“Anyway”—I rolled my eyes at him—“even when I was considering violence, my brain still catalogued your beautiful eyes and gorgeous bod.”
“You did?” He sounded amazed.
“How could I not?”
His breath caught and released, and then caught again. “But see, I’m awkward around strangers. I never know what to say, and it was always torture when I’d be out at a club or at a party with friends and guys would try to talk to me. I’m the king of answering questions with a flat yes or no. I know far too much about different kinds of weather. I never think to elaborate on an anecdote, because why would anyone possibly care? And did you know that most people hate it when you do exact math in your head? Like when everyone’s laughing and someone will say, ‘It’s, like, a million dollars,’ but you bring the conversation to a screeching halt by saying, ‘No, actually it’s blah-blah,’ down to the exact change.”
I snickered, because I could imagine him doing that clear as day.
“In the beginning, back when Troy laughed with me, I was bespelled.”
His comment, the inflection, told me that somewhere along the way, Troy had started laughing at him, and the desire flared in me to give the man a good ass-kicking.
“I thought he was Prince Charming and that he got me and how my mind worked, but I should have known better. He was always selfish in bed, never laughed at himself, and he never brought me dessert.”
“No?”
“Not once.”
“But you needed pie. How else were you supposed to know I was serious?”
He nodded, and when I looked closely, I realized he was brushing away tears.
Our exit off the freeway came at the perfect time, and after I made the turn and went through an intersection, I pulled over, hit the hazards, unclipped my belt, and was out of my seat and around to his side of the car in seconds.
When I opened his door, he asked, “What are you doing? We’re almost home, and it’s cold out––”
“Hey, it’s okay, baby. I know how uncomfortable you are talking about yourself, but this is me, right? You know I want to know everything about you, so tell me what’s got you upset.”
He sucked in a breath. “I just…God, I made such a doormat of myself with Troy, and I can’t stand the idea that you might think less of me for being with someone like him, and not only that, but I was planning to stay with him if it hadn’t been for him humiliating me so publicly.”
“Yeah, no,” I assured him with a scoff. “There’s nothing you could tell me about yourself that’d make me think less of you.”
It was really something to see how big his deep, dark indigo eyes got whenever something I said surprised or delighted him. Both reactions resulted in the same response, and I loved it.
“There isn’t?”
“No.” I didn’t need to elaborate. The word was a full sentence.
“Could you perhaps go into further detail?”
I grinned. “Yes.”
“Stop it, now, this is serious,” he warned. “I want to know everything you think about me.”
“But you know already what I think about you.”
“What do I know?”
“That it takes time for you to warm up to and trust people, especially when your heart is involved.”
He nodded. “It does.”
With Troy, that faith had been misplaced, and Cameron had paid a price for it, in self-doubt and self-recrimination.
“But it’s been different with me,” I professed, grinning at him. “With me, you dived right in.”
“Yes, I did.”
“So did I. I’m not in the habit of inviting people into my life, but you, honest to God, it was like the sun came out.”
His eyes fluttered closed, and he lifted his face, as though into a soft wind, and took a breath before he smiled.
“I need you to know that I see you. You loving Troy––”
“That wasn’t love,” he corrected adamantly, eyes open, staring at me.
“You thought he was special enough to marry.”
His breath caught. “But it never felt like this. It never felt the way it does with you.”
“Well, that’s good.” I took his face in my hands. “But I don’t care who you loved before me, who you were going to marry before me. It doesn’t matter, and it definitely doesn’t make me think more or less of you, because none of it has anything to do with you and me.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed.
“So let’s be done with ancient history and focus on our present and our future.” After a moment, I got a nod.
“I thought you were going to say we should focus on the here and now, and not put ‘future’ in there.”
I scoffed. “Please, I know better’n that. You not worry about the future? Is that even possible? Why would I purposely stress you out by skipping something like that?”