My heart stops when he slams his fist into the wall at full force, obliterating the sheetrock in its way.
"Cam!" I shoot up off the bed, but before I can even reach him he throws two more punches until there is a gaping hole in his bedroom wall.
I grab his bicep to stop him and he turns to me, enraged. I jump back. I've seen Cam mad, but never like this.
He's beside himself that he's frightened me, but I'm not afraid of him, I'm afraidforhim. His knuckles have already begun to swell.
He thrusts his fingers into his hair and pulls. He's jumping out of his own skin, at a loss for what to do with his fury, unable to unleash it in front of me because of my pitiful reactions.
He turns away, sucking in several deep breaths before staggering over to the corner of his bedroom and sliding to the floor. He sits with his knees bent, his elbows resting atop them, his head hanging down, his hands in his hair.
"How, Rory? How did you get that fuckin' gash? What else haven't you told me? Tell me everything. No more hidin'. Please, I can't take anymore. Just get it all out, whatever else there is. Now.Please, Ror. Just tell me, please." He's rambling and begging and I'm destroyed by his pain. I'm not sure I've done the right thing for Cam by telling him any of this at all. But it's too late to turn back now - he's seen the cut, and there is nothing else, and I can't know what other horrors he must be imagining.
I walk tentatively to where he's sitting. I don't know if he hears me approach, but I'm afraid to sit too close, afraid how he'll react when I tell him this last part, and I don't want him to have to hold in his steam for fear of frightening me. I sit down on the floor a few feet away, leaning against his bed. He doesn't lift his head.
"He tried to rip off my underwear like-" I'm about to say "like usual" again, but Cam has said how it affects him to hear me talk about these things so matter-of-factly, so I catch myself. "I had my uniform on, so they were covered by my spankies. He couldn't just tear through them and he got real frustrated. He, uh, used his house key."
I'm aware of Cam's knuckles fisting in his hair, so tight they're turning white.
"I don't know if he even knew he was cuttin' me. He was just tryin' to get them off," I offer. I'm defending Robin.Why the hell am I defending Robin?
All of a sudden, Cam shoots up from his corner. "Stay here," he murmurs, and stalks toward the door.
"Cam-" I go after him, of course I do. He stops in the doorway and turns; I nearly smack into him.
"I'll be right back,okay? I promise. I don't want to scare you, Rory girl, and I just really need to yell and hit something right now." He follows my gaze to the giant hole he punched into the wall just minutes earlier.
"Something else," he amends, and then leaves, roughly closing the door behind him.
****
Icry face down on Cam's comforter that right now offers me no comfort whatsoever. I know Cam's in the garage,taking it all out on his punching bag. I hear his yells and gruntseven through the floorboards. He doesn't let up for at least thirty minutes, and neither do my tears.
I don't hear him reenter, but I feel the bed dip as he sits beside me. I turn my head to find him shirtless and dripping with sweat,his muscles bulging from his workout, and I'm reminded that I'm still topless but for my bra.
Camholds up a first aid kit. "You gonna let me redress that?" he asks softly, his fingertips gently grazing the side of my hip over my pants.
"It's fine," I murmur.
"Come on, Ror," he pleads,and I relent. He's right. The gauze should be changed. I roll over and sit up, wincing when he starts to roll down my waistband. "These are pressing on the wound, Ror," he chides.
I hold back from spewing some suggestive comment like "so take them off" and let him put ointment on the cut and redress it. I silently grumble to myself over the direction the evening has taken.I can't help but resent the fact that in such a short span of time, Cam has gone from seeing me as something to be desired, to some kind of pathetic, abused puppy.
Cam lightly runs his fingers from my hip up my side, stopping just under my bra.I shiver.
"God, you're beautiful," he murmurs as his eyes rake me from head to toe.
I can't help but roll my eyes before glancing down, my gaze lingering on the particularly excessive damage to the limited cleavage of my right breast. I look anything but beautiful.
"I mean it, Ror," he says, obviously guessing the root of my skepticism. His thumb gently brushes over the offending injuries - an especially vibrant bruise flanked by slightly lighter, smaller marks, all just under a perfect mold of Robin's teeth, all in black and blue.
His touch makes me tremble, and it's such an alien feeling - to be trembling from desire and not fear.
"Even with his marks all over you, you're the most beautiful thing I've ever laid eyes on... This?" He strokes my bruises again, then gestures to my cut. "It'll heal, Rory girl.But until it does, it still doesn't change how I look at you-how I've been lookin' at you since we hit fuckin' puberty, okay Ror?"
I blink at him, trying to process how he can find me attractive in this moment, but even more, how he always knows exactly what I'm thinking. My every concern, my every fear.
Cam leans in slowly, and kisses me softly. But before I can deepen the kiss, he pulls away, leaving his forehead pressed to mine. "This sure ain't how I imagined gettin' you topless for the first time," he murmurs, and we both laugh.
