CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I took in a centering breath, then spoke. “Right after I graduated from college, I was offered a job in one of the most prestigious brokerages in New York. There were ten of us hired at the same time, and I was the only woman. I loved everything about it. Including my thirty-five-year-old boss, who took a liking to me.”
Grabbing one of the pillows from under my head, I moved it against my chest so that I could hold on to it. “I’d been so eager to please, wanting everyone’s approval, because I was determined to succeed. To make my parents happy, I suppose. He took advantage of that. Lots of late nights and things that I now understand were entirely inappropriate and we had an affair. He preyed on my inexperience. It was such a cliché that it feels ridiculous that it happened to me.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen Camden look truly angry. That it was on my behalf was a little thrilling. “Did he get fired?”
“No, I did. He was married, something I didn’t know. And when evidence of our relationship came to light, he threw me under the bus. He’d been very careful the entire time. He told the firm that I was harassing him. When the partners reviewed the footage, it was me going into his office, sitting on the edge of his desk. They didn’t know that he was the one who called me in. They didn’t see our emails, which he got someone in IT to destroy. There were no texts or anything that I could use to prove my innocence. I looked like the aggressor, and they fired me.”
Camden somehow managed to look even angrier, but he stayed quiet.
“It just about destroyed me. I had spent four years in college working toward this goal, getting internships every summer, and one man’s lies made everything go away. There were a rough couple of months, but then I decided that I was never going to let someone else dictate my career. I wanted to go into business for myself. Some friends had asked me to do events for them and I realized that I had a talent for it. I had a high demand right from the beginning and was worried that I couldn’t do it all alone. I had started doing volunteer work, because my mom was always saying that the best way to get over your problems is to help others, and that’s where I met—” I had very nearly said Krista’s name, which would have been so bad. He had no idea she worked for me. “My first employee. She had just gotten out of an abusive marriage and couldn’t find work. I hired her and now, here I am.”
“That must have been really hard, but good for you for finding a way forward,” he said, and I appreciated that he hadn’t jumped into my story with all the things I should have done differently, like my father had. I knew my dad had been trying to help me, but the situation couldn’t be retroactively fixed.
“I also promised myself that I’d never date anyone from my workplace. It was such a stupid mistake and I wanted to make sure that I’d never make it again.”
“And since you mostly work weddings, that’s why you don’t date wedding guests,” he correctly surmised, even if my reasons why were a little bit different than what he imagined.
“Pretty much.”
“I can see why you’d be afraid to trust men,” he said. “I don’t blame you.”
That made tears well up in my eyes, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I felt understood?
“I know I should be past it. I have dated, but like you said, my trust was so thoroughly violated that I find it hard to give it again. But it’s not the worst part. The worst is how hard it is to trust myself. When someone else makes you question everything—your judgment, your decisions, your intuition—that’s hard to recover from. He undermined my belief in me.”
At that Camden reached out his hand, resting it on top of mine. He squeezed gently. “I would like to be a man you could trust.”
“I’d like that, too,” I confessed.
“And if I were a different type of guy, I might ask you for this lowlife’s name and address so that I could invite his face to meet my fist.”
That made me smile. “And you’re not that kind of man?”
“Not one that would go searching for him, but if we just happened to accidentally run across him someday by total chance and coincidence, yeah, I’d enjoy punching him.”
“I think I’d enjoy that, too.”
He took his hand away and I almost reached for it, wanting his warmth and support back.
The look in his eyes made me think he knew exactly what I was feeling. “You did trust me, you know. Last night. When you asked me to stay.”
“I did. But that’s because you’re ...” I trailed off, trying to think of the right word to explain why I’d done that.
“Amazing? Good-looking? The most intelligent and impressive man you’ve ever known? Hilariously funny?”
“You’re different.”
The teasing light died in his eyes. “Good or bad? Like, good in that I’m different from the other men you’ve known or bad as in you’re so not interested that you felt like you didn’t have to worry about me?”
“Just ...” He was asking for too much. I couldn’t give him what he wanted. “Different.”
His phone rang and he didn’t even take it out of his pocket, which surprised me.
“You’re not going to get that?” I asked.
“Nope.”
He wasn’t even going to look at it? “What if it’s important?”
“A very wise woman told me to be present in the moment, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be than right here with you.”
His words touched my heart, and as much as I tried to suppress the feeling, I couldn’t let him in like this. “So basically we’re giving each other the same advice.”
“Sounds like.” He shifted then, making the entire mattress dip, and I nearly rolled into him.
“Your turn,” I said. “To give me a truth. Like why you’re single.”
“That’s easy. Too busy. I mean, it’s been a long time since I’ve been serious with someone. The last time was probably in college but it turned out that she was sleeping with my roommate whenever I traveled for meets. She blamed me for leaving her alone.”
“That doesn’t sound fun.”
“It was a long time ago,” he said, making a small shrug. “I haven’t been avoiding relationships; I’ve just been focused on other things. It doesn’t help when your best friend is marrying the woman of his dreams. Dan once told me that the night he met Sadie all he wanted to do was to keep talking to her for forever. It made me realize what I was missing out on. A woman I could stay up all night talking to.”
Like you.He didn’t say the words, but he didn’t have to. I felt them. Again my heart lurched happily.
“My turn,” I said, my throat feeling a little tight. “My truth is ... I’m not a spy.”
“Honestly, I don’t think you’re a spy, either.”
“That’s not really a truth. It’s more of a ‘you decided to stop being dumb and believe what was right in front of your face.’”
He seemed to take that as some kind of challenge and said, “Okay. Truth from me that I haven’t told anyone else—earlier tonight when I was rubbing your shoulders? I had to stop and walk away because you leaned your head to one side and you exposed your neck and the only thing I wanted to do was press my mouth against your skin.”
Warmth pooled in my gut; my breath stuttered in my lungs. “Just friends, remember?”
“That was a friend thing to say.”
“Um, no.”
“Being honest is friendly,” he insisted.
Saying stuff that made me want to pounce on him was not friendly. This conversation needed to be stopped. I turned over to reach for the TV remote on the nightstand next to the bed. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
He seemed to be at ease and completely aware of the fireworks that were going off inside me. “Sure. What did you have in mind?”
What I had in mind and what was going to happen were two entirely different things. “Something with Noah Douglas or Chase Covington in it.”
The hotel had the option to log in to my personal Netflix account. I made Camden cover his eyes while I entered the password and pulled up a romantic comedy I’d watched a dozen times already.
“I know it makes me sound old, but nine times out of ten I’d rather stay home and watch a movie than go out,” I told him.
“That sounds like a perfect night to me.”
That made me feel a bit giddy. With a smile plastered on my face, I started the movie. We were about a minute into it when he asked why the heroine was wearing so much makeup despite the fact that she’d just woken up and it set me off. “Right? Like there’s not enough pressure on women to always look perfect, now we have to be models when we roll out of bed.”
There was a look on his face, like he wanted to say something to me. Based on the way his gaze traveled from my head to my feet, I guessed it was going to be something nice about how I looked. I wanted to hear what he might have said, and it was my own fault for shutting all that down.
We kept up our commentary while we watched the movie, and it turned from being about what we were watching to us talking about our lives. I walked him through how I’d set up my business and the mistakes I’d made and things I wished I could do over, as well as the successes. At first I felt a little dumb, given that his company was operating at such a higher level than mine. He could have been a jerk about that, but he wasn’t. He listened intently, commenting and praising me. It made me feel ... significant. Like what I’d done mattered.
That led to him telling me why he hadn’t applied for patents for Dan’s central processing unit—his reasons lined up with what Sadie had told me a few days before. Which was why it had been so important to him to fend off any potential spies.
After we talked about the ins and outs of his plans, the conversation moved to us trading stories from high school and college, which led to us talking about bad dates we’d gone on (I was pretty sure I won that particular contest) and finding out how much we both liked to read. He told me how he would sit with Irene and read her favorite stories to her while she was having chemo and it made me like him even more.
Hours passed, and they felt like minutes. And with each shared laugh, every thing we discovered we had in common, we moved closer to one another. We both kept adjusting our positions so that we edged nearer, until we were almost touching.
But Camden didn’t cross that line, and I didn’t want him to.
Well, I did, but I had promises to keep.
Like the one my alarm reminded me of as it beeped. “It’s time to grab Brandy and get back to pretending to camp,” I told him.
Our faces were so close together that we were taking in each other’s breaths.
“Can we stay here for one more minute?” he asked, and I nodded slowly. I didn’t want to leave, either.
Even though I knew we had to, I loved being in this bubble with him. I didn’t know how many minutes had actually passed as we lay there, looking into each other’s eyes, but it was time to get back to reality.
“We should go,” I whispered.
“Are you sure I can’t kiss you?” he asked and his words turned my insides to hot liquid.
“Yes.” I meant that as yes, kiss me, but I verbally fixed it to, “Yes, I’m sure we can’t kiss.”
It was better this way. Even if I couldn’t tell him why.
He nodded and got up first, breaking the spell, and I was glad that he did. It made it easier for me to stand up and walk away from the bed where we’d spent the entire night getting to know each other.
Which had only made everything worse. Because I’d been interested in him before, definitely attracted to him, but now I really liked him. He was fun and funny and challenged me and ... crap. My mom was going to be so disappointed when she found out that I was not going to fall in love with him.
Because that could never happen. I couldn’t allow it.
We took the elevator up to Brandy’s room in silence. We didn’t need to talk. That connection was there, so strong that words weren’t necessary.
Mandy opened the door for us and Brandy was sitting on her patio, drinking coffee.
“We’re here to help get her back downstairs,” I said.
“She’s embarrassed over how she behaved last night,” Mandy told me. “And I won’t have any problem getting her to the yoga thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “But like always, give me a call if you need anything.”
We left and Camden took me by the hand. “Friends hold hands,” he told me.
I didn’t protest, even though I hadn’t held hands with one of my friends since I was five years old.
We got out to the west lawn, where people were starting to wake up and move around.
I was surprised at how beautiful the sunrise was—I didn’t usually get up this early. Although, technically, I’d never actually gone to sleep.
Funny thing was I didn’t even feel a little bit tired.
“Maybe greeting the sun’s not so bad,” I said.
I turned slightly to see Camden watching me and he said, “Yeah, I was thinking it’s pretty great.”
We walked over to the tent that we hadn’t gotten the chance to share and gathered up our things from the tote bags.
There was a finality to it, and I realized that I wouldn’t be seeing him again until the wedding. I probably wouldn’t even get to talk to him until the reception.
Which was for the best. I knew that, but it was like I couldn’t get that logical message to the rest of my body.
“What are your plans after this?” Camden asked, making small talk that felt a little awkward after everything we’d shared.
“We’ve got a spa day for the bridesmaids and the moms. You?”
“The boys and I were debating on whether we should go paintballing or play golf.”
I gasped. “No paintball!”
“Why not?”
Why were men so dense? “All it takes is one of you idiots missing and smacking Dan in the face and leaving him with a giant bruise that will be in all of his wedding pictures forever.”
“Nobody’s going to—” He sounded indignant, but then switched to a more sheepish tone. “You’re probably right. I’ll make sure we play golf. Do you have any objections to that?”
“None other than it’s a stupid sport. I don’t get that game. It’s just walking around in a huge yard and hitting tiny white balls while wearing dumb clothes.”
“I don’t know,” he said, that teasing lilt back in his voice. “It kind of sounds like you get it.”
That surprised me. I had a guy break up with me once because I’d dared to say that fantasy football was stupid. “You’re not going to defend golf?”
“Any sport that’s been around for five hundred years doesn’t need me to defend it.”
He probably had a point. “As my dad likes to say before he plays a game, make sure you bring an extra pair of pants in case you get a hole in one.”
Camden grinned at my cheesy joke, but we were interrupted by movement just outside the tent. Anton, Troy’s assistant, lifted the flap. “What are your names again?”
We gave them to him, and he opened that massive album, found our names, and returned our keycards to us. We thanked him and he left.
“Well,” Camden said. “This is it. I’m going to go now.”
“It’s not an airport. You don’t have to announce your departure.”
He nodded and started to walk to the front of the tent and stopped short. “What are you doing tonight after the bachelorette party?”
“Sleeping would be my guess.”
He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a quarter.
“You carry change?” I asked. “Why?”
“To pay for stuff,” he said, like it had been a dumb question.
I just shook my head. “An outdated phone and you have cash? You’re like a fugitive from the 1990s.”
Ignoring my words he said, “Let’s flip for it. Heads you hang out with me after the parties and tails I hang out with you.”
“Ha ha. That’s the same thing.”
He winked at me. “I knew you were smart.”
“Yeah, I heard you like smart women.” I had to stop being flirtatious. Normally this was never an issue for me, but it was turning into a big one.
“Fine. Heads we hang out, tails we don’t.”
He flipped the coin in the air and I found myself silently praying for heads. Camden caught the coin and flipped it onto the back of his other hand.
But he didn’t reveal it. Instead he said, “Tell me that you feel it, too. That something’s changed.”
“It can’t.” I felt silly saying it. Like a kid sticking their thumb into a dam, trying to hold back the oncoming flood.
“But it did.”
I didn’t disagree with his statement. I couldn’t. It was true. But I just let his words hang there in the air, not responding.
With a rueful smile he headed out of the tent. Without telling me the outcome of his coin flip. I wanted to say wait, come back, that the suspense was going to kill me.
I sank down on my cot, realizing the enormity of my situation. It wasn’t just the coin toss. Everything that man did and said was going to wreck me.
How was I going to make it through the next two days?