Chapter 13
thirteen
CAMILLA
I mistook my phone’s blaring ringtone for the alarm until I pried my eyes open and saw Greyson’s name across the screen. Despite the sun burning my eyes, I startled awake and hurried to answer. “Good morning,” I greeted him with a groggy voice.
“Did I wake you?” My eyes were still shut as I spoke, but I was willing to sacrifice sleep just to hear his voice. “No, I’ve been up for a while.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call yesterday. My dad had me sit in on a big meeting, so I didn’t get home until late.”
“How’d that go?” When I finally shot up from under the covers, I was immediately disappointed by the lack of fresh coffee scent.
“I don’t think any of them took me seriously, Cami.” His somber tone reminded me of when we’d lie in bed after a hard day at work, and I’d run my hands through his hair until he fell asleep.
“All that matters is that your dad takes you seriously. The rest of them will fall in line when you take over. You didn’t think you’d win me over, but you did.” I beamed a smile he couldn’t see.
“Four years of flirting and pining won’t work in this instance, Cami.” My laughter echoed through the room. He was known for being a bit of a player in college, so I’d admit, I made him work for my attention.
“It’ll just take time, Grey. They’ll see you’re different than your dad.” Those were some of his favorite words to hear.
“How do you always do that?”
“Do what?” I asked. “I was in a shitty mood when I picked up the phone, and now I’m not.” I walked over to the window to watch the birds fly over the calm ocean. With the days I had left in town, I wanted to soak up the view as much as I could.
“What can I say? It’s a talent,” I joked.
“How’d your day go yesterday?” His voice carried over the sounds of chaos coming from the coffee shop in the background.
I recalled the events from the day before and only thought of Julian. “Great. I went to my old high school with Julian to talk to the kids. They asked so many questions, Grey. It inspired me to finally start writing another book and?—”
“Who’s Julian?” he interrupted curtly. That was the first time I ever mentioned Julian’s name since I’d met him. “An old friend from high school who offered me his guest room until his sister’s wedding.” My hand holding the phone trembled as his silence grew on the other end. He had every right to be upset, so I waited for his anger, but of course, it never came. “Why didn’t you mention him before?” Greyson wasn’t the jealous type—territorial, but never jealous.
I chose my next words carefully. “I didn’t think it was important. He’s just a friend who had a spare room. I’ll be out of his hair after the wedding. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” A pit grew in my stomach for not telling him the whole truth, but telling him Julian and I dated nearly a decade before seemed unimportant. He was my past, and Greyson was my present. That’s what mattered.
He broke his silence that felt like an eternity. “It’s fine, Cami. I trust you. As long as you’re okay.” I was fully aware I didn’t deserve someone as selfless as him.
“I am. I promise.”
“Okay. I’m heading into the office, but I’ll call you later. I love you.” I took a breath of relief when he said the words I needed to hear. “I love you too.”
The line went dead, but I didn’t have a chance to sink back into my pillows before Julian’s voice echoed on the other side of the door. “Mila, are you up?”
I scurried around and immediately froze when I realized I was fixing my hair in the mirror. “What the hell are you doing, Cami?” I whispered to myself. “Come in.”
As he stood in the doorway, I had to peel my eyes away from how broad his shoulders and arms looked in his white tank top.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You get any writing done last night?” I smiled. “I did. It just started flowing.” I ignored how my stomach swirled at the sight of his warm smile.
“Well, remember when you said you’d help with the house if I helped you?” He tossed clothes onto my lap and winked. “I’m cashing in that offer. Change into those and meet me in the kitchen.”
I waited until he was out of the room to push myself out from under the covers, but he barged back in seconds later. “Julian! Get out!” I never slept in pajama bottoms, so I pulled my oversized shirt down as far as I could to cover my lace underwear.
He put his hand over his eyes so quickly, his forehead rammed into the door frame. “Shit, I’m sorry. Uhm, I was just gonna say there’s coffee in the kitchen when you’re finished getting dressed.” I could see a sliver of a smile he fought back.
“Seriously, get out, Julian!” He managed to dodge the pillow I threw at the door as it shut, and I heard his laughter erupt in the hall seconds later. Goddamn him.
Once the embarrassment subsided and I no longer wanted to crawl into a hole, I failed at holding back laughter of my own.
* * *
After stealing glances at each other over a cup of coffee, we met outside, where a plastic cover and cans of paint were laid out on the grass. “Is this what I think it is?” I asked.
I couldn’t contain my excitement when he put a paintbrush in my hand with a smirk. When our fingers grazed, I didn’t know whether the shivers that ran through my body were from the cold ocean breeze or his touch. I went with the latter.
“Time to give the house some color.” I’d waited over a decade to see the house the color I’d always imagined instead of the old rustic white. I adjusted the straps on the overalls he’d let me borrow that were a few sizes too big. “Show me what to do.” He seemed to snap out of a daze. “There’s an easier way to do this, but since I can’t afford a spray painter, we’ll have to do it by hand.” He poured paint into the trays spread out on the plastic.
“I don’t mind. I think it’ll give it some character.” I felt his burning glare as I admired the house and thought back to the first time I stumbled on it. I once pictured myself living in it, spending my days writing books on the porch overlooking the ocean, but life had other plans. Instead, I had to help Julian settle into it.
He pulled me back from the haunting thoughts. “I’ll let you do the honors of the first paint stroke.” I had no idea what I was doing, but I eagerly swiped the brush across the fresh wood with the green paint of my dreams, and reveled in how much consideration Julian had put into the house. Replenishing the rotten wood, cutting down the vines covering the roof, redoing the patio that was seconds away from caving in—it must’ve taken him months, but he seemed to glow with pride over how it was turning out.
“Slow, Mila. You don’t want streaks.” My breath hitched when his firm touch hovered over my hand to stop me. Our closeness was breaking my rule, but I let him stay at my back and guide my hands. “I always imagined this place this color,” I said my inner thoughts out loud.
His jagged breaths grazed my ear. “I remember.”
I was glad he couldn’t tell how hot my cheeks turned. “You do?” I thought it was purely a coincidence when he agreed to the shade, despite once hating green, but I never considered he remembered from when I mentioned it years before.
“I remember everything, Mila.” He couldn’t say things like that. It wasn’t fair I’d spent the past six years trying to forget what happened, and he was undoing everything in a matter of days. I suddenly felt suffocated, so I backed away in hopes of getting space to breathe air that wasn’t the same as his.
“You okay?” I flinched when his fingertips rested on my back.
“I’m fine,” I lied. What the hell was going on with me? He was just Julian, my friend; but last time I checked, a friend’s touch shouldn’t make you feel like you’ve been lit on fire. I tried to go back to painting, but I couldn’t concentrate with a question clawing at me. “Would you do it differently if you could go back, Julian?” I let the words slip.
“Do what?”
“Everything…Us . ” Once again, we were dancing on the line of boundaries I’d set, but if I didn’t ask, I feared I never would.
His face grew tight as he ran his fingers over his facial hair. “You and I ended up where we are because of the choices we made. It doesn’t matter if I would change anything or not, Mila.” It was the answer I thought I wanted from him, but I was met with an odd twinge of disappointment. He must’ve noticed the shift in my mood, because he approached me with a smile peeking through the corner of his lips.
“You’ve got paint on your face.”
“No, I don’t, what—” I gasped when I felt the wet paint drag across my cheek with his fingers. “You’re gonna pay for that.” I scooped green paint into my hands with the plan to retaliate, but once he bolted through the tall grass, I knew I’d never catch him.
“Julian!” I thought he would’ve lost his athletic speed as he aged, but he was just as fast as he was in high school, if not faster. When he disappeared from sight, I accepted my fate, because I knew what was coming next. It was his oldest trick, yet he still surprised me by picking me up off the ground and spinning in circles. “You still let your guard down.” His deep voice ringing so close to my ear made chills rise on my arms.
I got on my tiptoes and leaned in so close, our lips nearly touched, then watched his disbelief when I slapped wet paint across his cheek. “You’ve got a little something on your face.”
He threw his head back with rich laughter. “Okay, truce. We have to save some for the house.” He wiped it off with a towel then used the same one to clean my face with trembling fingers. “Thanks.” I couldn’t look away from his soft eyes as they roamed over my face. No one ever looked at me with the same depth as Julian. It was as if he was looking into my soul and letting me get a peek into his.
When he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, I saw the faded scar across his palm that matched mine. You jump, I jump, he told me the day Elijah Fisher dared us all to jump off the highest cliff point. It was perfect weather that day; the air felt different since we were one week away from graduating. Julian, Taylor, Sofia, Elijah, and I all packed our cars and headed to the cove in hopes of perfecting our tans and swimming in the open ocean, but of course, it didn’t play out that way. You know the saying, “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?” I guess my answer was yes, since we all took the fifty-foot plunge together. Julian never let go of my hand the entire time, which resulted in our matching cuts from the sharp rocks at the bottom. We had no idea a week later, our lives would turn upside down.
“Does your boyfriend know how you got this?” He traced over my deep scar, leaving his warmth to travel through my arm. I shook my head, only thinking of how easy it’d be to close the distance between us and how much that made me a shitty person.
I let out a sigh of relief when a car’s blaring horn echoed up the hill to the house. “Every time,” I heard him faintly whisper when Sofia popped her head out from the passenger window.
An unfamiliar face helped her out of the brand new Ford Bronco before they walked over to us, holding hands. My first impression of them was they looked like luxury together. “Sorry for the surprise visit, but we were just passing by, and I wanted Levi to meet Cami.”
Her fiancé pulled his sunglasses above his head to greet me with his dark green eyes. “Cami, this is Levi Willow. Levi, this is the girl I’ve been telling you about.” At first glance, I knew he was a perfect match for Sofia. She always went for clean-cut guys like him. The strong and confident aura he had reflected in his smooth, granite-like features.
“Nice to finally meet you, Cami. Sofia hasn’t stopped squealing since you agreed to be a bridesmaid.” He combed his fingers through his dark, curly locks framing his ivory skin.
I smiled. “Thank you for inviting me. I’m sure it’ll be beautiful.”
“Wait.” Sofia looked between me and Julian with furrowed brows. “Why do you guys have paint on your faces?” I looked over at him, embarrassed that I’d met a stranger with lingering green paint on my cheek.
“We were painting the house and had a little mishap.” Julian looked down to hide a smile from everyone.She didn’t seem to buy it, but she looked more pleased than anything else. “Anyway, since we’re here, do you guys want to have lunch in town? Or do you want to get back to your painting ?” She threw a playful smirk in Julian’s direction.
I looked at our paint-covered clothes, then back at the house that wasn’t even close to being finished. “Lunch sounds great.” I didn’t necessarily want to sit at lunch with my ex-boyfriend, his sister, and her fiancé, but I needed a break to gather my reeling thoughts, like what would have happened if Sofia hadn’t shown up, or what would Greyson think about me having paint fights with my ex-boyfriend?
* * *
After Sofia and Levi treated us to lunch, Julian and I spent the rest of the evening painting what we could of the house. It was coming along perfectly, and he even made sure there was white trimming like I’d mentioned just once. If he recalled a small detail like that from years ago, did he really remember everything? Why did I care so much if he did or not?
“Mila?” I scurried to shove the journal I was writing in under my pillow as Julian let himself in. “Hey.”
“You get any writing done?”
I sighed with disappointment. “I haven’t even attempted yet.” I was so wiped out from the day, opening my computer seemed like a huge chore.
“Show me what you have so far.” My cheeks flushed when he walked over and sat at the foot of my bed.
“Absolutely not.” No one had ever seen a first draft of my work before. Even my editor waited until I went over with edits before she had it in her hands.
“I’m not leaving this room until I see it, Mila. I have all night.” He was stubborn as much as he was persistent, so I knew he wasn’t bluffing. I rolled my eyes and grabbed my computer off my desk. “Don’t judge too hard. It’s only a first draft. It’s supposed to be shitty.” I chewed on my nails while he read the first chapter.
“It’s good.” His voice wasn’t as confident as I’d hoped.
“But?”
He sighed. “I’m no expert on writing a book, but maybe there should be an intro chapter that grabs the a reader’s attention.”
My eyes narrowed. “So, a prologue that serves as a hook?”
“Exactly.” The idea was different than my first book, which was exactly what my publisher wanted, so I jotted it down in my notes to visit at a later time. He laid on his back and stared up at the ceiling. “What’s it even about?”
I shrugged. “I’m still playing around with ideas, which is probably why I gave up after writing the first chapter.” It was getting both frustrating and discouraging that I didn’t have one solid book idea yet. Even after being pumped with inspiration from the presentation at Willow High, I quickly lost momentum. I hoped one would just come to me when least expected, but I didn’t exactly have the time to wait around.
His eyes never strayed from the ceiling as he asked me something that vacuum sucked all the air from the room. “Going back to what you asked me earlier. It’s my turn to ask; would you do anything differently if you could go back?”
I partly expected it, but I still got the air knocked out of me. I could name a few moments I’d do differently if I suddenly had a do over, but none I was willing to admit. “I think you were right when you said we both ended up where we are because of the choices we made, but I definitely could have reacted better in some situations.”
He perked up with interest. “Like?”
I knew the words were only going to fuel the fire before I said them. “When you told me you loved me for the first time.” His breaths halted, and the only sound was the soft crash of waves outside.
“I think about how I reacted that night a lot too, but then I see the students at Willow High and how young they are. We were just kids figuring how to handle being in love, Mila.”
I cringed at the memory of storming off after he’d told me the words I’d been waiting so desperately to hear. “I guess you’re right.”
After all those years, he still didn’t know the whole story.