Chapter 2
Ellie
“Holy shit,” Camden says as he hugs me tight with his massive arms. “It’s really you.”
He laughs like he’s in disbelief.
I am too. I can’t believe I ran into my childhood best friend. The boy who lived next door to me, who I had a crush on.
Except he’s not a boy anymore.
When he releases me from his hug and steps back, I get another look at him.
Whoa.
Camden is a man. A tall, muscular, handsome man.
There’s a tingle in my tummy when I take in the size of him. I’m tall for a girl—just under five-foot-eight. But Camden dwarfs me. He’s well over six feet and massive.
I take in the broad spread of his shoulders and chest, how the muscles poke through the thin fabric of the T-shirt he’s wearing.
I glance down at his legs, which are huge too. Even through his jeans, I can tell his thighs and calves are ripped.
My gaze falls to his hands. They’re like baseball gloves.
He reaches up and runs a hand through his wavy chestnut hair. I swallow hard and hope I don’t look as dazed as I feel.
He shakes his head as his bright blue eyes focus on my face. The corner of his mouth quirks up in a half-smile. Those tingles spark through my tummy again.
Those boyish good looks he had when he was a kid are still there. I can see it in the brightness of his eyes and his smile. He’s always had this cheeky, mischievous edge to his smile. It always made my tummy flip, just like it does now.
I clear my throat and smile, feeling flustered.
“How many years has it been?” Camden says.
“Almost thirteen, I think.”
He shakes his head, a bewildered smile on his face. He opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, someone from inside the house speaks.
“Dude, just pay her the money and ask her to leave,” someone hollers.
Just then, a guy who looks a few years older than Camden walks up to him. He offers a polite smile when he looks at me.
“Hey. Sorry for what an inconvenience this is, but we won’t be needing your services tonight.” He claps Camden on the back, then hands me a handful of twenties. “We’re not interested in having a stripper perform for us. We’re really sorry.”
Camden twists his head to look at the guy. “She’s not a stripper.”
He explains what happened. His friend frowns like he’s confused, then bursts out laughing.
“No fucking way,” he says between laughs. He wipes his eyes. “Dude, you’re an idiot.”
Camden just shrugs and flashes a wide smile. “I am.”
I can’t help but chuckle. He’s always been like this, so effortlessly confident. It’s one of the first things that drew me to him.
I think back to fifth-grade math class when our teacher called on him to solve a math problem at the chalkboard. He got it wrong, and when the teacher started to scold him, he just flashed that same easy smile and shrugged.
He didn’t get embarrassed easily, and I always admired him for it. And was a little envious of it too. I was shy and easily flustered. I was in awe of the boy who could just shrug everything off with a cute smile.
I start to hand Camden’s friend his cash back, but they both shake their heads.
“That’s all yours,” his friend says.
“But I’m not working your party tonight.”
Camden grins at me, his mouth lifting in a sly smile. I notice the dimple in his right cheek. I bite back a grin, a happy feeling coursing through me. He’s always had that cute dimple when he smiles, and it’s comforting to see it after all these years.
“Oh, you’re working tonight, Rapunzel,” Camden says. “You said you do face painting, right?”
I nod.
He spins around. “Boys, change of plans. No stripper.”
Relieved sounds echo from behind him. I hear one guy mutter, “Thank fuck.”
“We’re doing face painting instead,” Camden says.
He lets me inside his house and closes the door behind me. I’m greeted with a bunch of confused stares from all the guys sitting around the kitchen table.
Camden pats a hand on my shoulder. “This is Ellie, aka Rapunzel. She’s a party princess.”
Even more confused looks. I hold back a laugh.
Camden explains the mistake he made while booking me. A quiet second passes before three of the guys at the table burst out laughing. The other two roll their eyes.
He introduces me to the guys sitting at the table. I give a small wave and smile.
He leads me over to the end of the table and pulls out a chair for me. I sit down and start to pull out the face paint from the kit I brought with me.
He nods at his friend, who looks like a lumberjack. Ryker, I think his name is.
“This guy’s wedding is next weekend,” Camden says.
“Congratulations,” I say to Ryker.
He nods and says thanks. Camden gestures for him to sit down in the chair in front of me. Ryker exhales sharply, like he doesn’t want to, but then I catch him fighting a smile.
“What would you like painted on your face?” I ask.
“Make him look like a bunny,” Camden says.
Ryker glares at him, but Camden just chuckles. “Come on. It’ll be fun. We’ll all get our faces painted,” Camden says.
“With bunnies?” Ryker mutters.
Camden shakes his head. “Nah, we’ll do different animals. I’ll take pics at the end and send them to your fiancées. They’ll love it.”
The guys chuckle.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” Xander says.
“Fine.” Ryker turns back to me, and I start to brush white face paint along his cheeks and forehead.
The rest of the guys go back to their poker game. While dealing out the cards, Camden tells them that we were childhood best friends who lost touch.
“No way,” Xander says, looking between us. “And you just randomly run into each other after all these years?”
I smile as I draw a bunny nose on Ryker’s nose. “Yup. Crazy, right?” I put the finishing touches on Ryker’s face. “All done.”
He turns to his friends. When they look at him, they all burst out laughing. I laugh too.
Ryker exhales sharply, but I can tell by the way the corner of his mouth is twitching that he’s fighting a smile.
“That’s it. Laugh it up,” he grumbles.
Camden takes a photo of Ryker on his phone. “Just sent that to your fiancée.”
“Great,” Ryker mutters as he stands up. He points to Camden. “You’re up next.”
Camden hops up and sits in the chair in front of me. “I wanna be a unicorn.”
I burst out laughing. So do the rest of his friends.
“You got it.” I swipe bright pink paint onto Camden’s brow and cheeks.
I glance up at the guys, who are all taking photos of Ryker while he gulps water from a glass.
“Hold still,” Xander says as he aims his phone at him.
“If you send that to anyone, I’m gonna murder you,” Ryker says.
“Oh come on, Georgie. You know the Bashers fans would love to see you like this, looking like a cute little bunny.”
Ryker tosses a pretzel at Xander’s face. Xander just laughs.
“Why does Xander call Ryker Georgie?” I ask Camden.
“Hockey habit. We call each other by our last names or a nickname based on our name. Ryker’s last name is St. George.”
“Oh. Right.” A second later, it clicks. Bashers. Hockey. Camden and his friends play for Denver’s professional hockey team.
I gasp. “Wait, you guys are professional hockey players?”
My cheeks heat. That’s probably really embarrassing that I didn’t recognize any of them.
But Camden just chuckles. “Yup.”
His teammates don’t look the least bit offended. They just laugh and go back to their card game.
“I should have known you’d grow up to play hockey. You were great at it when you were a kid,” I say.
Camden was always the best player on the teams he played for. I went to a few of his games, and he was always the fastest on the ice and almost always scored a goal.
That confident smile doesn’t budge from his face. He’s clearly unbothered that I didn’t know this about him.
“I was into a lot of stuff as a kid,” he says. “It was anyone’s guess what I’d end up doing for a living.”
He’s right. He was also a really good figure skater. I remember he did that because it helped his skating when he played hockey. He also swam in the summer and played soccer sometimes too.
I paint a golden unicorn horn in the middle of his forehead. “Incredible at hockey and figure skating and soccer and swimming. You were good at everything.”
His cheeks flush pink under the white paint on his cheeks. “Not everything. I was bad at school, remember? I’d always come over to your house and ask you to help me with my homework.”
I smile at the memory of Camden coming over almost every day after school.
“You did well on our solar system project in fourth grade,” I say.
“Because of you. I thought they named the planet Pluto after the Disney character.”
My head falls back as I laugh.
“I’m not much of a thinker,” he teases. “I’m a dumbass who can’t tell the difference between a party princess and a stripper, remember?”
I’m laughing so hard now, I almost drop the brush in my hand.
“Everyone has their own talents. You’re good at hockey,” I say. “Which means you’re good at skating fast and hitting pucks and…not falling on the ice and…”
Camden smiles as I struggle to come up with other hockey-related things.
I shake my head and laugh. “Sorry, I don’t know anything about hockey. Or any sports, really.”
“It’s okay. You were more into music. Do you still play the piano?”
Warm tingles gather in my chest at how he remembers.
“Not as much as I’d like to with how busy I am these days, but at least a couple times a week I play on my keyboard,” I say. “How about you? Do you still play?”
“Sometimes. Same thing though, I’m so busy that it’s hard to find time.” He nods at Sam. “I played piano for his proposal though.”
Sam grins and says that he proposed to his fiancee by recreating a musical scene from The Big Bang Theory, their favorite show.
“Camden knocked it out of the park with his stellar piano playing skills,” Sam says.
I playfully tap Camden’s arm with my free hand. “Look at you using your musical talent for romance.”
He flashes a sexy, lopsided grin. “I’ll have to play for you sometime, see if you think my skills have held up over the years,” he says, a playful lilt to his voice.