Chapter 30 #2
Cameron released a pent-up sigh and relaxed back into his seat, shrugging. “Just a few things.” He put it between his legs and pulled a baseball glove out. “My dad always brought a glove to games for me. I wasn’t sure if Chloe would want one. We’re in foul ball range, so you never know.”
He shrugged again, slightly sheepish and downright adorable.
It was the least confident I’d ever seen this man look, and it was all because he wasn’t sure if my daughter would be interested in a tradition he’d had with his dad.
My lips spread into a smile as I took the glove from him and passed it to Chloe, who immediately responded with a resounding “Cool!” and thrust her hand into it unsuccessfully.
Cameron leaned over my lap to try to help her, and I tried not to breathe in his sandalwood cologne too deeply.
It swirled around me, reminding me of moments I couldn’t think about right now.
“And I brought this for you,” he said after spending a few minutes with the glove and returning to his Mary Poppins bag, pulling out the last thing I expected to see: a ball of yarn and crochet hooks.
“Cameron,” I laughed. “Why?”
“I know you like to keep your hands busy. I didn’t want you getting bored.” He smiled, but it was, once again, a little shy. “I can just put it back in the bag if you don’t want it. It’s not a big deal.”
“No, no.” I grabbed for the yarn, plopping it in my lap. “As long as you’re not embarrassed to be sitting with the strange lady who crochets at a baseball game.”
He was quiet, and I looked up from the yarn to see his eyes trained solely on me, his expression suddenly serious.
“I can’t imagine ever being embarrassed to be with you.”
He had the ability to disarm me so easily it should be concerning. At one point, in that pub in the hours after midnight, it was concerning. But now? Now, it was something else.
“This was sweet of you,” I said softly. “Thank you.”
Cameron nodded, stared at me for a long moment, and then let out a shuddering sigh that I felt in my bones—something that was tangled with longing, the same I felt whenever I looked at him and couldn’t touch him.
And the scariest part about it was that it had nothing to do with the want and the yearning I’d felt with him in the bedroom. No, this was a different sort of desire. The desire to just hold someone’s hand because you cared about them, because you saw them, because you appreciated them.
“Did you go to a lot of games with your dad?” I asked, needing more of Cameron. I couldn’t touch him, but I could worm my way closer to him. Somehow.
“A few times a season,” he answered easily. “He was a lawyer, too, so he didn’t have a ton of free time, but whenever he could manage it, we would go. Uncle Tony and my grandpa liked to tag along sometimes.”
“That’s who was supposed to come today?”
He grimaced. “Yeah, Grandpa’s recovering from a bit of a fall. He should be okay, though.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” I wrapped my fingers around the ball of yarn, once again resisting the urge to touch him. “I’m sure you miss them.”
“I do,” he acknowledged. “But I think I’ll try to visit home soon. And I’m happy I got to bring you and Chloe. You said once you’d always wanted to bring her to Fenway.”
I had said that, hadn’t I? And he remembered.
“She’s very excited,” I said, lowering my voice and glancing over to see Chloe on the edge of her seat, watching with fascination at the pre-game warm-ups, glove in hand.
I looked back to Cameron to see him watching her, too.
A bit of nostalgia swirled in his eyes, like he could see himself in her, and I liked that.
He’d just wanted to share this experience with someone who might appreciate it, and Chloe was that person.
I was, too, but mostly because it meant I got to spend the evening with them.
“I didn’t realize your dad was a lawyer,” I said, and Cameron’s head swiveled back, eyes finding me again. “Will you tell me more about him?” He gave me a funny stare, and I rushed to add, “You don’t have to, of course, if you’d prefer not to.”
“No, Sunshine.” He absently tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear before seeming to realize what he was doing and dropping his hand. “I’d love to tell you about my dad.”
“What was his name?” I asked.
“Elijah.” He swallowed. “It’s my middle name.”
“Is he the reason you went into law?”
He nodded. “It wasn’t any kind of pressured thing. There wasn’t an expectation, but…”
“You wanted to?”
“I did,” he admitted, “though it’s…complicated.”
“You’ve listened to me talk a lot, Cameron.” I fiddled with the crochet hooks in my hands without taking my attention off him. I didn’t know how to look away. “I can be a good listener, too.”
Cameron’s eyes darted around the field, landing momentarily on Chloe, who was intently watching the big display screen, where an announcer was testing people in the stadium on their lyric knowledge of popular songs. She was giggling at the last person who’d just butchered “Pink Pony Club.”
“He was just a really good man,” Cameron said finally, looking back at me.
“And even though our time together was cut short, being raised by such a loving and successful Black man really shaped me as a child and young adult. It gave me the example I’ve always tried to follow, both in my personal and professional life.
I wasn’t the only person who looked up to him, either.
He was the kind of guy neighbors called when they needed a hand fixing their fence or getting a ride to the airport.
He was a good son. I was young, but I remember how broken he’d seemed when my grandma passed from cancer.
His focus was entirely on my grandpa, though.
Always making sure he was never alone, bringing him over for dinners multiple times a week.
He’d get my uncle to come, too, pulling him out of his grief. And to my mom—”
Cameron broke off, shaking his head.
“My parents were closer than any two people I’ve known.” The corner of Cameron’s mouth curved. “They met at a bar.”
His eyes were unblinking, not backing down from the way they were looking at me. Looking through me, almost. Seeing everything.
My breath hitched.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, lips still tilting with the ghost of a smile. “My mom was behind the counter. It was her parents’ place. My dad asked to buy her a drink after her shift, and the rest was history.”
“He was as smooth a talker as you, then,” I said, suddenly feeling hot—a heat that had nothing to do with the balmy summer evening, the kind of weather that was perfect for a ballgame.
Cameron’s grin grew. “You think I’m a smooth talker, Natalie?”
I rolled my eyes, but it was playful. We both knew he was as smooth a talker as they came. “I thought maybe it was from being a lawyer, but now I know it’s just genetic.”
His smile was full now, as though he liked that—having another tie to his dad.
“I miss him,” Cameron said, but there wasn’t wistfulness in his voice or sudden grief.
Just a simple, profound fact. Not a dip into emotions he kept locked up, but a truth he carried with him day in and day out.
“And I know I’m not alone in that. When he died, all I could feel was how heavily everyone took it, aware we lost someone so great.
And as I grew up, all I knew was I—” He sighed, huffing a humorless laugh. “It sounds ridiculous.”
“You wanted to be great, like him,” I put the pieces together for Cameron, and his eyes grew round like he hadn’t expected me to get it.
As if I didn’t understand the weight of existing in a family where everyone was so incredibly high achieving and supportive and somehow able to do it all, for everyone, making me feel like a failure when sometimes all I could do and be was Chloe’s all.
That some days, I didn’t have room for more.
“You wanted to be the man that they all lost.”
I couldn’t help but notice that Cameron hadn’t mentioned how his dad had passed. But it also seemed apparent he wanted to talk more about how his dad had lived than how his dad had died, and I didn’t want to change that.
“I did, and becoming a lawyer was the best way I knew how,” Cameron acknowledged.
“Because he was a great lawyer, too. He started in military law because it was how he could fund his education. But that was all before I was born, before he left and branched into family law, working his way to being partner. He cared about the people he worked with. That’s what everyone always tells me, anyway.
And that’s the kind of lawyer I want to be, too.
That kind of man. His shoes are big, though.
It’s hard to be great in all those different ways, getting pulled in a million different directions.
He somehow managed to be in so many places, all at the same time, and make it look easy.
” His eyes shifted to me. “Kind of like you.”
“Oh no.” I shook my head, immediately brushing that comment off.
He had no idea the guilt I carried because of the things I couldn’t manage some days.
“I don’t think I make anything look easy.
Because it isn’t. But you?” This man always made everything seem effortless, how he handled situations and walked around with confidence.
“I think you’re more like your dad than you realize.
” When Cameron remained stoic, seemingly unable to find any words to respond to that, I added, “And you know what?”
“What?” he breathed, still looking a little awed, his eyes roaming over my face.
“You’re right that there’s a million places I could be right now, doing a million things, and I’m sure you probably feel the same. But for me, I really don’t want to be anywhere else but here. I hope you know that.”
Cameron stayed quiet for a long moment, his gaze boring into mine, and I worried that maybe I’d said the wrong thing or bared too much. But then his lips cracked into a shy grin.
“Funny,” he murmured. “I feel exactly the same way.”
I crocheted half a small baseball by the end of the game.
I thought it might make up for the fact that Chloe didn’t catch a real baseball, though she insisted on wearing the glove the entire time anyway.
She only took it off when she went to get food with Cameron, after he insisted that she wouldn’t be able to hold ice cream with it on her hand.
I could tell Chloe wanted to argue that point and attempt to prove him wrong but wanted the ice cream more.
Cameron also had a way of saying things that made them sound final, like there would be no buts.
I needed to learn his ways.
As promised, he gave her a piggyback ride to the car, including climbing and descending the stairs of the stadium as we exited.
He was spoiling her, just a little bit, but I found it really hard to care.
Especially when I watched the way her cute face squished onto his shoulder, her eyes fluttering shut with exhaustion.
Cameron must have sensed the way her body had melted and shut down as we walked because when we made it to the car, he was gentle with the way he roused her, getting her tucked into the back seat.
The entire thing left me feeling light-headed, giddy, and anxious.
Something hopeful and silly bloomed in my chest, something I shouldn’t be reading into, something I should put an absolute stop to, but I just couldn’t.
And not only could I not get a grip on my emotions, but I also couldn’t stop myself from spilling them.
“This felt kinda like a date.” The words tumbled out of my mouth when it was just me and Cameron again, standing in my front entryway.
It wasn’t my fault. He’d done things to my ovaries when he carried my sleeping daughter up the stairs to her room—my daughter, who was truly too old to be carried anywhere—and then looked at me with a crooked grin, dimples on full display.
“I mean, a client date, of course,” I tried to amend.
“With my daughter tagging along and ketchup stains on my shirt because said daughter put way too many condiments on a hot dog and me spending half the time crocheting like an old lady, but, well…” My voice vanished as Cameron stepped into my space, his lips curving further in amusement. “Never mind.”
“You’re cute when you ramble,” he said, his voice all low and delicious and wonderful. He reached out, sliding his palm onto the side of my face and cupping it while his thumb drifted over my mouth, like he was trying to coax it open again, get me to say more silly things.
Something inside me sighed at his touch, relieved to finally have it again.
“Literally no one has ever said that before,” I laughed, breathless, feeling like I was riding a high.
“It’s true.” His eyes dropped to my mouth, seeming to study the way he was caressing it with his fingertip. “And if this felt like a date, then I think that means I get to kiss you good night.”
“I know it wasn’t a date,” I whispered, not wanting him to think I didn’t know that. I understood exactly where we stood. Even if I was starting to wish that we stood somewhere else.
“Natalie.” He shook his head like he didn’t care about that, about the specifics. “For the love of God, just let me kiss you before I go.”
I barely managed a nod before Cameron dropped his head and brushed a tender kiss across my lips.
It was the most tentative kiss he’d ever given me, almost as though he knew that there was something about tonight that was fragile.
But even still, after a few moments, he couldn’t seem to help but deepen it.
His tongue stroked mine. I whimpered. He groaned and then pushed himself back. We couldn’t. Not now, not here.
Cameron’s mouth hovered over mine even after, though. Separating felt impossible.
“For the record…” His warm breath teased my lips. “A date involving you and your daughter and ketchup stains and crocheting? That’s my kind of date.”
His words washed over me, making me feel like I was free-falling.
And then he left.