He could see the questions in Cam’s green eyes, and he knew Cam would never ask them. Just like he would never tell Cam that sometimes he wanted Allison to be here to see her girls so bad.
But Cam was his lover now, and he was thinking about asking Cam to get married. It was a grown-up kind of love, not a young love like his and Allison’s, and not a shelter from the storm. It didn’t matter that his family didn’t care about him anymore. He had Cam’s family, and they loved those girls, and that was important.
But even if it was just him and Cam against the world, like it had been with Allison, he would take it in heartbeat.
“I love you,” he told Cam. “Don’t you ever doubt that.”
“I love you too, baby, and I’ll be just fine here on my own for a few while you take her to Girl Scouts. You make sure she knows that.”
“I will, I promise. And she’ll come home and she’ll tell you all about her meeting. You know she will. She adores you. She’s just scared that things are changing. Again.”
Bekka had seen the most change out of all the kids, and he knew now that it was weighing on her. He would work on that. Hell if he had to, he’d get a therapist.
“I’ll be waiting right here. I want to know everything that happens.”
He bent down to take a kiss as Rebekka came pelting back into the room with her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m ready, Daddy.”
“Look at that; so am I.”
She flashed a look at Cam. “I… will see you after Girl Scouts, Cam.”
“I can’t wait to hear it all about it, honey. I promise I’ll be careful while you’re gone. In fact, I think I’ll go sit on the couch and hang out with Rosie.”
She looked relieved. “Rosie will take care of you. Come on, Daddy, let’s go.”
Mitch took her hand and gave Cam a questioning look. Cam nodded and waved him off with his good hand. So Mitch had to believe that he was going to be okay.
He had to believe it was all going to be okay because he wasn’t willing to go back to where he had been before Cam had come into his life.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cam was pretty sure by the time his collarbone healed up, he was going to lose his mind.
When the week of Christmas rolled around, his arm was feeling pretty good, even though it wasn’t healed yet. And the rest of his bruises had faded for the most part. The bonk on his head was not leaving any lasting damage that he knew of.
His biggest challenge was his collarbone, and he couldn’t hardly pick anything up still. He couldn’t pull, he couldn’t push, and he wasn’t allowed to ride his horses, which made him nuts.
Mitch was out working on a job. Not roofing. The weather wasn’t good enough for that, but he had branched out into crews that did flooring as well, since Mitch knew a lot of tile guys, and that was making him some good money.
Mark was working in the workshop out back, which he had outfitted real quick from an old utility shed. He was making some kind of thing for the kids. He had no idea what. It had to do with swings or something. Cam wasn’t sure.
So, it was just him and the girls inside. Rachel and Bekka were making chocolate-dipped spoons. The kind that you put in hot chocolate and let the chocolate melt into the liquid. One way or the other, there was white and dark chocolate and sprinklesfrom one end of the kitchen to the other, and he was trying to avoid that while simultaneously making sure no one burned themselves while they were melting things.
It took him about twenty minutes, he figured, from the last time he’d seen her to realize that Sarah had gone missing along with Rosie. She hadn’t been particularly interested in chocolate dipping, but he thought she was watching a movie out in the front room, and she wasn’t there.
“Hey, Bekka, have you seen Sarah?” Cam asked.
Bekka had seemed to be in a better mood, so he was hoping he wasn’t pulling down fire on his head by asking.
A little frown pulled her eyebrows together, and she looked around the kitchen and then peered into the front room. “I’ll go check her room.”
“I can do that, kiddo. It’ll do me good to get up and move around.” He winked at her and she kind of chuckled. “You just make sure Rachel doesn’t pull that bowl of chocolate down on top of her head, okay?”
“Deal.” She nodded once, like that was that, and he supposed it was at least in her twelve-year-old mind.
Cam made his way to Sarah’s room, where he knocked on the door. When nobody answered, he peeked in. Black lace curtains, black satin bedspread, Wednesday Addams poster on the wall. No Sarah. That was worrying.
He headed back to the kitchen, where he stomped his feet into a pair of muck boots and threw a jacket over his bad arm while shoving his other arm into the sleeve. “You two be careful. I’m gonna go see if Sarah’s out with Mark in the shed.”
