I’d realized I was going to ask. “I… uh, I’ve missed them,” I told him.
He squinted at me, maybe seeing what I was really saying, that I’d missed him. “Sure,” he said, his voice still flat, noncommittal.
Tuck stood too then, grinned at us. “Don’t you kids get too crazy. I’m going to edit a few of these transitions.” He turned and headed for the big dining room table, which was strewn with paper and hand-drawn story boards for the movie. These guys really had been hard at work. I was glad—Maddie’s wedding was less than a week away. We needed to be ready.
I followed Cam down the front steps and stayed two paces behind him all the way to his house, where he opened the door to complete mayhem. The dogs were getting too big to stay together inside his little house while he was out, and the baby gates he’d used to block off the hall to the bedrooms had been trampled and clothes were gnawed and scattered around. A boot lay in the middle of the mess in pieces, one puppy sitting next to it with extremely guilty eyes. It dropped it’s little head when we stepped inside and Cam said in a disappointed voice, “Number Four. Bad dog.”
He turned to me. “That’s the third boot I’ve lost.”
“Sounds like you should just give them the other one.”
He lifted a shoulder, and together we cleaned up a bit.
“Tuck’s taking two of these guys tonight. I can’t keep them any more,” he said, shaking his head as we finished tidying up while the dogs jumped on our legs and feet and generally continued wreaking havoc around us. Matilda looked as tired as Cam, and I guessed at what it might be like to be trapped in a small house with total mayhem all day long. Exhausting.
“Should we let them out?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Cam said. What he didn’t say was that the second I opened the door, the puppies would scatter, and Matilda would go nuts trying to herd them into the pen Cam had set up. One got almost all the way down the driveway before I caught him and brought him back, dumping him over the little wall into the pen with a sigh of relief.
“Yikes,” I said, laughing.
“Yeah, Matilda’s the only one with the sense not to wander away.” He smiled as he talked about the dogs, and I saw a warmth in his eyes that I wished was aimed at me.
We leaned on the sides of the pen on our elbows across from one another, the dogs yipping and leaping around each other between us. For a minute, there was just the merry sound of the dogs and the heavy weight of Cam’s silence. Then he said, “How was your trip?”
“It was good,” I said. “Busy.” I told him about the concert series Theo had set up. “He’s ready for me to get down there as soon as possible.”
“What about the six month promise you made to your dad?”
“I talked to him about it in the car on the way back from the airport. He just wants me to be happy—and I think he feels like he accomplished what he set out to do in bringing me up here. We’ve talked.” An unfamiliar warmth rumbled through me, thinking about Dad now. “I’ve forgiven him. He explained a lot of things, and whatever resentment I had…it’s gone.”
Cam’s eyes held mine and he smiled. “That’s really good.”
“It is.”
