Camden by Shey Stahl
This is a stupid fucking idea. What am I thinking? I have no business being here, and how the hell am I going to keep my hands off River the whole entire evening and not be upset when Tiller refers to the guy that knocked River up as “the piece of shit”?
Yeah, so that’s exciting.
I’ve spent nearly every Christmas since I was twelve with the Sawyer family if I’m in the States. Every year is the same.
The kids run the show in the morning, with no rhyme or reason to their madness, and then we take the side-by-sides out into the desert.
I fear this, because guess who is riding with Tiller this year?
Me. Lucky guy, huh?
Usually, it’d be Roan but last year they had an incident where they jumped a ten-foot cliff and Roan now has dental implants in most of his front teeth.
Tell me the truth. Do you think he’s going to kill me? I’m thinking maybe I should wear body armor. Or carry a gun.
I’m kidding. Kind of.
“Are you sure about this?”
I turn to see River standing in the shop, staring at me with wide eyes. Setting the helmet down on the seat of the side-by-side, I step back. She comes forward, and after looking over her shoulder, she presses her body against mine.
“No. And I might die today so one last kiss?”
“Or fuck?” she adds, winking.
“I wish,” I sigh, jetting out my bottom lip. “But I’d like to keep my dick and maybe knock you up again someday. If anyone finds us fucking out here, we’re both dead.”
“Knock me up again?” she repeats. Her hands plant on my chest. Her nose scrunches in the cutest way. “Dude, no. I’m having one and done.”
“We’ll see about that.” With my hand on her hips, I back her in into the wall behind her. I’m rougher than I need to be, but enough she knows who’s in charge here. My mouth finds her neck first, one of my hands raising up to pull her sweater down a few inches to reveal her collarbone. It’s the first I’ve been alone with her today and haven’t even wished her Merry Christmas yet. “Come over tonight.”
“Why?” she pants.
Slipping my hand over on her hip, I reach inside her pants and stroke two fingers over her clit. “Because I want to….” I pause and insert both fingers. Her head hits the wall, her hand squeezing my wrist with one, my shoulder with the other. “And I need to wish you Merry Christmas.”
“You could just say it,” she breathes, her lips parting beautifully. I can’t deny it, but all I can think about is sticking my cock in her mouth.
“Nah.” Withdrawing my hand, I leave her wanting more and suck her juices off my fingers. “I’ll keep you waiting.”
“Why did you have your hand on Sissy’s potty?”
Both River and I jump back immediately. My heart stops when I see Wyatt standing in front of us.
While I pray my erection isn’t obvious, fear knots inside my chest. What if that had been Tiller? Also, has Wyatt been in here the entire time? River is the first to speak. “He didn’t. He was helping me adjust my pants because the baby was kicking.”
I don’t know if Wyatt buys that one, but she seems more concerned with the blood running down her arm. “I like the taste of blood,” she says, licking the spot she’s bleeding from.
“I don’t doubt that, devil child,” I say, picking her up and holding her upside down by her ankles. “Now where’s your helmet?”
She cackles as Tiller, Shade and Roan make their way into the shop. I turn away from them, set Wyatt on her feet and reach for the helmet. Thankfully my shorts are dark and you can’t tell the obvious semi I’m still sporting. I sneak a quick glance at River. Her cheeks are still flushed but at least it’s not obvious for her.
“What the fuck are you doing out here?” Tiller asks River. “You’re not going in your condition.”
I can tell the way he says “your condition” pisses her off. He’s being a dick to her lately, like he’s pissed she’s pregnant. Or disappointed. And while I understand on one level, she doesn’t deserve his harshness.
River rolls her eyes. “I know that. I was looking for Wyatt. Mom told me to go find her.”
Amberly, who walked in with Sloane on one hip and Saylor, Roan and Ophelia’s daughter on the other. “I did?”
“Yeah, you did.” River snaps, wide-eyed at her mom.
“Oh, yeah.” She looks at Wyatt next, now on Tiller’s back. Well, halfway. “There you are.”
Tiller’s dark eyes land on mine, and then River. I think he’s about to say something to us, but Wyatt shows her arm to her dad. “I’m bleeding.”
Tiller glances at it. “Gnarly, Wy.” But then his eyes find River, and then me. He looks at me, toying with his lip ring. Tiller’s gaze is always a mixture of hatred, confusion, and annoyance. And you never know which one outweighs the other. The only person he’s nice to is Amberly. He nods to the side-by-side, an edge to him that hadn’t been there earlier. “Get in, Cam-Man.”
Pray for my safety.
No, seriously. Start praying or my baby will be born a bastard.
Roan slaps his hand on my back, eyeing Tiller and then me. “Wanna ride with me, bud?”
“Nope.” Tiller answer for me. “Me and Cam-Man need to talk.”
“Don’t kill him,” Shade says, strolling past us with Tallulah next to him. “We need him next year.”
Tiller reaches for the keys. “I can’t make a promise like that.”
Fuck. I swallow over the dryness in my throat and pull my helmet on. For some reason, I glance over at River in that second. She’s nervously biting her nails and breathing heavy. I wink at her and then climb into the side-by-side next to Tiller.
He says nothing to me as he starts it up, the rumble vibrating my chest. I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous in my entire life.
You know what that say, everything in moderation?
Tiller Sawyer, he doesn’t live by those words. He pisses on them. This guy, he gave me my first drink, my sex education, and taught me how to fight. He also taught me moderation is for cowards, and anything you do should be limitless. Regardless, he has rules, and expects you to follow them until you’re man enough to break them. And if you’re man enough to take him on, well, you’re just as crazy as him.
Which explains why we’re on that same side of the dunes Roan busted his teeth out on.
Do you hear the music playing over the engine screaming through the desert? Probably not, but it’s “Dragula” by Rob Zombie. It’s thumping to the beat of my heart as I hold onto the roll cage. “Slow down!” I scream at him, bouncing around, despite the seat belt I’ve double checked three fucking times in the matter of ten seconds.
“What does freestyle give you?” Tiller yells over the music and engine.
Do you know much about the Wild Cat? If you don’t, he’s a confident, scrappy, crazy motherfucker who’s cool under pressure and has the pain threshold of a badger. He’s also clever.
“What?” I yell, staring at him. Sand roosts up from Roan’s side-by-side where he’s doing donuts with Lennox and Saylor. He’s being tame with the girls, and Tiller? I’m convinced I’m going to die any minute.
“I said… what the fuck does freestyle mean to you?” Tiller shouts, muscling the side-by-side to the right and then sharply to the left to avoid the edge.
“I uh, can you please keep it away from that fucking cliff?”
“Answer the question.”
“What do you mean?”
“Freestyle,” he barks. “What does competing mean to you? Why do you do it?”
“It’s a part of my life. An experience. Like, meditative.”
He nods, still going like hell on the side of the cliff. Like at any second he’s going to turn right and launch us off the side. “Like an obsession?”
“Yeah.” I suck in a sharp breath. “You know that saying: we ride together, we die together?”
He looks at me again with dark canyon eyes so fucking compulsive you never know from one minute the next what he’s thinking. He nods.
“I don’t want to die with you, ya crazy motherfucker. TURN LEFT!” I shout.
He doesn’t, and if I could see his lips under the helmet, I bet he’s smiling. “You want to know what my obsession is?”
“Tormenting the fuck out of people?”
He grins. “Flying.”
Can you guess what happens next?
If, by chance you guessed he turned over that cliff, you’d be wrong. What he does is possibly worse. He turns left all right, but doing close to a hundred miles an hour, and we do a series of snap flips through the dunes.
The next thing I remember, I’m outside the side-by-side, flat on my back, staring up at a cloudless sky. I don’t even have the energy to look up, or move. Tell me, am I paralyzed? Am I dead? I think of River, instantly, and then the baby.
A shadow obscures my vision and I see Tiller standing over me, blood pouring from his right eye. His helmet is off now and he’s grinning. “Ya alive?”
I breath in, and then out. “I think so.” Carefully, I sit up and glance around the wreckage. The side-by-side is destroyed; nothing but a roll cage is left. Is your heart pounding like mine? If not, slide your eyes to the ones burning a hole through me.
I look up at Tiller, and then the cliff behind us. I’m waiting for him to say something, anything, like question me about River, but he does the strangest thing.
He walks away.
Fuckin’ weird, right? I know what you’re thinking. Huge build up for nothing.
Not exactly. That was his way of scaring the shit out of me. A warning about pissing off the Wild Cat.
I stare at River beside me. We’re at the beach, days after that epic Christmas disaster and sitting on my tailgate wrapped up in blankets and eating tacos. By the way, see the cast on my wrist? Broke it in that crash with Tiller.
River and me, we’ve just gotten back from another doctor’s appointment where I finally got to see the baby moving around. I don’t know who he looks like yet, but he’s an active little thing. He barely sat still the entire appointment to the point the doctor had a hard time getting proper measurements from him.
River cried the entire time because she thought there was something wrong with him. Maybe she ate something spicy or whatever else she did that day, but she worried. Constantly.
I’ve never seen this side of her before. She’s always been so focused on racing and competing that seeing her so content on becoming a mother is a completely different side. And sexy. She’s glowing, her belly is getting bigger, her ass is filling out, and sure, all those things turn me on, but seeing her happy is the biggest turn on of all.
Despite all of that, I think about how to right this situation. I got my eighteen-year-old girl pregnant. I know what I need to do next. Pressing my lips to her temple, I stare out at the ocean and whisper, “We could get married.”
As soon as I say those words, she practically chokes on her taco. Actually, she does choke. After a minute, she sighs, stares at me and levels that same balls-to-the-wall glare at me. She rolls her eyes and laughs in my face. “Funny.”
“That’s not exactly the reaction I was going for.”
Look at her face. She’s doing that fish-out-of-water gape at me but it’s the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen, because for the last week, her face has been glowing and her cheeks are pink. The dusting of freckles more evident as she scowls at me and mumbles, “Be serious.”
I cradle her face in my hands and run my thumbs over her freckles. Does she see it? That every part of her is like dust particles from a meteorite, leaving memories with me. “I am.”
“No, you’re not,” she says seriously, setting her taco down in the foil. “You’re just saying that because you think it’s what I want to hear. You don’t want me to be your wife.”
The way she says wife, the title of being mine, it makes my cock twitch. I’m not ashamed to admit that. “Bullshit.”
“Bullshit what?”
“That I don’t want you to be my wife.”
“You do?”
I smirk. “Yes, someday. I didn’t see it happening when you’re eighteen, but if that’s what you want, I’ll ask.”
Another eye roll. “No.”
“No, what?”
“I don’t want it because of this.” She points to her stomach. “Camden, can’t you see how this looks to me? You break it off with me, then I get pregnant and suddenly everything is okay? We can be together because we fucked up? I don’t like how it looks. It’s like you’re settling and I’m not second place.”
“I never said you were second place.” I wrap my arm around her shoulder. “When I marry you, it’ll be despite this situation and because I want to.”
She pushes my face away from hers. “You’re crazy.”
“I am.” I sneak in a peck on her cheek. “Because of you.”
In a sense, she’s right to feel this way, to have this apprehension. I’ve only ever made excuses as to why I couldn’t be with her. And the truth came down to my own insecurities. I don’t think I’m good enough for River.
I believe I’m not.
