Camden by Shey Stahl

 

Do you see that girl with the purple hair lying on the bed? The one staring at the ceiling wondering where her next move will take her? That girl, she’s addictive, controlling at times, self-absorbed, shy, obsessed with the rush, hard to tame and a little bit crazy. Okay, maybe more like a lot crazy. I’d say 25 percent and the rest falls into all those other categories.

I wonder what part of my decisions last night fall into the crazy or addictive category? Probably all of it because, I kissed him. And when I say him like you’re supposed to know who the fuck I’m talking about, I mean him. Because there’s only one. Once you meet him, there’s no going back. And for the first time, our lips touched and I know this is the point of no return for me. Why? Because that feeling in my chest, the one pumping wildly with the memory and constricting at the same time, that one tells me it’s over. He’s the one.

I’ve been with other guys because I wanted to make Camden jealous, but none compare to him and jealousy isn’t a trait of his.

Camden Rivera and me together, it’s been a long time coming, since the day I met him and he taught me how to play Halo while letting me sit on his lap. I was almost four, he was ten. Six years, eight months and twenty-one days separate us.

“He’s too old for you,” Amberly said when she caught me needing to be anywhere he was when I was eleven.

“Don’t even think about it,” Tiller warned when he noticed the interest Camden showed when I was fifteen and I sat on his lap wearing a bikini and he tensed.

“I know that look,” Ophelia told me when he won his first X Games event and I kissed his cheek at sixteen.

“Careful, girl,” Scarlet teased when she caught us in the shadows between trailers, Camden’s hand between my legs for the first time. That was two weeks ago and ever since then, Camden’s been wearing down. Every day he gets a little closer to what I want. Him. Always. Forever.

How it started? Simple. Easy. Like finding a soul mate. When in fact, it might have ultimately been a terrible decision in a long line of other terrible decisions that ultimately led to this. Me. In love with Camden Jerad Rivera. And not just any kind of love. Love that exists for a seventeen-, um, almost eighteen-year-old girl that was drawn in by that beautiful, rugged, untouchable boy who had been my ride or die from the first day I stepped foot inside the Sawyer brothers’ mansion.

Laying in my bed with the warm California sun trickling into the room, I think about the last time I slept in this room. I usually stay at my house, but I still have a room at the mansion because believe it or not, I live here too. We all do. It’s kind of the house we all gravitate to when we want to be together.

I think about the breathy, angsty way Camden whispered for me to stop last night. He didn’t want me to. Not at all, but Camden, he’s too loyal to the ones who raised me to act on it. And I say ones, because there are many. I wasn’t just raised by Tiller, my dad. Shade taught me my passion for dirt bikes. Roan taught me dedication, and my dad, he taught me, well, I don’t know. Addiction?

I’d love to say my dad quit his excessive lifestyle when I was four, but that’d be a lie. Being Tiller Sawyer’s daughter is a lot like being kidnapped by a holy fucking terror adrenaline junkie with psychotic violent tendencies and a big heart. Sweet and candid, he gave me a sense of security I didn’t know I needed. Probably because nobody crossed him. And when nobody was looking, you would have never thought the same guy they call Wild Cat would be the same one who would sit and watch Beauty and the Beast with me over and over again. And sometimes I believe I’m the only one who got to see layers underneath what made him the Wild Cat to so many.

I actually didn’t hate being raised by him at the mansion, or the fact that my aunt became the mother I never knew, but needed in more ways than one. In fact, all the Wives became my mothers. You heard that saying it takes a village to raise a kid. All the Sawyer kids were raised by many.

Even Camden. My dad and uncles, they’re his brothers. Not by blood, but he’d do anything for them and in turn, they’d lay their lives on the line for him. Well, all but one if he found out my first orgasm came from Camden when I was barely sixteen. I don’t even think Camden knows it happened, but it did. In the back of his moto van after I won my first championship and he let a girl high on adrenaline straddle his lap. To this day, I wonder what he thought of that night, but I’m too afraid to ask. That’s where the shyness comes into play. He never once touched me, but he also never told me to stop what I was doing. I do recall the look in his eyes, the passion, the desire, but he never acted on it.

I know what you’re thinking. He’s too old for you. And that might be true, but you weren’t raised in my world. I’ve been a professional athlete since I turned thirteen and started racing motocross full time. I went to private schools, rarely had a curfew, drank before I should have, partied with the craziest of them and learned sex education from those same parties at the mansion. Were my parents irresponsible? Uh, probably to some, but my happiness came first. I don’t say that to imply they gave me everything I wanted. I didn’t get a Shelby Mustang for my sixteenth birthday, but I asked for one. And tattoos? Nope. Won’t allow it until I’m eighteen, regardless of the fact that both my parents have them from head to toe.

Sometimes I think they’re hypocrites.

Sometimes I realize they’re looking out for me.

“Fuck.” Beside me, Gray stirs, flopping her arms over her face to shield it from the morning sun. “What time is it?”

“Noon,” I snort, smiling at her as I roll over. “Feel better?”

“No,” she grumbles, sighing into her hands and then laying them flat on the mattress on either side of her. “How’d we get back here?”

“Camden.” I stare at Gray, waiting for the reaction I know is coming. All my friends—okay, I don’t have many—but they all know Camden controls everything I do, without meaning to. I don’t know why that is either. It’s like some kind of cosmic crush that won’t release its hold on me.

“Oh shit.” She sits up on her elbows, her chest rising and falling with each breath. “Was he totally pissed you were there?”

My heart pumps a little faster remembering the way his kiss tasted. The hunger behind his grip on my hip and the needy way he begged me to go inside. “Wasn’t pleased, that’s for sure. He made us leave.”

Her brow creases, her natural beauty never more apparent as it is first thing in the morning with the sun shining on her. Okay, it’s afternoon, but Gray Riley, she’s beautiful. Tough, independent, reliable, and so fucking talented behind the wheel. I like to joke with her she has it easy with a roll cage around her, takes away all the balls in going two hundred miles per hour.

At eighteen, she’s leading the NASCAR points and well on her way to follow in her grandpa’s legendary shoes. Sometimes, I’m jealous of her. Not in the sense that she has things I don’t, but in the sense that she does. Daxel Stone. She has the guy and doesn’t have to hide her true feelings around her family. I do. Hell, they’ve been together since she was fourteen years old!

“I kissed him,” I tell her, curious what her reaction will be.

Gray reaches for her phone beside her, still half asleep. “What did he say?”

I lay back on the mattress and stare up at the ceiling. I had my mom paint it black when I was seven. I wanted to be able to look at the stars anytime, so she hired some guy to come in and paint me a night sky. When you turn the lights out, the stars glow. “Called me a fucking kid as usual.”

Gray purses her lips, her focus on me “He’s one to talk.”

“That’s what I said.”

She glances over at me, and then her phone. “Does your dad know?”

I shake my head, straightening my posture as I sit up and hold my determination. “Fuck no. He’d kill me. And Camden.”

“Truth.”

“What’d your dad say about you and Dax?”

Gray sits up and swings her legs over the side of my bed. “Nothing really. Asked if I was happy with him, but hasn’t said much else.” Laughing, she tosses a magazine at me. “I find it weird that your parents are naked on the cover of Sports Illustrated.”

My eyes sweep to the magazine and I chuckle, pushing it aside. “They’re not naked. His junk is covered up.” It’s true. My parents are on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Tiller is in front, his helmet covering his dick, thankfully, and Amberly is wrapped around his side with everything that would be risqué covered by shadows. That’s my parents for you though. Extreme.

They’ve featured my uncle Shade and Aunt Scarlet before, Roan and Ophelia, but my parents held out longer. Or rather my dad did. He’s never one to follow suit, because he hates being told what to do, and made fun of his brothers for giving into a cover shoot.

Gray pulls on her shorts, staring at her phone on my bed. “I need to catch D’s fight tonight. Sorry.”

I sit up. “Where is it?”

Her eyes light up. “Madison Square Garden.”

I blink, steadily. “Wow. That’s amazing. I still remember when he was fighting in the basement of a bar.”

“I know.” She grins and her happiness is damn near blinding. “Seems so crazy to think he’s fighting for the title soon.”

“About as crazy as my eighteen-year-old best friend leading the points in the NASCAR Cup Series,” I hedge, grinning at her with my pillow tucked in my lap.

She rolls her eyes. Gray, she doesn’t like attention. Of any kind, when sober. Drunk her is an entirely different story. Regardless, she’s been pushed into the position she’s in. Loathes being in the spotlight about as much as I do, despises getting her picture taken and still, she’s constantly shining in it. We’re kids, really, as Camden said. Barely legal, yet thrown into a lifestyle and expected to perform. Gray and me, we didn’t ask to be their poster children for a sport our families dominated. Simply put, we were two misfits with adrenaline in our veins and everything to prove.

Holding up her phone, she grins. “Jonah’s asking about you….”

Ah, yes. Gray’s cousin Jonah. Sweet guy, races sprint cars with the World of Outlaws and I’d be lucky to be with someone like him, but he’s not the one that holds my heart. He’s a bit cocky, for sure, and my first. A year ago, I hooked up with him at a race in Grand Rapids and he took my virginity in a race car hauler with his dad on the other side of the door, clueless as to what the kids in the back were doing. We didn’t talk much after that but he keeps tabs on me through Gray.

“Come with me,” she says, eyeing me.

“I can’t.” I sigh. “I’m racing at Mammoth this weekend and then I have the Mayhem Tour starting up.”

“Shit.” She pockets her cell phone and reaches for her bag, leaning in to kiss my cheek. “I’ll see you in a couple months then, right?”

“Yep. I’ll see you at the Sonoma race, right?”

“Okay, miss you already,” she says as she’s leaving the room.

I don’t get to see Gray as often as when I was racing GNCC events because we used to end up in the same cities a lot of the times. I met her back when my uncle Roan teamed up with Lane Riley and created a shock company. From then on, we were inseparable. Now we only see each other when we can sneak away from our obligations. It’s crazy to think that I haven’t even graduated high school yet and live the life of a professional racer, much like Gray.

Gray leaves and Wyatt—my little sister—comes barging through the doors with her black hair standing on end with what appears to be hairspray. Wyatt Isabella, she’s fire. I don’t say that in a way like, she’s cool. She drives me absolutely insane. Spitting image of Tiller, she has his instability and Amberly’s free spirit. That combined is lethal. Never trust her. Last week, she set fire to the motocross track. It’s freaking sand and clay. How she did it, I don’t know, but something about a fire jump that got out of control and she dumped over a gas can once she saw the fire because she wanted bigger flames.

The minute she’s in my room, she’s into all my shit. Like I said, we don’t live at this house. Nobody really does, but it’s constantly occupied and I keep my room here because of Wyatt.

I cringe when she picks up my pink teddy bear perched near the window. “Wyatt! Stop it.”

She scrunches her tiny dark brow. “Make me.” Wyatt reminds me of a baby Megan Fox. Long black hair, freckles like mine dusting her upturned button nose and full, rich, cherry lips. She’s nicknamed Whizzy and hates it when you call her it. Why do they call her that? Because she whizzes by you in a tornado of batshit crazy on her way to cause trouble. She got expelled from fucking kindergarten. Kindergarten, people! All you do is color and she couldn’t even get her shit together for that. Now she’s in a private Christian school because my parents are trying to show her Jesus. Yesterday was her seventh birthday and she might as well be going on thirteen because she is fucking mean. She knows Jesus all right and they’re gonna have some long talks when she meets him about all the ways she’s an asshole.

“Put it down,” I warn her again, lifting up my pillow like I’m going to throw it at her.

Her hand plants on her hip, pushing her black hair from her face. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s not half black, half white, because this kid is straight up Cruella. “I don’t have to,” she mocks in the sassiest tone.

Don’t kill your baby sister.

There’s eleven years between me and Wyatt and it shows. She drives me insane, but I’d also kill any fucker who messed with her.

“Wyatt Isabelle, do I need to get dad?”

That gets to her and she drops her hand from the bear and runs away. If there’s anyone she’s terrified of, it’s Tiller. All he has to do is raise a dark eyebrow her way and she straightens up. He scared me when I was little too. Now he’s more like the dad all my friends want to stare at. And if you’ve ever met the six-foot lean man they call the Wild Cat, you’d understand why that is. For nearing forty, he’s still got all his hair, laugh lines near his eyes, though he rarely laughs, and tattoos over the majority of his body. His hair is usually in a Mohawk, or messy to the point you wonder if he’s brushed in the last ten years, and if he’s not glaring, you should be afraid because despite him not having a permanent scowl, nothing good ever comes from being near him.

When Wyatt leaves, I take the bear from the window and stare at it. I touch the bracelet wrapped around the bear’s neck. It hasn’t moved since that day and stays in this room where Amberly placed it.

I have one memory of my birth mom. One where I was known as River James Taylor. And it’s not one that you would think I’d remember. It’s an aftermath. The devastation that the two people I loved the most were gone. I was three years old at the time and my therapist tells me it’s my imagination putting together pieces of what people told me. I don’t believe that. I think I remember it because she wants me to.

I was in the car with them.

They say both Ava and Cullen were killed instantly in that accident on Mulholland Highway, but as I recall, Ava didn’t. She passed moments later only after saying to me, “He’s got you.”

To this day, those words haunt me. What did she mean?

I remember sitting in the police station later too, wearing a pink and purple princess dress while clinging to my blanket, rubbing my nose with the soft fleece. As I hold onto that teddy bear my dad gave me, I flash back to that night and still see the lilac colors blending with my mother’s blood.

My next memory is of Amberly holding me, tears rolling down her face as I twirl the strands of her purple hair around my fingers. Two years later, Amberly adopted me with my biological dad, Tiller. I took his last name because at five, I wanted nothing more than to be just like the Wild Cat.

Why Tiller is my biological dad is even a crazier story, but when you know Tiller, not all that surprising. They told me when I was eleven how it went down. Apparently, Tiller slept with my biological mom, Ava, one night after a motocross race and because Cullen (her husband at the time) were having problems over not conceiving kids. As luck would have it, or some weird wrinkle in fate, Tiller knocked my mom up that night. She told Cullen about it immediately, they stayed together and a month later she found out she was pregnant with me. They decided it was a blessing and raised me none the wiser with the intention of probably never telling me about Tiller.

And then they died in a car accident and my mom gave custody to Amberly, my aunt, asking that she tell Tiller about me.

Maybe that’s what she meant when she said, “He’s got you.”

They tell me now that Tiller adopting me was the only thing that saved his life, but I don’t know. What I do know is that by them dying I got to know Tiller, and then I met Camden. So, who’s got me, Tiller or Camden? Because both have had my back and make me feel slightly less awkward about being a misunderstood mental drifter, happiest in deep thought.

 

I eventually make my way downstairs. I have practice later and still haven’t landed the double outside the foam pit. In the kitchen, Scarlet sits on a barstool, their youngest daughter, Ariah, coloring beside her with a wild mess of blonde curls in her face. She’s six and sassy as ever, but nothing in comparison to Whizzy Wyatt.

In fact, do you see Wyatt watching Ariah as they color together? Wyatt’s looking at her like she’s going to take scissors to her hair and chop her blonde locks off for getting in her face.

Quietly I make my way through the kitchen and over to the coffeepot where I know there’s coffee and maybe even food. Though nobody technically lives in the mansion anymore, there are maids and even a cook.

“Hey, babe,” Scarlet says, smiling at me. Do you notice the grin? It’s wider than usual. It’s the kind that says I-know-what-you-did-last-night. Or, she’s withholding information. With Scarlet’s eccentric crazy vibe, she’s got no poker face. And can’t drive without hitting curbs, but besides all that, I wonder what she knows.

I raise an eyebrow as I pour coffee. “What?”

“I just said hello.” The grin widens, as mischievous as the two girls coloring beside her. Don’t tell Ophelia, but Scarlet is my favorite aunt. Not because she’s certifiably crazy, but she’s the most fun. You want to drink and watch chick flicks, she’s your girl. Want a wingman at a party? Scarlet. She’s the aunt you go to for a good time. For my eighteenth birthday, she’s throwing a party here at the mansion and I can’t wait, knowing she’s taking care of all of it.

Now, if I need advice that’s not from my mom and on occasion, legal advice, I go to Aunt Ophelia. After Lennox was born, she went back to school to get her law degree. Hello, my uncles needed it for sure. She will defend you, right or wrong, no matter what. She’s loyal, sincere, loving, and cooks a mean smoked mac and cheese.

If I need someone who’s going to listen and give me a no-bullshit answer, I go to my mom.

I set the coffeepot down. “That’s a prying kind of hello.”

Her blue eyes brighten as she sets her phone on the counter, screen side down. There’s probably a reason for it. Shade left for Seattle this morning with Roan and my dad. More than likely he’s sending her inappropriate texts. “Ophelia will be back soon to have you sign the contracts for Mayhem.”

I raise an eyebrow again. “Okay….”

Scarlet grins wider. “She’s with Camden in the den.”

My heart kicks my ribs hard. It’s like my damn breath is taken away knowing he’s in the same house as me. And then I think about why he’s in the same house. He’s signing with S3. That has to be it, right?

I don’t say anything because I know my next words will give away my intentions.