Instead, Anika stops to study Cam. He’s silent, moving towards her again. She waits for him to indicate which is his house, but he just takes her hand, lifting it and pulling her in towards him like they’re about to launch into a dance. Or just another step in the one they’re already in. Cam nestles her against him for a moment then pushes his lips out to wordlessly point at one of the houses nearby. She laughs and turns to walk towards it, Cam following after her. They climb the concrete steps up to the main door and a security light in the porch of the basement flat below them flicks on, making Anika jump slightly. It’s his turn to let out a soft laugh. It drifts out through his nostrils as he reaches into his pocket for his keys.
‘Nervous?’ he asks.
Anika climbs up one more step until she’s flush with his back as he undoes the locks. ‘Nope,’ she says, lying. ‘You?’ Her tone is teasing. Cam pushes the door open but pauses in the doorway and turns his head to her slightly, looking over his shoulder.
‘Yeah, actually.’
He waits, just looking at her, until butterflies flutter furiously in her stomach again. Then he steps away, flicking on the hallway light. The walls inside are coated in a chic paint colour somewhere between grey and brown, the skirting boards and ceiling contrasting in immaculate white. A wooden staircase leads up into darkness on the left-hand side – he must have two floors. Anika follows Cam through a door into a large open-plankitchen–dining–living room and he switches on some sidelights; a floor lamp sheds a pool of light over a round dining table, another on a side table illuminates comfortable, well-designed grey soft furnishings. The kitchen is cream, lacquered and clean. Cam moves through and switches on some lights under the cupboards. Anika notices sliding doors on the far side of the kitchen that lead out into a garden.
‘Blimey,’ she says. ‘This isnice.’
Cam ducks his head, eyes fixed on her, and pulls a face somewhere between smugness and gratitude, pressing his palms together with a small bow. She’s still standing in the living-room area. He shrugs out of his suit jacket, shaking it out for a second before hanging it on the back of one of the dining chairs. Then Cam lets out a growl and stretches slightly like he’s trying to dispel the tension that Anika can sense in his body, just as she can feel it in her own. She thinks back to the sex she’s had since everything that happened with the hospital, the diary … She had a compelling sense of what she wanted and went after it. The people she’s got it with – Hattie, Mo – have been pretty much just a by-product of that desire. But this feeling brewing with Cam is so much more conscious, so much deeper. She’s veryaware– of Cam’s essence, of their history. With him there’s no way she could tap purely into her desires without them getting snagged on memories. On emotions.
For the moment she settles on honesty.
‘This is weird.’ Anika puts her bag down beside one of the sofas and wanders over to a pewter fireplace, above which is a large mirror. She avoids the reflection of her eyes, quickly moving away to stand in front of a shelving unit full of books and pictures.
‘Hmm.’ Cam rumbles in response to what she’s said. He’s still in the dining area, leaning both hands on the chair where his jacket hangs, the motion making the muscles in his arms moredefined. ‘Facts,’ he says, but doesn’t move anything more than his eyes towards her from across the open space. Anika alights on a picture of Cam, Zaya and their parents where the kids look around twelve. The elder Asiedus stand slightly stiffly side by side, while Cam and Zaya are turned to each other in front of them, grinning in matching green-and-yellow shell suits. Anika keeps moving, picking up a couple of awards that are on the shelf, including a Perspex one that spells out MOBO.
‘Forgot you won one of these,’ Anika says, grinning at Cam.
Cam chuckles softly, pushing off from the chair and moving over to Anika, half of his body behind hers, looking over her shoulder. The heat of him ignites her, even without him touching her.
‘Do you know what?’ she says after a beat, turning around fully to face him.
He stays close. ‘What?’
She pauses. ‘These dogs arebarking.’ Anika looks down at her feet and Cam laughs properly this time.It’s after midnight. The diary protection on these heels must have worn off.She thinks it without question. Pressing one palm against his sternum for balance, she kicks off one stiletto and then the other, dropping down from almost-eye-to-eye so that she should now have to look up at him a bit. But Cam’s chin is dropped towards his chest, gaze angling down at her. The hand she still has resting on his chest rubs up and down fractionally as the movement of his breath increases. She can feel his heart beating beneath it and her head starts to swim a little. Anika wants to believe it’s just from the change in altitude.
Both Cam’s hands are thrust into his pockets, his eyelids lowered. ‘I try not to hang on to much from back then,’ he says. ‘But the last time I was alone with you, before all the shit went down … Boy. That sticks in my mind. It honestly does.’ His voice vibrates the molecules all the way up her arm and Anika has tofight to keep her oxygen circulating.
‘Mine too,’ she replies in a whisper.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Still standing by the shelves in his living room, Cam pulls his hands from his pockets to reach for Anika’s shoulders. His hands hover before he lets them land, and a slow smile of reminiscence breaks his lips apart. She studies his mouth, wanting it on her but also desperately wanting to hear the words his lips are about to form. ‘Where have you been, Anika Lapo?’ he asks gently, that quizzical look back on his face, his face close to hers.
Anika takes a step back in her bare feet. ‘I don’t know, man. I’ve been about.’
‘Nah,’ he says almost immediately, then pauses, tilting his head. He still reminds her of that curious sixteen-year-old boy, but he’s all man now. ‘Something is different. Like you said earlier.’
Anika isn’t sure this is the line of questioning she wants to get into right now, but she speaks without thinking. ‘I was waiting. I was bound up, just waiting for my life to start for thirty years. And then …’ She looks over at Cam. ‘Several weeks ago, they told me something was wrong with me. Like, seriously wrong.’ She’s hesitating, she knows it – even with the protections she’s written on every page of the diary.
Cam’s jaw tenses ever so slightly. ‘They?’
‘Doctors. My bowel nearly perforated.’ She nestles one hand against her stomach. ‘That can mean lights out,’ she clicks her other fingers, ‘like that. You can be gone. Dead.’ The word echoes with startling finality in her brain and she almost thinks she sees Cam flinch. On the exhale of a huge breath, she adds, ‘But then the concept of death set me free.’
His movements are slow motion. One leg moves back a little to better support him as he leans away slightly, his arms folding over one another. Thoughts churn visibly, but all he says is, ‘Yeah?’
Anika nods. Steel supports her back as she straightens it. ‘The thing is, I … Irejectedit.’ Her hands swipe through the empty air. ‘I took control of my life from that second on. I refused to just let life happen to me. Now I have a place where I can make every intention clear and …’ Anika pauses. She wants to tell him about the diary, but she stops herself. Cam is perhaps the only person she would ever tell, because she feels like he might understand, and yet the confession doesn’t come. ‘Now I’m good. I’m better than good.’
‘You took control,’ Cam says. No question mark in his tone. He drinks her in and she feels more fully seen than she’s ever felt before. Even without her high heels her legs tremble for a moment, but she doesn’t break eye contact.
He moves closer to her again. ‘Life has done its best to make me feel helpless too, you know,’ he says, despite Anika’s statement. And it’s because of that – the way he sees through the layers of what she’s said – that she is scared that hedoessee her. That Cam sees more than she could ever have thought. Deep, deep down into the tiny fragment inside her that continues to be deathly afraid in spite of everything. The part that is still locked in fear that she could lose everything at any time, because it almost happened before and she wasn’t anywhere near ready. The part that is so desperate to remake herself in a better light while she has the chance.
‘That night. Everything that happened in the park … Losing Zay. That changed me.’
It unnerves Anika to hear Cam say this. He turns his face to the side, but his eyes remain locked on her, wordlessly asking if she knows what he means. She does.
