24. Felicity
24
FELICITY
T he weather was just starting to break, which meant all of New York was taking to the great outdoors to drink in the first rays of sunshine after a dreary winter. I couldn’t resist it myself, but there was no way I was going back to the emotional crime scene that was Central Park. I wound up walking along the water’s edge at Riverside Park, trying not to focus on anything but the warmth on my face.
I’d been running away from reality for the past few days, but I had to deal with it—my life was a mess. I’d called in sick to work every day. Sandrine and Lucy had been reaching out to me to make sure I was holding up okay, Sandrine making sure to tell me there was no pressure for me to return to the office, but I knew I needed to make some hard choices about my next steps.
Just not right now.
I paused to take in the view of the skyline across the water. They say there’s no such thing as bad press, and after the livestream debacle, I shockingly had a million other possibilities open to me. That was good news, since the one thing I was sure about was that I didn’t have to stay at Veritique, in the shadow of the man who’d broken my heart. I mean, how could I go back and pretend everything was normal? I closed my eyes and tipped my head back, trying to remain in the moment instead of spinning out about what I had to do to get my life back on track.
The punch against my back jolted me into fight or flight mode. It was broad daylight, and I was surrounded by people—who the hell was assaulting me? I spun around to find a panting, waggy-tailed assailant who must’ve recognized me from a distance.
“Boris!” I said, reaching down to grab his leash. “What did you do? Did you run away from Tyler?”
I scanned the crowd looking for him and felt my stomach bottom out when a group of people parted to reveal Cameron jogging toward me.
The absolute last person I wanted to see.
“Hey,” he said when he reached me, slightly out of breath. “Sorry about that.”
I handed the leash back to Cameron. He couldn’t look me in the eyes.
“I guess he recognized you from a distance. He does that with people he likes,” Cameron said. “All of a sudden he took off running, and I wasn’t holding onto the leash tightly enough, so…” he gestured to me. “Anyway, thanks for grabbing him.”
“I guess he didn’t hear about us not being real,” I snipped. “You should probably let your dog know there’s no reason for him to pretend to like me any longer.”
His brow creased. “Boris isn’t pretending, he genuinely…” he drifted off.
I glanced around to see if anyone was watching us, but my sunglasses and baseball cap had rendered me unrecognizable. Cameron was wearing sunglasses as well, along with a hoodie and jeans. His billionaire persona was folded up and hidden away, but the aura surrounding him? As intense as ever. He managed to fit in and look like everyone else and simultaneously better than he had any right to.
I needed to get away from him.
“I have to get back home. Good to see you, Boris,” I gave him a quick scratch between the ears.
“We’re walking home too.”
Cameron didn’t have to say it, but unless we were going to awkwardly ignore one another on the walk to the building, we were sort of stuck together. I considered making up an errand to give me an excuse to go somewhere else, but I decided I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
I sighed. “Let’s go.”
We walked side by side in silence, dodging joggers and cyclists, until I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“I’m fine , by the way,” I blurted out. “Thanks for asking.”
“I could tell,” Cameron replied calmly. “As you should be. There’s nothing to be upset about.”
I flip-flopped between seething and wanting to cry at the statement. “Oh no? You mean it’s totally cool to act the way you did that day in Central Park?”
He sighed. “Fine, okay, I might have overreacted about the proposal thing.”
I didn’t say anything, waiting for his apology, which never came.
“It’s for the best, you know,” he continued. “When couples get stress-tested and don’t make it, that means they weren’t meant to be. Which doesn’t even apply to us since we were never a real couple.”
My face contorted with disgust at his ridiculous logic. “ Excuse me? So you think one little trial is enough to end a relationship? Have you ever heard of working through adversity? Or getting therapy?”
“Therapy is pointless,” he said, kicking a rock out of his path, which Boris tried to chase.
I snorted. “You sound like my parents.”
It was an intriguing enough confession to get him to finally look over at me. “What do you mean?”
I wasn’t expecting to go there with him, and it wasn’t a conversation I liked having, but the moment felt right. He needed to see that his logic was flawed using a real-life example.
“I lived in a home of prizefighters,” I began slowly. “Both of my parents knew how to verbally destroy each other. Perfectly constructed insults designed to wound. Screaming. Flying dishes. Storming out the door. I think I heard my parents say ‘I hate you’ more often than ‘I love you.’”
Cameron let out a shocked huff.
“Needless to say, I didn’t like being home much. And that’s where Nina came in. She could tell I was desperate to escape my real life, so she helped me create our own safe little world up in her treehouse. I basically navigated their entire divorce up there.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said softly.
I steeled myself against him trying to be nice to me. “It wasn’t great, but things got better after the divorce. They weren’t horrible people, but they figured out every possible way to be horrible for each other.”
Boris paused to sniff a lamppost, and we both stared at him rather than looking at each other. I felt vulnerable revealing that part of my story, but I also felt like he needed to hear it.
“That’s what I mean, you know,” Cameron said as we started walking again.
“Huh?” I asked.
“About relationships. That’s how most of them end up. Fights. Pain. Divorce. We all know the statistics.”
“No,” I fired back at him. “It’s not true for everyone. That’s how my parents’ relationship ended because they refused to even try. And that’s what started our whole conversation—your argument that therapy doesn’t work. My parents never even considered it. But here’s the crazy part: I know they were in love when they got together. I’ve seen the old photos of them with their arms around each other, so giddy and happy it’s almost embarrassing. But life happened, and instead of facing the troubles that came along with it as a team, they let the challenges fracture them. And I’m not talking about big stuff, like cheating, but the normal bumps in the road. Money problems. Career challenges. Parenthood. And each new problem turned them into rivals instead of teammates. A good therapist could’ve helped them figure out what they needed to work on, but they refused to even consider it. So a family was ripped apart.”
“I’m really sorry, Felicity,” Cameron said.
“What people don’t realize is that trauma echoes. Thanks to my parents, I didn’t have a model of what a good relationship looked like, so I was willing to take whatever bullshit my partners gave me. Like Steven.”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to talk about him?”
“I’m trying to make a point,” I said with a frustrated sigh. “Steven was withholding with his affection. His love felt almost…transactional. Like he had to decide whether I was worthy. That was fine with me for way too long because I didn’t know I was worthy of more. But when I finally started asking for what I needed from our relationship, like validation and a real commitment instead of stringing me along, he bailed.” I choked out a humorless laugh. “No, it was worse than just bailing. He built a career on lies about me.”
“Felicity…”
“All of that was just to say that you’re wrong , Cameron. A relationship can work, but only if you’re willing to work at it. I’m not saying you should try to stick it out in a situation that’s all stress and drama. That’s not healthy. What I mean is that running away at the first sign of trouble is giving up.”
I glanced over at him, but he refused to look at me.
“You work harder than anyone I’ve ever met. You run an empire, Cameron, clearly you know how to get things done. That’s why I’m sort of in shock that you gave up on us so easily. We had something good—I know you felt it too. But instead of sticking things out, you opted to walk away. I thought I knew you. Clearly, I was wrong.”
“It’s not the same thing,” Cameron sighed.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” I asked with anger tinging my voice.
He didn’t answer.
After that, I gave up. We both retreated into our own thoughts, walking side by side but worlds away.
“Excuse me?”
A teenager ran up to us clutching her phone, her eyes shining.
Shit. We’d been spotted.
“Ohmygosh, I love you guys so much and I’m super excited to see you together!” she said quickly, mashing her words together. “Can we take a picture? No one will believe I ran into you without proof! Are you guys back together? I really hope so!”
Cameron started to answer, but I cut him off, since the man didn’t know how to handle an unexpected social media run-in.
“Hi,” I replied in a syrupy voice. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Maddie!” Her cheeks went pink. “Oh my gosh I can’t believe you’re talking to me!”
I could feel Cameron glaring at the side of my head.
“You know what, Maddie? We’re both so happy to meet you, and we’re honored that you’ve enjoyed our story, but right now we’re talking about some work stuff that’s really important. We’re trying to stay undercover, so would it be okay if we skipped a photo?”
Her face fell.
“How about this? What’s your Insta handle? I’ll follow you back, and you can use that as proof that we met.”
“Really?” Maddie jumped up and down, and Boris joined her. “Okay, yay! I’m MaddieMagnificent on every platform.”
She glanced at Cameron, probably expecting him to make the same offer.
“Cameron doesn’t do social media,” I explained for him. “He’s boring, right?”
I laughed harder than necessary, and Maddie joined in.
“Thank you!” she said. “You two are the best, and everyone is hoping you, uh, you figure stuff out. Good luck!”
She placed her finger to her lips in a “shush” gesture, then ran off.
“Why did you give her hope that we’re reconciling?” Cameron asked in a strained voice.
“What did you expect me to do?” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth. “It’s not like Veritique has given me an action plan about how to respond to stuff like that. It’s to be expected that people are going to stay interested in CamLicity, at least for a little while longer. I didn’t confirm or deny.”
“If you’d come back to the office maybe we could hammer something out,” he responded. “And anyway, I thought you were sick. You don’t look unhealthy.”
“I was sick,” I lied, “now I’m taking vacation time.”
“For how long?”
“Don’t know. Sandrine told me it’s fine,” I added.
He grumbled something unintelligible.
It finally hit me that I didn’t have to walk with him. I didn’t owe Cameron O’Connor a thing when we were off the clock. I could take off in a different direction and enjoy the beautiful day without a frowning bosshole beside me.
“You know what? I changed my mind, I’m not going right home. I need something sweet after all this saltiness.”
He frowned at me.
“Yeah,” I said, mainly to myself. “I need some Levain cookies.” I knelt in front of Boris and kissed him on the head. “Bye, mister. You’re the best boy. Take care of yourself.”
It sounded like a final goodbye because it was. My future was starting to swim into focus, and it didn’t include Cameron, which also meant it was probably the last time I’d see Boris.
“Well…he could use a longer walk; we’ll go with you,” he said, shocking the hell out of me. He pushed his sunglasses on top of his head and stared at me.
“No, that’s not necessary,” I replied. “In fact, I don’t want you to. It turns out you were right all along, Cameron. I’m better off without you.”
I walked away before he could answer, hiding a little smile of victory. Once he was out of sight, lost in the crowd, I called Nina.
“Hey, I’m going to Levain. What do you want?”
I picked up my pace at the promise of being comforted by the world’s most addictive chocolate chip cookies.
“Ooh, your favorite,” she cheered. “What’s the occasion?”
“I’m celebrating the first day of the rest of my life.”
“What?” she squawked. “That sounds a little ominous. What do you mean?”
“I just ran into Cameron, and I realized I’m okay,” my voice came out shaky. “Or I’m going to be okay.”
“Oof. Did you cry? Was it awkward?”
The feelings I’d been suppressing as I talked to him were finally taking over. I wanted to seem strong in front of him, and I’d succeeded, but it was all an act.
Damn it, I still missed him.
“I didn’t cry, and it was awkward. Someone clocked us as CamLicity. I handled it.”
Just saying the name made me glance around furtively, but no one on the sidewalk noticed me.
“Was he a jerk about it?”
“He just seemed…grumpy. More than usual. But here’s what’s weird—when I told him I was going to Levain, he offered to tag along!”
“Talk about mixed signals,” she laughed.
“No,” I shook my head. “He’s still firmly in the ‘relationships are pointless’ camp, he just wanted to walk Boris farther. I told him not to bother.”
“Good for you!”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I feel… okay . Now I just need to figure out what to do career-wise.”
“So you’re quitting for sure?”
I slowed down behind a trio of tourists taking up the entire sidewalk, which gave me time to consider it. The thought made me a little queasy because I loved my job, but I didn’t see a way to do it with the ghost of Cameron haunting me at every meeting.
“Yeah, I think so. Guess I need to find a new job.”
“Treehouse, treehouse…” she sang.
I laughed at her relentlessness. “Yes, of course , but we’re not quite there yet, you know? I don’t have as much saved as I’d planned to, and we need to find a space.”
“We will, it’s coming. I feel it in my bones.”
“Okay, tell me what kind of cookies you want.”
Nina gave me her order and I hung up, feeling more clarity than I’d had in ages. I wasn’t exactly happy, or positive, but I figured the good feelings were on the way now that I was starting to make peace with my life and the end of my relationship with Cameron.
But there was one little persistent thought that kept popping up, no matter how many times I tried to ignore it.
Cameron did a great job of pretending he didn’t care about me, but I knew him. He’d revealed himself to me whether he liked it or not. And when I looked in his eyes, I could see it.
He missed me too.