"I don’t know whether I can face him again."
"I hate to be harsh, but that will need to change between now and when you get there." I sighed, knowing she was right.
"I don't think I ever even got to tell him how I felt."
"Really?" she asked, surprised. I shook my head. I hadn't gotten to that part on Tuesday; I had been too busy fucking him over.
"You should say something then."
"What for?" I scoffed.
"Because you're just going to keep wondering “what if” if you don't say anything," she said matter of factly. "And I'm going to be the one who gets to listen to you complain about it.” I smiled a little, knowing she was right about that. I was usually much better at communicating my feelings when guys were involved, but everything between Cameron and I had just progressed in this way I hadn't been able to keep track of. There had been other things in the way, and I had gone and shot myself in the foot by not being honest with him since the beginning.
"He's going to say he doesn't care."
"You don't know that."
"But what if he does?"
"You won't know ‘til you tell him what you feel." Right again. I felt like a teenager, awkwardly trying to navigate my first crush. I didn't like feeling so weak and uncertain with Cameron, but I had to talk to him if I wanted to know anything for sure. If there was any chance at all that he cared for me, then I wanted to know.
"I'm scared," I admitted.
"You have nothing to lose. If you tell him what you feel, and he doesn't feel the same way, then move on," she said, shrugging. "You don't lose anything when there isn't anything there." If I looked at it like that, then yeah, what did I have to lose? Nothing. I'd feel better once everything was out on the table, and I would feel better hearing once and for all whether or not he felt anything too. If he didn't, I'd survive. It wouldn't be the end of the world, but I knew that I'd probably feel that way for a little while after.
This wasn't normal, I thought, leaving the salon after Kasey wished me luck. It wasn't right that I felt this way about him. It didn't make sense. It had been what? A month? Hardly enough time to have fallen this hard. I wasn't saying it couldn't happen; I just wanted to psych myself out enough so that when he said he didn't feel the same way in a few hours, it wouldn't hurt so bad.
What a mess. You're a fucking mess.
This was going to be the worst day of my life. I was driving out of the city with about an hour before noon. I wrestled between wanting it to last as little time as it possibly could and making it the longest ride of my life. The weather wasn't on my side, again, not being bad enough to slow me down as much as I wanted when I got off the road and onto the mountain trail.
Excuses started forming in my head, all the reasons I didn't want to be there. He wouldn't want to see me, it would be cold out, and I had come in nothing but my work clothes and a coat. This would be the last time; that would probably end up being the hardest thing to deal with. If he sold the company, what reason would he have to ever come down off this damn mountain? What time and place would there be for us to ever cross paths again? Was it selfish? I was being selfish. This wasn't about me. I kept telling myself that as I passed the fork and turned into his property.
He was going up the steps to his porch and stopped, turning back when he saw my car.
Oh god. This was it. Too late to run now. I killed my engine and took a couple deep breaths. He could see me from where he was on the porch; how ridiculous would it look if I turned around and drove away without coming and saying something to him? For once, do the thing that you were fucking sent here to do, I thought. I gathered the paperwork and my purse and got out of the car. Nothing that happens here and now could possibly be worse than what's already gone down between us, I thought, seeing him at the top of the porch steps. The wind whipped around my coat. It was cold, but I hardly noticed it over my pounding pulse.
This was it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cameron
This was it, huh? I watched her coming out of the car. Just like that first time she came up here, I thought. Makeup and heels. She was wearing grey slacks, which made me think she had come here from the office. Good. It was a Friday after all. Hopefully she was making her way back to the city before nightfall.
She wasn't staying here again if that was what she thought was happening.
Damn, I thought as she came up to me. I was mad at her, but my body hadn't gotten the memo. I hadn't stopped thinking about the nights we spent together. I hadn't stopped thinking about anything that had happened with her. What could I say? Women I had known longer had made less of an impression on me than she had. I didn't hate her as much as I wanted to be able to. If I could, that meant that I could watch her leave again later today and not feel shit.
"Cameron, hi," she said, coming up the steps to me. Her hair was up, and it bothered me. I liked it down, so I could run my fingers through it, hold a handful of it in my fist as she sucked my dick.
"You're back," I said. If I had thought of anything else to say, I would have said something, but I didn't. Say anything, literally anything, I thought. Here's a good place to start, how about apologizing to her?
The other day before she had left, the last thing I had said to her had been that I thought she was just as bad as the people, the world, I had come out here to get away from. It had been a few days now, and I guess I had learned some things since then. I might have been too quick to judge her. I had been too angry at the time to consider the position she had been put in by Brett and the stockholders at the company. Had she still been wrong? Yeah, but I could have cut her some slack.
"Is this a bad time?"
"What would you do if I said that it was?" I challenged. Leave and come back later? No, really, what would she have done if I told her that I was busy and couldn't talk to her?