I pull the huge hoodie over my head and then take off the towel from around me. I pull on the boxers, and roll the top over in the hope that they stay up. I hold on to them as I climb up onto the huge bed and sit cross-legged, facing him.
“I didn’t want that to happen.” Tears sting my eyes and I feel humiliated at his words. I look down at my hands and a tear plops from my eye as I do. Fucking tears, how many can a human body produce in a lifetime? Surely if it’s a limited amount, mine should be drying up by now. I swallow hard a couple of times before looking up at him.
“I’m so sorry. Do you want me to go?”
He frowns. “What the fuck are you talking about, Kitten?” Now it’s my turn to frown. “You’re going nowhere. We’re gonna eat some food. Then I’m gonna talk and your gonna listen. There’ll be no touching, just talking, words, Kitten, saying and listening to words, no touching.” I’ve no idea what all of that means. All I know is that he doesn’t want me to go.
“So no more sex then?” He gives his head a shake, and then he gives me his sexy-arsed smile and I want to suck on his face.
“Maybe, once we’ve talked. If you still want to once I’ve said what I’ve got to say, and you’ve answered a few questions I need answering.” I nod in response. “Come here.”
“Where?” I ask, confused.
“Over here, on my lap.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“You said no touching.”
“Fuck, yeah, I did.” He scratches at his head. “This is what you do to me. I don’t know if I’m on my head or my arse around you.” My belly flips a few times at his words. Good, I’m glad. I want him to feel as messed up by all of this as I am.
I smile and reach out with my little finger towards him. He watches my hand.
“What’re you doing?”
I smile as sweetly as I can at him. “Just our little finger. D’ya think it would be okay if we just touched them together?”
He shakes his head. “Kitten, I’m trying so hard to hang on here. If I touch any part of you, then I’m gonna want to touch all of you. I want you naked, under me and in my bed, your skin stuck to mine. I don’t want room for a single atom between us, but not until we talk and not until you eat. Coz once you’re in this bed, you’re not leaving any time soon.”
A buzzer sounds from beside him and he turns and speaks into the intercom at the side of the bed. A voice notifies him his takeaway has been delivered and he tells Jock to bring it up.
“Let’s go eat,” he says to me.
“You not gonna shower first?” I ask.
He winks at me. “Na, I smell of sex and you. Why would I wanna wash that away?” He walks away as I melt all over his bed.
Our relationship has always been sexual. Sean and I were always good together, compatible; we just knew each other so well, but with Cam, it’s always been different. With Sean, if we were in the same room, we had to touch, hold hands, sit shoulder to shoulder; however, we could work it, we would always be touching. With Cam, it’s always been more sexual. He could never pass me without biting or tweaking my nipple, putting his hand up my skirt or groping my arse, and I sit and wonder, is it just me he’s like that with, or is it like that with every woman who he’s fucking? Is it like that with his pregnant girlfriend too?
I throw myself back on his bed and let my legs dangle over the side. I’ve never felt like this in a relationship before. With Sean I was always confident of his love, even when we got back together and the truth came out about our separation. When he was on the road with the band, wherever he was touring, I always knew he loved me. I always trusted him completely, and when I was with Cam the first time around, I always felt I had the power. Perhaps it was because I’d convinced myself that I didn’t love him and it didn’t matter to me what he felt. Although, I know that if I’d caught him cheating, it would’ve been a massive blow to my self-esteem after what I thought Sean had done. Now though, everything is different. I feel so unsure. I’m overthinking every little comment he makes and I know I must sound like a needy, whiney little bitch, and I hate myself for it. My stomach lets out a loud growl just as Cam calls my name up the stairs. I actually don’t feel like food now. I feel like staying up here and sulking, but I know I need to eat. I get up with a sigh and stomp my way downstairs. Why is it I can find this sulky part of the old me easily enough, but the confident, spitting, snarling, all-guns-blazing part of me refuses to make an appearance?
* * *
Cam looks up at me from where he’s sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, and as much as I hate it, the sight of him brings a small smile to my lips. We used to sit and eat like this at his old flat above the wine bar. Fuck, I thought my life was complicated then. What the fuck did I know?
I sit cross-legged on the floor opposite him as he pours me a glass of wine.
“Try the wine. It’s from New Zealand.” I smile a little again. We used to do this too. He was always trying out new wines for the restaurant he was about to open. Now look at him, look at us; we’ve both come so far and yet, here we are, full circle, together, sitting on the floor, eating takeaway off the coffee table and trying a new wine. I take a sip.
“Mmm, it’s good. Is it a Sav Blanc?” He raises his eyebrows in surprise and tilts his head slightly,
“Well done, Kitten. It is.” His praise warms my belly.
“Marlborough region?” I ask.
“You looked at the label.” I open my mouth to protest, but stop as my head spins slightly from the alcohol and complete lack of food in my stomach, so I serve myself up Singapore noodles, chicken curry and chips. My plate is piled high and I’m just contemplating whether my eyes are bigger than my belly, when Cam says, “You’ll never eat all that, Kitten.” I raise my eyebrows, deep down from somewhere, G has appeared.
“You wanna bet, Tiger?” He arches one eyebrow at me.
“I’ll bet you anal that you don’t finish that.” I spit a half chewed, chunky Chinese chip back onto my plate, but quickly compose myself,
“You’re on.”
I eat slowly but surely. There is no way I’m losing this bet, and even if I do, there is no fucking way he is putting that monster of a cock inside my arse, no way.
I just finish the very last noodle on my plate when his phone vibrates and lights up on the coffee table beside him. He picks it up and looks at the screen. He looks up at the ceiling for a few seconds then at me.
“I need to take this. I’m sorry.”
“Go for it,” I say with a shrug. He gets up and I expect him to leave the room, but instead, he sits up on the edge of the sofa.
“Tamara,” he says and my heart sinks. I start putting lids on the takeaway containers, but I’m listening to what Cam is saying too. Although at the moment, he just seems to be listening. “You need to calm the fuck down, Tam. Getting yourself in this state isn’t doing you or the baby any good.” I stop what I’m doing and take a few deep breaths. I really don’t want to vomit up what I’ve just eaten so I keep still until the moment passes. Cam’s hand reaches out and grabs mine. I turn and look at him while he pulls me to sit down on the sofa next to him.
“Stay here,” he says. “Don’t go anywhere.” He moves the phone away from his ear and puts it on loud speaker, placing it down on the coffee table. Very quietly, he says to me, “I want you to listen to this conversation, so you better understand what I tell you later on.” I nod at him
“Who are you talking to?” A well-spoken, whiney, female voice says from the phone. “Cameron, have you got someone there with you? It’s her isn’t it, that fucking McCarthy whore? Don’t lie to me, Cam. It’s been all over the news today. It’s been on all the gossip shows.”
Cam lets out a long sigh. “Tam, it’s none of your business who I’m with. We’re not together, remember.”
“I’m carrying your child.”
“Says you.”
“I’ve not slept with another man in almost a year. This is y
our baby, Cameron, and when it’s born and you get your little paternity test done, then you’ll see, then you’ll realise, then we’ll be together, as a family.”
“No, Tamara, we won’t.” He sits back into the corner of the sofa, drapes one arm along the back behind me as he lifts his right leg and rests his ankle on the knee of his left. He reaches out and twirls a piece of my hair in his fingers and my nipples become so hard they feel like they’re actually going to explode, reassuring me that I’m the most fucked-up person in the world. The man I just had mind blowing sex with, right here on this floor, is talking on the phone to a woman who’s apparently carrying his child, while he plays with my hair, and I’m so turned on, I’ve developed a case of exploding nipples.
“Why did you lie to me?” she asks in her horrible, whiney voice. “Why did you lie and tell me you were out of the country till Thursday, when you knew you were coming home today?” God, was it only today we got home? I suddenly feel tired. I just want to sleep and the bitch’s voice on the phone is really starting to piss me off. I get up and clear away the mess from the coffee table as I hear her say, “What’s that noise? Where are you, Cami? Are you in a restaurant? I can come and join you if you’d like, Cam? You can come back here and have my arse if you want, baby. I can call Maddie too. We can play.” I rinse the plates under the tap, then load them in the dishwasher, trying to drown out the conversation going on behind me.
“Where’s Robyn, Tam? Where’s your nurse?”
“Oh, fuck off, Cam, why’d you want to speak with her?”
“Because I don’t like the way you sound. It’s getting late. You should be in bed.”
“I’ll go to bed when you get here.”
“Tam, I’ve not been in your bed for over four months and I won’t ever be again. Please stop all of this. I’ll look after you. I’ve told you this. I’ll look after you, and when the baby comes, if it turns out to be mine, then I will look after the both of you, but we are not, and will not, ever be together. Now I need to go. Tell Robyn to call me. If she doesn’t, I will call her anyway, so I’ll find out if you’re playing up.”
“Don’t go. Don’t go. I love you, Cam. I love you. Be with me, not her, why her, be with me,” she screams like a deranged person down the phone. He ends the call and looks up at me. I’m still in the kitchen leaning back against the dishwasher.
“I swear to God, I’ve never had sex without a condom with anyone other than you and my wife.”
He sits on the edge of the sofa again, his eyes wide and pleading; his hand runs over his jaw and then through his hair.
“So why are you giving her the time of day, if there’s no possible way the kid can be yours, why are you taking her calls?” He leans forward and takes a gulp from his wine glass.
“She has a coke habit. What if, by some chance, that baby’s mine? What if the condom split and I did get her pregnant? I can’t take that risk, George, just in case that baby is mine. Then I have to do everything I can to keep it safe.” I nod, totally understanding that.
“So is she using now, while she’s pregnant?”
He shakes his head. “She was in the beginning. I had to get her on a specialist program so they could monitor the baby while they got her off the shit. Now I pay for a nurse and a minder to be with her twenty four seven, one to look after her and one to make sure she doesn’t get the opportunity to get her hands on gear of any kind.”
I shake my head in disgust. I’d do anything to be able to carry a baby again. I’d give anything to be a mother, yet here’s this pathetic excuse for a human, snorting lines of Charlie and taking untold risks with the health of her baby. I’ve no idea what the effects of cocaine are on a developing foetus, but I’m pretty sure they’re not good.
Without realising it, I’ve crossed my hands across my belly, protecting something that’s not there, something that will never be there again.
“Come over here, Kitten. Let’s talk.” I go and sit at the opposite end of the sofa to him.
“I didn’t know you’d lost two babies. I’m so sorry you went through that.” I don’t want to hear his words of sympathy. I’m fine until people start telling me how sorry they are.
“I had an ectopic. I’d only known I was pregnant for a day or so.” He nods, but doesn’t say any more for a few seconds. I reach over to the coffee table and pick up my wine glass. He tops it up for me and then puts the cream throw back over me. “How long have you lived here?” I ask.
“A couple of years. I bought it when we started work on K, and when we started work on… the club in Shoreditch, I needed to be closer. I was sick of battling traffic so I bought this place.” I notice he stopped himself saying the name of the club and I wonder if it’s true that the two K’s stand for Kitten and King.
“Do you still have the other place, above the wine bar?” He nods.
“I still own the wine bar. It does well. My sister runs it and the restaurant. They’re both doing well. She lives in the flat now.” I can’t help but smile as I think of the things we did in that flat, every room, every surface, but then I remember the last time I was there.
“You were a mess the last time I was in that flat. You really scared me.”
He nods his head. “I was. I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”
“I’m sorry I made you feel you had to get like that.” I want to go to him and show him how sorry I am, but I stay where I am. “What happened? Did your brother get you the help you needed?”
He nods slowly. “I was a mess for about six months. I was off the drugs but suffering from depression. I just couldn’t function and you seemed to be everywhere. Every time I turned on the telly, opened the paper or a magazine, there was a story about you and your amazing love story and I just felt like I couldn’t escape it.” I cover my mouth to try and hold in a sob.
“I’m so sorry, Tiger, I treated you appallingly. You were so good to me. You put me back together and I just walked back to the man who broke me.” He folds his arms across his chest and shrugs.
“That’s why I need to be sure this time. I can’t let that happen again. I’m in too far now. End of the day, Kitten, I’m always gonna love ya, no matter what happens between us. It just hurt so much before coz I thought we were good. I thought I had it all worked out and we’d be together. I just never realised that I was inconsequential to you once he was back on the scene.”
I ache. My throat, my chest, my insides ache. I’ve been there. I know the agony of being left and I hate that I was guilty for making him feel like that, that I caused him that much pain.
I wipe my eyes on the back of my hand.
“Do we stand a chance do you think? Will you ever be able to forgive me for what happened back then?” He shakes his head and I feel like the floor has been pulled away from me.
“I’ve already told you I don’t know. We can try, Kitten. That’s all we can do.” I nod.
“I need to ask you something. If the baby’s yours, what will you do?”
“I haven’t got a fucking clue. I can’t look after a kid with my lifestyle, my work, and she certainly can’t.” He finishes his drink and then pours the last of the bottle into his glass. “Tamara’s just two years older than you. I’ve known her since she was eighteen. We were at some charity dinner thing. We spent the night together and that was it. She was just starting out as a model and she was doing some television presenting, and for a while, she was gonna be the next big thing.”
“She’s the redhead, the one I’ve seen you out with a couple of times,” I interrupt him.
“Yeah, yeah, she was a good-looking girl when she was younger. We always worked together coz she didn’t want anything more than a fuck. That’s all it’s ever been; that’s all it ever was for me. Then when she was about twenty-two. It started to become apparent that she wasn’t gonna make it as a model. She went a bit off the rails and I didn’t see her for a few years. Then we bumped into each other about two and a half years ago and we’ve just got togeth
er every now and then since, just for a fuck, or if either of us needed a date for an event, we got together, no strings.” He takes a sip of his wine and looks down at his glass, as though he’s thinking about what to say next. “I always thought she was happy with that set up. She never mentioned that she wanted more. She’s a nice enough girl, good looking, nicely turned out, never wanted anything. Then, within about a month of us bumping back into each other, I noticed she was becoming needy, clingy and a bit erratic.” He looks at me and shrugs. “I don’t bring birds back to my place, Georgia. I’m quite a private person. It’s either a hotel or their place, and apart from my wife, you’ve been the only exception to that rule.”
I’m not sure if his statement makes me feel better or worse. I drain my glass and look at him across the top of it. Without saying anymore, he gets up to go and get another bottle from the fridge and tops me up.
“Anyway, I did a bit of digging and found out she had a habit, an expensive habit. I tried to help her out. I’ve been there. I felt sorry for her so I paid off her debts and paid for her rehab.” He shrugs as he seems to be thinking about this. “Again, I didn’t hear from her, except the odd phone call or text for a couple of months once she’d straightened herself out, then she turned up at my club opening in Ibiza in August. We went to a hotel and fucked, and next thing I hear from her is that she’s pregnant and the baby’s mine. It was also apparent that she was well and truly off the wagon. I didn’t know what to do at first. I didn’t believe her, about the baby I mean, so I went with her to the doctors and then for a scan and all the dates match up, so like I said, I got her on a program. They seemed to think she’d been taking worse shit than coke, probably heroin, but they straightened her out and everything seems to be okay with the baby, but we won’t know for sure until he’s born.”
My head fly’s up at that news. “A boy, you’re having a son?” I hate her. This woman I don’t know, who’s gonna have something I never will, something she doesn’t deserve.
“I don’t know that I’m having anything yet, George. There’s ways of testing from inside the womb, but she’s all over the place so I don’t wanna rock the boat. She’s unstable enough as it is. So anyway, I’m paying for a flat and a nurse, a minder. I buy her shopping and pay her medical bills so she can afford to see the best doctors.” He shrugs. “If the baby’s not mine, then I’ll make sure the right people get involved to make sure the kid’s safe, but that’ll be it. If the kid’s mine,” he pauses and shrugs again, “I haven’t got a Scooby what I’ll do. No idea, but he’ll be with me. One way or the other, I’ll find a way to have the baby with me, and you need to know that. You need to understand that. If the baby turns out to be mine, I will fight for custody of him.”
Carnage Boxset Page 66