Reckless (Blue Collar Boyfriends Book 1) (15 page)

In a way,
Cami felt closer to the brother she hadn’t spoken to in eight years than to the woman she spoke to at least once a week. At least the pitiful excuse for a relationship she had with Cade was genuine. What she had with her mother felt fake and brittle—a facade she longed to shatter but couldn’t imagine living without. If she asked for the truth, she risked losing the one person in her life who at least pretended to care about her.

Depression blanketed her, turning her mood foul. She picked up her pen and interrupted her mother’s upbeat chatter.
I bet they’re missing you at work
, she wrote.
I’m fine here. Why
don’t you go in?

“Don’t be silly, sweetheart. There’s no place I’d rather be than at your side. Besides, they know family comes first.”

Her mother was an administrator at Shasta College, north of town. Cami knew for a fact she hadn’t taken a sick day all year, and thus had plenty of time off for this “family emergency.”

She tried another tack.
Hey Mom,
she wrote after a few minutes, going for casual lest her mother think she was trying to get rid of her.
I’d like to check my email. Would you mind running
to my apartment for my laptop? And it might be nice to have my slippers and robe for when they
let me out of bed.

She wasn’t a slob exactly, but she’d been born to a pathological
neatnik. Once her mother set foot in Cami’s apartment, she wouldn’t come out until every speck of dust was removed, every piece of clutter stored in its proper place, and every item of clothing had been washed, dried, pressed, and put away with color-coordinated precision. She’d be lucky to see her mother again by dinner time.

“I could do that. If you’re sure you don’t need me here.”

I’m sure.

Understatement of the year.
What she needed more than anything was some time to herself. Well, what she really needed was a rough and serious construction worker with a tender streak that made his angry streak look like a pinstripe, but since he didn’t really exist, she’d settle for some time to think.

Go enjoy the sunshine for me.

Her mother brightened at that and gathered her things, chattering away about what other items Cami might like from her apartment.

When the door finally
snicked shut, pounds of tension rolled off her. Her head sank deep into her pillow, and her fingers uncurled. Time alone with her thoughts. Just what the doctor ordered. Unfortunately, dragging her thoughts away from her memories of Derek was like dragging her mother from a department store sale.

Her body was at peace, eager for rest and healing, but he
r heart throbbed with sadness. She missed Derek.

He might not be real, but she couldn’t deny the reality of her love for him. Being with him had
felt
real, the focus of those precious hours so sharp the edges cut her heart.

As afternoon crept toward evening, she worried about him as if he existed. Who would comfort him through his nightmares? Who would encourage him to make things right when he made mistakes? Who would keep him company during the lonely weeknights when Haley stayed with her mom?

With the push of a button, she silenced the TV, and in the stillness that passed for quiet in an ICU room, the breathing machine sighed in incrimination.
Fool…ish,
it chanted.
Fool…ish. Fool…ish.

She needed to let it go. Let him go. He wasn’t real.

She’d asked to see Derek Summers, and she hoped he would agree so she could see for herself the name was just a coincidence. Then the lingering thread of hope keeping her heart from plummeting into despair could finally snap, and she could let the tears fall and wash away the beautiful dream.

After Lt. Christy’s call, Derek managed to put his nose to the grindstone and make significant progress on readying the site for Friday’s walkthrough. As an added benefit to keeping his head down and plowing through his workload, he didn’t have time to dwell on how much he hated himself.

When he stood from his desk to stretch his back, he looked out the trailer window to find the site abandoned and streaked with long shadows. Across the gravel lot, the last laborers were climbing into their cars and trucks, headed to their homes for big meals and good sleep.

Speaking of which, it was after six. He ought to go home for the night too, but every time he thought about his quiet, empty house, he felt a pull in his chest he’d rather not explore.

Instead of going home, he headed over to survey the
three buildings himself so he knew firsthand what was ready to go for Friday and what they still needed to do.

The four-story concrete skeletons loomed cool and gray under a gold-blue sky. Late-rush hour traffic hummed along the east edge of the site and his boots crunched over the machinery-rutted ground. As he strode into the shadow of the first building, the scents of fresh concrete and welder’s dust permeated the hazy air. The day’s dying sun glinted off the cab of a crane and shot an unexpected memory of buckling metal and breaking glass into his mind.

No. Don’t think about that.

He stalked the bare concrete halls of the first building by the harsh light of strung-up halogens, jotting notes on electrical and plumbing fixtures and critical ductwork paths. He frowned at the unoccupied platforms where the chillers should be. Delivery was scheduled for tomorrow morning, and he’d prepared the laborers to stay late if needed to get them installed.

The schedule was tight, but it would have to work. Failure was unacceptable.

He made his way into the second building. Above him hung a
network of ducts and copper pipes studded with set-point sprinklers, the naked guts of a building. The glare of artificial light off the hardware brought another unwelcome memory slamming into his mind, a car-filled stretch of sunny freeway, turned upside down, the burning smell of airbag explosives, the
splat-splat-splat
of blood dropping onto upholstery. He reeled with the sickening onslaught to his senses and steadied himself with a hand on the cold wall.

What the hell? Bad enough he had to deal with the acc
ident in his sleep; now it was intruding on his waking hours? He should be moving past all this now that he’d turned himself in. The pit of guilt in his stomach should be shrinking, not sitting heavy like a damned boulder.

He wished Lt. Christy had kept the woman’s name
—Camilla Arlington—to himself. It would be easier to face her tomorrow as some nameless face.

Shaking off his dread of tomorrow’s visit, he finished his rounds and headed back to the trailer as the sun sank below the horizon. That frigging lump wasn’t the only sensation in his stomach. He was hungry too. He needed to go home and eat dinner, but he resisted. Only after spending an hour on the busy work of clearing out his inbox and organizing his project files did he realize why he didn’t want to go
home.

She
wouldn’t be there.

He’d cleared his conscience today. He shouldn’t hav
e the nightmare anymore. These fleeting images were its last hurrah. He knew it instinctively, just like he knew the nightmare’s exit from his psyche would render DG unnecessary.

With the return of his sanity, he felt utterly bereft.

Half an hour later, he opened the door to his dark house. His gaze instantly darted to the hallway. His heart leapt with anticipation—the optimistic organ hadn’t gotten the memo that DG was gone forever.

Ignoring the soreness in his chest, he trudged to
the kitchen and made himself a sandwich. His usual chair at the table beckoned him, but a stronger pull had him carrying his plate to the bedroom. He’d never eaten dinner in bed before—except in his stressed mind with DG—but for some reason, he couldn’t imagine eating anywhere else tonight.

He kicked off his boots and climbed on the rumpled bed. After putting a pillow at his back, he balanced his plate on his lap and reached for the beer he’d set beside his lamp. It was a cheap lamp with a brass base and a wire-and-fabric shade. Its mate was in the living room, the pair having come with the leather sofa and end table set he’d gotten when he’d moved in. His gaze fixed on the shade. It was flattened along one side. He lost his appetite.

DG had thrown the lamp at his door to wake him from his nightmare the other night. He’d righted it without noticing the damage, but he noticed it now, couldn’t look away from it.

Without a conscious command, his hand skimmed over the fitted sheet on his bed. His fingers found a stiff patch of dried semen, right where he remembered making love to DG last night.

It couldn’t be.

His mind must be playing tricks on him. He couldn’t really
be smelling the melon scent of her shampoo on his pillow. He couldn’t have really spent a handful of glorious nights with a ghostly dream girl. Not only was it impossible; it was laughable.

Except he wasn’t laughing.

He was hurting. He missed DG with a vicious longing.

Suddenly, he couldn’t stand being in his bed without her. Growling out a curse, he went to the kitchen to eat his sandwich. It tasted like sawdust. He swallowed it anyway, bite by dry, tasteless bite. Finished with dinner, he dragged his laptop across the table and fired it up. In desperate need of some cheer, he logged on to Facebook and pulled up Haley’s page. At Deidre’s urging, he kept an account and checked it weekly to make sure Haley wasn’t getting into any trouble online. He rarely did more than scan. Tonight he took his time reading the dozens of get-well messages plastered across her page from friends and teammates, and let the innocent greetings warm his heart. He chuckled at a picture of her holding up her purple cast and shrugging dramatically. He wrote under the photo,
Tough break, kiddo. Feel better. Dad.

Did the woman in the hospital have friends and cow
orkers leaving messages on her Facebook page?
Get well soon, Camilla. I hope the jerk that cut you off rots in jail.

His gaze flicked to the search box. He could type in her name. If she was on Facebook, he could see what she looked like. He could see whose life he’d wrecked with a single stupid decision.

Bad idea. Knowing her name was hard enough. The last thing he needed was a face to put with the hard knot of guilt in his stomach.

Call him a masochist, but he typed
Camilla Arlington
into the search box, anyway. With a mix of dread and morbid curiosity, he hit enter. The page refreshed, and his vision tunneled to the avatar that topped the search results list. He clicked on the image to see it larger.

The woman had her face lifted to the sun. She wore an innocent, joyous smile. She had thick, shiny auburn hair, naturally beautiful fair skin, and eyes as deep and blue as the ocean. His chest imploded, shoving all the air out of his lungs in a violent burst.

Camilla Arlington was DG.

“No.” He slammed his laptop shut and pushed back from the table so hard his chair crashed to
the floor. He gasped for air as he stood over his kitchen table.

Images ripped through him one after another. His beautiful, vulnerable dream girl lying in a hospital bed with part of her skull missing, DG gripping her steering wheel as his big truck cut her off, DG afraid, DG hurting.

DG knowing he was the one who had hurt her.

“No!
Derek, you fucker!”

His entire body coiled with the urge to do violence. He wheeled around and laid hands on the first thing he saw.
His refrigerator. With a murderous grip on each side, he rocked it forward and slammed it to the floor on its side. The shelves and contents banged around inside.

Seething
with self-loathing, he kicked the side-by side doors until they dented and the lower one fell open. His fridge was wrecked, but the damage didn’t satisfy the monster within. Maybe if he’d had his steel-toes on, but despite the pain shooting through his stocking feet and ankles, he needed more. With a roar, he ripped the upper door off its hinges and threw it across the kitchen. It crashed against his stove, making the oven door drop open.

Panting, he surveyed the wreckage and pulled at his hair. Condiment jars and bottles of beer littered his floor, some of them shattered. A pool of water and foam spread from the battered corpse of his fridge across the linoleum, and tracked toward the back door. And still, his hands shook with the need to hit.

He didn’t recognize himself. Not even his father in his worst fit of temper had ever looked quite as crazed as he felt just now.

Tracking sticky debris down the hall, he strode to the basement and laid into his heavy bag without pausing to put his gloves on. The seventy-five-pound bag danced, making the rafters groan against the bolts. He hit the bag until sweat soaked his shirt and dripped into his eyes. He hit it until his knuckles swelled and cracked. Then he hit it some more.

Sweat blurred his vision. Tears too. He sobbed out his misery with every punch.

Finally, he stumbled back and landed on his ass with a pillar at his back. “Derek, you fucker,” he repeated, this time in a voice as small and pathetic as the man he was.

He’d wondered what had ripped DG away from him too many hours before dawn last night. Now he knew. He had. When he’d put her in a coma.

He’d nearly killed his dream girl before he’d even met her.

* * * *

The trailer door squeaked open, but Derek hardly heard it. He was in the zone.
Phone calls, emails, scheduling meetings, approving plans, putting out fires. It wasn’t fun, but it sure as hell beat thinking about last night. Or later today.

“Jesus,
Summers, what’d you do to your hand?” Fred tossed his hardhat in the extra chair.

The hand in question tightened around a pen, making the bruised and scabbed knuckles throb. “None of your goddamned business, that’s what.”

As soon as he said it, he wished he could take it back. That had been harsh, even for him.

Fred had busted his ass this week to help pull the site together for the walkthrough while Derek took care of Haley and turned himself in. The construction engineer deserved a pat on the back, not a verbal lashing.

He threw down the pen and wiped a hand down his face. “Sorry, Fred. It’s been a rough week.” Funny how the
S
word was free flowing out of his mouth these days. He’d said it to Haley. He’d said it to DG. Now Fred, who waved away the apology.

“No wonder, what with your kid breaking her arm. That’s the worst. You wish you could take it for them, you know.” Fred had five kids, all grown now, but over the years, Derek had heard stories about each one.

He had Haley on his mind, of course, but she wasn’t the reason for his short temper today. “Yeah,” he said. “You need something, old man?” He whipped out the nickname, hoping to get back on familiar footing with the CE.

“Just coming in to let you know the chillers are in, one and all. Good job, boss.”

His lungs relaxed a fraction. At least something in his life was going right. He snorted at Fred’s praise. “Like I had anything to do with it. You’re the man, Fred.”

Fred sauntered out of the trailer, and Derek glanced at his computer clock. Almost two o’clock. That left several hours for the crew to get everything connected. They’d be good to go for the walkthrough. Now if he could just pull his personal shit together.

If he could stop hurting the females in his life, that would be really good. Figuring out how to make up for the mother of all hurts, that would be even better. What he’d done to DG—Camilla—went beyond hurt feelings. Way beyond. It went beyond the forgivable.

He’d spent most of the night going back and forth between chomping at the bit to see her, and dreading it. It had been tempting to call off the visit to the hospital today. She probably didn’t even remember him. She’d been in a coma when they were together. If she remembered him at all, he probably seemed like a dream to her. He had probably faded from her memory, like the nightmares were finally fading for him.

But Camilla had asked to see him the very day she’d woken up, right after the officer gave her his name, according to Christy. It’s not like he’d ever been in a situation like this before, but it struck him as unusual for a victim in a car accident to request a meeting with the perpetrator. She had to remember him. Why else would she have asked?

The tru
th was he couldn’t stand being away from her. He’d run from her once when she’d been hurting and terrified—his dreams had shown him that. He refused to run a second time. And he would be damned if he’d let his dream girl down.

Never again.

He owed her the biggest apology he’d ever uttered. He owed her a lifetime of love to make up for putting her through what she’d experienced last Friday and the weeks and maybe months of recovery she had in front of her. He’d be there every step of the way if she’d let him.