CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Adalyn
When I returned to the kitchen, I found a very different Cameron than the one I’d left there.
This one wasn’t looking at me with all that softness and vulnerability that had made my chest hurt. This Cameron was mad. Upset.
Disconcerted.
“Adalyn,” he said. That was all. Just my name.
I came to a stop. My gaze roamed all over his face, his stance, the kitchen, looking for an explanation. Had I done something to cause this? Minutes ago, I’d run into his arms because I hadn’t been able to help myself. Because I’d felt so horrible at the idea of having used something so painful against him that I would have cracked in two if I didn’t make sure he knew how sorry I was. Minutes ago, he was calling me love and telling me he’d hated being mean to me in the past. Cameron didn’t know that I was used to not being wanted in places, I was used to imposing myself on people’s lives and situations, with only a few exceptions like Matthew or my mother.
Cameron lifted his arm, making me notice the phone he was gripping in his fist. “What’s this,” he ground out, not even formulating the question.
A nanosecond was all it took me. Just a glimpse.
I had been mentally preparing myself for this, for him finding out, ever since that conversation with Diane and Gabriel. After I learned that Cameron hadn’t known about it and apparently hadn’t been curious enough to google me. But most of all, I’d been dreading this moment for the last few weeks. Days. It had been hanging over my head. I knew that Cameron was eventually going to see it.
But that didn’t mean I’d been ready.
All the warmth in my body left me, and I was sure I wobbled a tiny step to the side, because the storm of emotion in Cameron’s eyes wavered for an instant. He reached for me.
I widened my stance. I shook my head and told myself to stand straight. What was that thing Cameron told the girls? Soldier on.
“I think it’s obvious from the clip,” I told him. “Did you watch the whole thing?”
He let out a rough exhale. “I don’t understand.”
I didn’t, either. I didn’t understand why he was so upset, unless perhaps he hated being left in the dark or caught off guard. Perhaps he felt betrayed by me not telling him that he was walking around with a ticking PR bomb. After all, I was a meme, a viral thirty-second clip, a face used to sell energy drinks. Choose entertainment over dignity. I was every single thing he was running away from.
“There’s nothing to understand,” I said.
“Explain the video to me anyway,” he pleaded, and now I could hear it in his voice. How hurt he was. How frustrated. “Please.”
I averted my eyes. “What clip did you see? The techno remix? Or the one with classical music? Or perhaps you saw one of the choreographed dances or the theatrical reinterpretation of the audio. People are really talented nowadays.” I shrugged. “Or maybe you saw the ad with my face. I’m sure it shows up under my hashtag by now.”
“There is an ad,” Cameron said very slowly. As if he couldn’t even speak. “With your face?”
My stomach twisted. I was pretty sure I was going to be sick, but I managed a nod.
There was a long stretch of silence until Cameron spoke again. “What did he do?”
I felt my brows twisting, my eyes narrowing with doubt. That had been the same question my mother had asked. “He didn’t do anything. It wasn’t Sparkles’s—or Paul’s—fault. I did that.”
Once more, Cameron didn’t utter a single word for what seemed like an eternity. That was probably why my eyes found their way back to him. His face. He looked so utterly lost. Helpless. I hated putting that there. “I wasn’t asking about the mascot. I was talking about your father. He’s the owner of the club. What did he do about this?”
I blinked at him. He already knew that. “My father sent me here.” Cameron’s expression hardened. I fumbled with my hands. “The clip had gone viral in under a day.” I pointed at the phone as it rested there, in his fist. “I was a PR problem for the club. Heck, I was a problem for him, and so I was sent here, on an assignment.”
All that anger dissolved. “Don’t say that.”
“Say what?”
“That you’re a problem.” His voice cracked. “You’re not a fucking problem, Adalyn.”
Those guards I had been neglecting for the last days engaged, coming up at full force. “Don’t pretend that you never saw me as a problem, Cameron.” My words weren’t harsh or accusing. I was simply stating a fact. And I wasn’t mad or angry about that. I understood why he did. But that didn’t mean I was able to stand here and listen to him taking my side when there was no such thing as sides in this. “What would you have done in his place, huh? Wouldn’t you want to protect the team? The franchise? The empire he has built? His own name? Because I would. I was jeopardizing all of those things. I was a running joke—still am, for that matter. So, really, what would you have done instead?”
“Christ, Adalyn,” he said. “I would have protected you. Not anything else. I would have done anything to protect you.”
His words clashed against me with such force that I thought I might stumble backward. I braced a hand on the back of a stool. “And how exactly would you have done that, Cameron? Going door-to-door telling every person watching to stop? Snatching their phones from their hands and smashing them against the floor? Or perhaps shouting at the press not to pay me any attention and focus on the un-shockingly lackluster season the team was having instead? Or—”
“Yes,” he interjected. And the single word was suspended in the air for what seemed like an eternity. “I would have done all of those things.” He crossed the distance separating us. “I would have done anything I could.”
My next breath didn’t make it in. Or out.
Cameron’s hands came around my face, the contact of his skin against mine dizzying, overwhelming in a way I wasn’t ready to process in that moment. But a way I didn’t want to let go of. Not yet. I leaned into his touch.
“I would have done everything in my power to protect you.” His thumbs brushed my cheeks, and as angry as he still looked, his voice was so soft, so gentle. “The internet was fucking bullying you, so I would have tried to fix this. And I would have never—fucking ever—treated you like a problem and shoved you aside to get you out of the way.”
My chest was heaving at this point, and whatever I thought I’d felt disappeared, turning into hurt. A hurt I didn’t want there but couldn’t help. “But you wanted me out of here, too. And I don’t blame you. I’m not mad or resentful.” My throat tightened. “When I arrived in Green Oak, I was an inconvenience for you, and you wanted to shove me out. And I’m not blameless, but that’s not that different from what my father did.”
A strangled sound left him, his forehead falling on mine. My hands rose, and I wrapped my fingers around his wrists. Showing him that I wanted him right where he was. “I would have fucking cared, love. And I’m going to show you, okay?”
I couldn’t imagine how, but I gave him a small nod.
Cameron seemed to breathe a little easier. “I’m not your father, and I don’t really know him. But that’s not…” His head shook against mine. “I hate what he did. His reaction.” His hands moved down my cheeks, settling on the sides of my neck. “And if you think I’m not stubborn enough to go door-by-door, smashing phones against the ground, then you have me figured out all wrong.”
A strange puff of air burst out, but I couldn’t tell if it was a sob or a laugh. Probably neither. Because this was too much. It was too intense. And I didn’t think I had the tools to process it. I wished I could keep my eyes closed until everything heavy and complicated inside my chest disappeared. I didn’t want to turn back time and not have this conversation, because it had always been meant to take place, but I wished I could magically pop up in bed and will the rest of the night away. Wake up tomorrow, buried in the comforter of Cameron’s guest room.
And, of course, this man who was still holding my face between his hands like his life depended on it seemed to somehow read my mind, because I was wordlessly being lifted off the ground and then, I was being deposited in the soft and plush cushions of the couch. I sighed, half happy to be granted the wish and half sad that this meant he was walking away. But then, a large body was curling along mine and what I knew was Cameron’s arm was coming around my middle, curling over my waist, and dragging me to his chest.
“I know you hate being carried everywhere,” he said into my hair. “But I’ve been stopping myself all night. Maybe all week.”
An avalanche of contradicting feelings rioted and clashed inside me as I buried my hands between our bodies, letting my palms fall on his chest and my forehead rest against his chin. “I don’t hate it.”
I really didn’t. I resisted it—him—because I liked being in Cameron’s arms too much. Enough to remind myself that Green Oak was a bubble, and there was a life waiting for me back in Miami. One that I had fought hard to go back to but was starting to feel I didn’t belong to anymore. Not like I thought I did.
And where did that leave me? Where did that leave us?
We spent the night on the couch.
Or so I thought. Now that I was blinking at the empty space beside me, I wasn’t exactly sure if I’d slept alone.
Willow popped her head out from beneath the couch. The only warning she gave me was a mew before she curled in my lap. I petted her behind her ears, just like I’d learned she liked, wondering what time it was but not wanting to leave the safety of the couch or the blanket wrapped tightly around me.
Had I imagined everything? Had last night been a dream?
I dropped my hand to the side and felt the cushion still warm.
So I couldn’t have imagined Cameron sleeping by my side.
I hadn’t imagined the feel of my hands slipping under his shirt, or the feel of his smooth and warm skin under the pads of my fingers. I hadn’t imagined his hands moving around me and finding a place on my back. Or how his thumbs had snuck under the waist of my jeans and how he had hummed deep in his throat. My eyelids fluttered shut, my breath coming out of me in a burst.
No wonder I’d woke up all aroused. No, that wasn’t a word I would use for how I felt.
Horny. That’s what I was. Hot. And bothered. And turned on. And he wasn’t even here right now.
I reopened my eyes to Willow’s bicolored gaze. She stared at me and then let out a sound that I interpreted as Your thoughts are too loud, and I’m trying to sleep.
“Sorry, girl,” I told her, passing my fingers over her head one more time. I frowned, something occurring to me. “Hmm. I’ve never been this sexually frustrated before, so I’m trying to deal.”
A deep chuckle came from the kitchen.
My upper body sprung up. My head swiveled in the direction of the sound.
Cameron was leaning on the island, petting Pierogi with one hand and holding a mug with the other. There was a huge grin on his face. “Morning to you, too, love.”
Ugh.
I let myself fall on my back, disappearing from his sight behind the back of the couch. I brought my hands to my face and bit back a groan. That wasn’t something Cameron needed to hear.
His head reappeared over the couch. He leaned on the edge with his elbows, still with the smuggest smile known to man.
“Don’t let it get to your head,” I said, busying my hands with Willow’s fur. Trying to be casual. “Think of it as… morning wood. But for girls. Completely unrelated to you. It just happened.” I shook my head. “Sexual frustration is common.”
He let out a laugh this time. “Sure,” he said. “Only we both know it was all me. In fact, it’d be easy to prove how much.” And just as I was arching a brow, he was raising an arm and flexing his biceps. “See?”
I loved his arms. Specifically flexed like that. I let out a snort. “Really,” I deadpanned. “What are you, ten?”
Cameron straightened up. And in a swift motion I would have never anticipated, he took off his shirt.
My mouth clamped shut. My whole face warmed. Heated. He didn’t even need to flex. I swallowed. Hard. I was hornier than ever. “I keep forgetting how much you love to win,” I said under my breath.
“Nah,” he said, his lips inching higher. “You keep giving me reasons to play a harder and longer game, darling.”
Remnants from last night came back to me, not of him and me on the couch, but our conversation. The way it had revealed so many crucial pieces to understanding each other. It had been intense, but it also had been needed. In this moment, I felt closer to Cameron than I did to anyone else. He’d bared himself to me, and I knew how hard it had been for him. It made me feel horrible for not doing the same. Not completely. But how could I have told him all the things that led me to my biggest mistake? I was still scared Cameron would look at me differently. Like my father or David had. I was terrified.
As if sensing my inner battle, Cameron’s lightness vanished and he turned away from me.
My gaze followed him as he crossed the space to the far end of the living room, sculpted muscles dancing on his back and knocking every rational thought out of my head with each step he took. Cameron kneeled, disappearing from my sight for a second and popping up again holding a mat. It was The Mat. Which meant it was Yoga Time. I loved Yoga Time. It was the time of the day I could openly watch him.
“You’re off the hook today,” Cameron said, shooting me a knowing glance. “But you’re joining me tomorrow.” His expression turned serious. “I want you to try to meditate as well. I’m not in the best position to lecture anyone, God knows I have issues to sift through myself, but I think it will help you. With those bursts of anxiety you experience.”
“My… panic attacks.”
“Yes.” He gave me a nod. “It won’t fix them. I’ve learned that therapy is the key for that. But I’m not a therapist and I’m not your…” He trailed off, and my heart skipped a beat. “It’s a start. Baby steps, yeah?” I gave him a nod, and he let out an exhale, as if relieved I was letting him try to help. God. This man. “Good. I’ll guide you through the basics. Tomorrow. Worst case the workout will take your mind off things for a bit.”
I watched him unroll the mat. There was a concerned look on his face. I didn’t like it there. “I think you’ll need to wear a shirt then,” I told him. “I don’t think my mind will be able to relax otherwise.”
He gave me somewhat of a smile, as if he wanted to tell me that he appreciated me trying to lighten his mood. But the frown remained there.
“Cameron?” I said. He stopped what he was doing to look at me. “You shouldn’t worry so much. I want to try the yoga and meditation. With you. But I… I’m okay. For the most part, I think. After last night, I don’t want you to feel like you need to fix things for me. I’ve been doing fine on my own for a long time.”
“I know,” he answered simply. “I’m beginning to understand just how long.” The emotion in his eyes seemed to brighten, making them look as green as ever. I couldn’t look anywhere else. “I don’t intend on slaying your dragons for you. Not because I don’t want to, believe me, I do. But because you would hate it, and you don’t need me to.”
Pressure rushed to the backs of my eyes. And something strange happened. Something in the middle of my chest. A flutter I didn’t understand. A longing for those things he’d just said I didn’t need or want.
An emotion crossed Cameron’s face, and I could tell from the way he widened his stance that he was stopping himself from coming my way. He cleared his throat. “Josie is picking you up in an hour, right?”
Right. “Girls’ time, yes.”
Cameron looked down at his feet for an instant. “I asked her to drop you back after lunch. And I made her promise to be on time, so I’d have you back soon. There’s something I have planned for you. That okay?”
So I’d have you back soon. The strange flutter stirred. “Of course.”
The relief in his face was so clear that it made me pause.
He’d thought I’d say no.
“I better go shower then,” I said, turning away. I took two steps before turning. Cameron was still looking at me. He hadn’t moved. “I wouldn’t hate it, you know?” I told him, and he frowned. “I wouldn’t hate it if you were the one slaying my dragons for me.”