Striking

by Lila Felix

  “Oh my god, Camdyn Montgomery. Have you been drinking the moonshine down there? It probably poisoned your brain. Just get home, we’ll figure this out when you get here.” Her voice had turned to unbendable steel. I imagined her forehead straining against the freezing potion of botox and her eyes bugging out behind fake eyelashes and pounds of makeup.

  “Mother, hear me: I am not coming home. I’ve already applied to college. I’ve already accepted Mallory’s offer. I might not need rehab, but LA was not a healthy environment for me. I feel like I’m finally making something of myself. I finally found myself. I don’t want to go back to California. It’s venomous.”

  “Are you in a cult? Did they make you join some kind of weird mountain cult down there? I told your father Passages was the way to go. Malibu would have been the perfect location for you to get your shit together. But no, he wanted to send you as far away as possible. And now look? Now look at what you’re doing with your life. It’s worse than before!”

  There was just so much wrong with my family. It was hard to know where to start. The only good thing out of this conversation was that I no longer felt the familiar bite of neglect or aching of insecurity. I was finally at a good place, a self-secured, emotionally stable, confident place in my life. And while I loved my parents and would always and forever look forward to the day when I could feel their love in return, I didn’t need that validation anymore to move on with my life.

  “Where is daddy?” I asked, a little bit amused.

  “He is furious with you, Camdyn.” She huffed.

  “Ok, let me talk to him,” I offered, already knowing where this was going.

  “He’s not here right now,” she mumbled a bit defeated. After a long pause in which I said nothing, she finally admitted, “He had to make his tee time.”

  And there it was. I nodded my head in amused understanding, even though she couldn’t see me. “Well, give him my love. I’ll call you guys sometime next week after I figure out tuition and all that.”

  “And what makes you think we’d actually support you while you stay down there?” she gasped, completely outraged.

  “Uh, sixty days in rehab would have billed triple what all four years are going to cost you. And you love me. Somewhere, deep, deep down in those cold, shriveled up hearts of yours and daddy’s, you love me. You want what’s best for me. And this is best for me, mom. Believe me.”

  She let out a long, frustrated breath and finally said, “Alright, call me next week.”

  “Bye mom,” I smiled. That was as close to an “I love you” as I would ever get.

  “Bye, Cami.”

  I hung up and stared down at my phone, relishing in the first peace I’d ever felt after finishing a conversation with someone in my family. It felt good-really, really good.

  “She won’t need to pay for your school,” a deeply familiar voice stated firmly from behind me, effectively scaring the ever-loving-shit out of me!

  I screamed at the top of my lungs and dropped my phone. It ripped out my ear buds, fell from my hands and clattered along the rocky terrain at the bottom of the long drop down. “Holy hell, Stockton!”

  My heart was beating erratically from the scare and didn’t slow down when I turned around to stare up at his hulking form, hovering above me. My blood tingled, my skin burned and tears already pricked at my eyes. What was he doing here?

  He leaned over me, casting me in his shadow, and looked down where my phone lay blinking up at us. “You won’t need your mom to pay for school, Cami. You’ll be able to do it yourself from the investment you earned when you helped set up Wright Custom Blades and Tools. Do you want me to get that for you?”

  “Wait, what?” I gaped.

  “The company you helped form? My company you helped form? The one in which I sell my designs to major manufacturers and make truckloads of money. Since you’re an investor and got in pretty early, you won’t need your parents to pay for anything anymore. You’ll have your own hefty income to fall back on.” He flashed me a mischievous smile and then sobered quickly, “Now would you like me to go down there and get your phone for you?”

  “Uh, yes. You’re definitely going down there to get it for me! It’s your fault I dropped it in the first place. You’re lucky I keep that case on it. Because if it would have shattered, you would be in so much trouble, Stockton Wright.”

  He looked down at me and our gazes crashed into each other, holding firmly, transfixing me in his intensity. My heart never slowed its frantic rhythm, my lungs never quite able to catch a sufficient breath. His lips were twitching like he was trying not to smile and I was seconds away from biting his shin just to get him to stop torturing me with his presence.

  “Always the Duchess,” he smirked.

  I rolled my eyes-obviously the more mature of the two of us.

  “Always the asshole,” I mumbled. I scooted back from where his legs had sidled up next to me and climbed my way to standing. I felt tiny next to him under normal circumstances. With him standing and me sitting on the ground I felt absolutely miniscule. And I didn’t want to feel tiny around him-I wanted to feel in control-of my feelings, of my words, of the love still coursing through every vein and molecule that made me up.

  “I’ll get it for you, Cami,” he promised. His expression was somber again, his eyes soft but pained. “But first we talk.”

  “Talk?” I gaped. And then came up with the very eloquent, very appropriate, “Ha!”

  Stockton ran a rough hand over the back of his shaved head and looked up at me from those thick, sooty eyelashes. His eyes were bright spearmint and looking at me like I hadn’t pissed him the hell off, but instead like I was breakable…. delicate…. precious.

  I swallowed, because honestly, that was all I was capable of in that moment.

  “I’m an idiot,” he started with. He took a step forward and then seemed to think better of it and rooted himself in place by the banister. I cowered next to the side of the house and waited… just waited. “Cami, I just…. I’m so sorry. I acted like a complete fool and I treated you like…. like you should never be treated. God, Cami I messed up. I was so lost in my own pain and anguish I didn’t recognize the light you brought into my life, not fully anyway, until you took it away. But I see now how wrong I was-how screwed up my entire outlook on life was. You were right when you said my parents would have wanted to hear ‘I love you’ instead of be careful, and you were right when you said I was drowning in memories of my past. There isn’t anything I could have done for my parents-I see that now. And until now that thought has been eating me alive with guilt. I’ve felt useless and inadequate since the day they died. And I haven’t tried to do anything about it. I was content to let that guilt and grief eat me alive. Until you-until you came into my life and challenged me to be a better man, to be a good enough man for you.”

  He paused in his speech and closed the distance between us like he couldn’t stand to be apart from me for a second longer. His shining green eyes were brimming with so much emotion that I could feel it, all the way down in my toes, in the marrow of my bones. I felt his love for me like it was the air I breathed and the blood that pumped through my veins.

  I had been terrified of his anger-such was his overwhelming presence. But his love…. not even him at his worst could compete with the intensity and concentration I felt now. If I shook with fear before, I now swelled and glowed from the raw strength of his love. I felt as bright as the sun while he poured into me everything I had always wanted to feel, always wanted to know. His affection and pure adoration wrapped around me like delicious warmth and my body tingled from his immovable focus.

  He needed to say more things. He needed to fix us. But until then I would bask in the greatness of what lay between us and hope for the best.

  “I had my own issues,” he continued. “And I got confused and took them out on you. But you were right, hell you were always right. I was letting my own stupidity stop me from remembering dreams I once held above
all else. I had a plan once, a future that I hoped and prayed for and in a few moments of grief I forgot everything I ever wanted for myself. You helped me remember that-you brought those good things back into my life. And instead of yelling and blaming you, I should have recognized that. I should have been honest with myself and I should have crawled out of that dark hole I’d shoved myself into a long time ago. Maybe I was covering my own short-comings by hiding behind Willa and trying to live a life worthy of something better. But I was not worthy until you came along and shook up everything I’d ever known. Cami, I cannot live without you. When I said I loved you, I meant it then. And I mean it now. You are my light, my salvation. And I need you more than I need to breathe. Please, forgive me.”

  My throat was closed by thick emotion, roiling through me in waves of mixed relief and fulfillment. I had never felt so loved, never so adored. The tears spilled over before I could talk myself out of them and I could only nod in agreement. I did forgive him. Maybe I had already forgiven him before I left that night, because I knew, I knew what it was like to live with the oppressive past choking you with every breath. I knew how broken he was before I fell in love with him and I knew how damaged I was.

  But he helped me heal.

  And now I had done the same for him.

  “You can’t ever treat me like that again, Stockton,” I whispered through the heavy emotion. “I’m serious. You talk things out with me. Don’t just get mad. We do this together, yeah?”

  He took another step closer while nodding enthusiastically, “Yeah,” he whispered.

  We were only a breath apart now, his body engulfing mine with his size. He lifted his hands as if he was going to pull me to him, but seemed to think better of it. They hovered over me, radiating his heat in lovely warmth. One finger carefully went to my jaw and he traced the line reverently…. humbly.

  “I don’t ever want to hurt you,” I continued to whisper. “I would never do something hurtful intentionally.” The tears were still falling, and he caught one on his calloused fingertip.

  “I know that,” he whispered back. “And from this day forward you have my word that I won’t do anything to intentionally hurt you either. Never again.” My body trembled with the anticipation of his touch, desperately needing his perfect arms around me. Slowly he dropped a hand to pick one of mine up. He held it up to his mouth and with careful determination he kissed my knuckles once, then twice, then turned my hand over and pressed the sweetest kiss in the history of kisses to my palm. “I love you, Cami. With all that’s in me, I love you. You are my light, my future, Cami, you are my everything. And I intend to remind you of that every single day for the rest of your life.”

  So much emotion bubbled up inside of me that I could only stand there paralyzed in happiness. Things I couldn’t even name before this moment filled my heart and soul to the point of bursting. Security, unhindered love, acceptance, joy-all gifts from Stockton and the raw power of his love for me.

  “You told me I need to be a great man to be good enough for you, Duchess. And I agree with that. I might not be one yet, but I’m too selfish to wait. And I will be, Cami. One day I will be. You have my word. You want a great man? Then I will become one or die trying. I will give you everything you want, everything you need and I will spend a lifetime making sure you feel every ounce of love I feel for you. You are mine, forever.”

  “Ok, yes,” I agreed quickly, finally finding my voice again. “I’m yours, Stockton. I never stopped being yours.”

  He smiled down at me-true, genuine, blinding. He was wrong. He was the great man I wanted-needed. He was the great man I always knew he could be.

  “And you’re staying? Going to college here?”

  I gasped with pretend outrage, “You were eavesdropping!” I playfully smacked at his chest with my free hand, but it was mostly an excuse to touch him. I kept my hand there, loving the feel of his tight muscles beneath my fingers.

  “I might’ve been,” he chuckled. “But tell me it’s true.”

  “It’s true,” I answered. He was making my head spin, making me dizzy with his closeness and perfect words. Breathlessly I explained, “I applied to Milligan. Hopefully, I start in the fall.”

  “And you’re staying here?”

  “Mallory invited me,” I confirmed.

  That gorgeous smile was back and he leaned forward like he would kiss me. I desperately wanted him to-needed him to. Having him this close with the trauma of the past few days firmly behind us, I was dying to get lost in those lips again.

  “Cami,” he murmured.

  I reached up on my tip toes but he pulled back, pulling a frustrated groan from me. “What?” I whimpered.

  “Tell me you love me,” he pleaded softly.

  “I love you, Stockton Wright. I never stopped loving you. I never will stop loving you. You are my great love-my great man.”

  His lips crashed to mine in frantic hunger. He consumed me in that kiss, took every bit of me there was and made it his own.

  His hard body pressed into me, contrasting drastically with the soft, gentleness of his lips. He claimed me again and again, reaffirming every single feeling and thought I had ever had about us. I was his forever and he was mine.

  It took a thousand mistakes, and a lifetime of unhappiness to get me here, but somehow in this tiny mountain town filled with backwards thinking rednecks and the strongest moonshine known to mankind, I had found a love so pure, so deep, so all-consuming I would never recover. Never survive without my gorgeous, somber, adoring blacksmith. Our lives had gone through fires and forges of the hottest, most hurtful kind. But on the other side, our metals had been refined into the strongest halves of each other. It was our love that defined us now. It was the love we would feel for each other every single day moving forward.

  And I would never look back at California-never wish for the life I left behind.

  My life was here now, with Stockton-as Stockton’s. Never could I have imagined this kind of happiness or completion. He had struck love to the very core of my eternal soul-his love was striking.

  I felt something slide onto my finger and I broke our perfect kiss to stare down at the stunning gold gem set in the most intricate hand-woven silver band I’d ever seen.

  “Stockton,” I breathed, tears already filling my eyes again.

  “This isn’t a proposal,” he murmured carefully. “It’s a promise. A promise to be great for you, to make our love great from every day forward. One day I will make you my wife and this ring is going to remind you of that. You’re my salvation Cami, and one day soon you’ll be my wife too.”

  The tears fell then, big, sloppy and so full of bursting happiness I hardly had room to breathe.

  “I love you, Duchess,” he promised as he worshipped me with his caressing touch, soulful mint green eyes and the ring that he made himself; that he created from scratch just for me.

  “I love you too, Hillbilly.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Stockton

  “You’re not going to the prom, Duchess!” I yelled down the hall of the Macon’s.

  Mallory laughed and Henry grumbled something unintelligible in the corner.

  Now that Cami had enrolled in school and was pretty tame, the Macon’s had really warmed up to both her and me.

  I heard her door open, “I’m still early, I’ve got ten minutes.”

  I rolled my eyes. She’d always been right on time.

  And ten minutes later she came out looking like a diamond among coal.

  She’d curled her hair and was wearing a white dress that tied up around her neck. She knew it drove me mad. It would drive any sane man to insanity. Just one pull—just one and the whole thing would be history. That dress should be illegal in all fifty states.

  “Well, don’t you clean up nice, Mr. Wright.”

  “Well, Will threatened me. She said if I came in my overalls she’d never forgive me. That really made me want to wear them even more.”

  She step
ped up to me and smoothed the collar of my gray suit jacket.

  “Well, I for one am pleased that you didn’t.”

  Mallory got out of her chair and scooted us out, “You’re gonna be late—out—out.”

  Cami slowed as we approached my truck as she always did.

  “Really? You couldn’t bring Willa’s Jeep tonight? You had to bring this—this—thing?”

  She gestured towards my new Ford Raptor, bought with my second big check from my new company—the one that she’d inadvertently, singlehandedly started. It was tall, even for me. It came with regular wheels but the hillbilly in me just couldn’t stand it. I’d outfitted it with tractor tires and had the shop add a little ladder on the passenger side for Cami.

  “I have to climb a freaking ladder in these,” she pointed to a pair of heels that were clearly only made for my pleasure. They made her calves flex and pull that gave me ideas—ideas that had nothing to do with driving her to the high school—unless we were talking about the bleachers—under the bleachers was the breeding ground for sin itself.

  “I will pick you up, Duchess. We wouldn’t want her Highness to climb.”

  “Good, damned Big Foot truck,” she mumbled.

  I climbed up on the lower rung and reached down to lift her into the seat. She was light as air but I wasn’t going to make it that easy on her. Almost into the seat, I froze and just held her to me.

  “Put me down you big oaf,” she wiggled in my arms but instead of making the situation better, it caused me to grab whatever I could to hold onto her and in this instant, it was her ass. She gasped—I loved that after weeks of nearly nonstop making out she still was shocked by my boldness.

  “Duchess,” I squeezed her cheek once, just to shock her again, “you better marry me soon. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Maybe we can be like those Dawson’s Ocean people and you can just sleep in my bed all the time. I know you love that show.”