Loving You Always Read Free

I’ve always wanted to do.” He leaned down to kiss her nose. “I want to paint. Sebastian—you remember Sebastian, right? You met him at Kristeene’s birthday party the night we got engaged.”
    “I remember him.” Kerris walked over to clear their breakfast dishes from the table. “Every time I’ve swung by his gallery, he’s never there.”
    “Been in Paris.” Cam threw his voice over his shoulder as he moved toward the office to grab his backpack and laptop. “He’s back. He thinks I should take a year to study in Paris. He says I have a lot of raw talent, but I need it refined. I need to train and study.”
    “A year?” Kerris’s hands froze over the sink waiting for their breakfast dishes. “What would we—you mean live in Paris for a year?”
    “Yeah, babe. Think about it.” Cam came up behind her at the sink to wrap his arms around her. “The three of us in Paris, where some of the greatest artists did their best work. I could study at the Sorbonne. If I apply now, I could be accepted in the next six months.”
    “Six months.” Kerris turned to face him, her back against the sink. “I’m only six weeks pregnant. Déjà Vu is just getting off the ground. I want to have our baby here in the States with a doctor I trust, surrounded by our friends. Our life is here.”
    Cam’s smile dissolved into a straight line.
    “Working that dead end job isn’t much of a life. This money from Kristeene is a godsend. It’ll give me the freedom to pursue my dream.”
    “I’ve always been your biggest cheerleader, you know that.” Kerris evened her tone and placed a calming palm against his chest. “I’m just saying the timing may be a little off. Maybe in another eighteen months or so?”
    “Eighteen months.” Cam stepped back and stalked over to lean against the granite countertop, facing her with arms folded across the muscles of his chest. “You expect me to stay in Rivermont for eighteen months when I’ll have money in the bank to pursue my dreams?”
    “And my dreams?” She deliberately quieted her voice, not wanting this to explode between them. “What about the things I want to do? The business I just started? The family we’re just starting? Are you considering any of that?”
    “You know, maybe I’m missing something.” Cam leveled his creased brows, his face giving nothing away. “Maybe there’s something else you want to stay in the States for. Or should I say someone .”
    Kerris reached behind her to clutch the rim of the sink. She turned her back to him, rinsing out the dishes she had left there. The muscles of her back tightened under the unrelenting burn of Cam’s stare. They hadn’t spoken of that moment again since that first night, but she knew it was still between them. He was a wounded animal secretly nursing his hurt.
    “Cam, do we need to talk about Walsh again? I always thought we should have. We can’t sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen.”
    “Oh, I know it happened.” His voice frosted over with fresh bitterness like new snow. “Do you think I will ever forget seeing you in my best friend’s arms?”
    “I told you it was only a kiss,” she whispered, knowing that he would hear it in the eerie silence surrounding them. “We got emotional talking about Haiti—”
    “Don’t give me that shit again!” His voice erupting into the quiet made her jump. “Do you think I don’t see how Walsh looks at you?”
    Kerris, the way my son looks at you is like a starved man. It’s like he can’t bring himself to look at anything else in the room.
    Kristeene’s words in the hospital room that last day before she went home for good drifted back to Kerris. It had been months, but it felt like yesterday. Kerris tunneled her hands into the dark hair on either side of her head before turning to look directly at her husband. She clasped her hands together over the tightly coiled dread in her belly.
    “And how do I look at him?” She braved the