Chapter 17 Camden
CAMDEN
I flick my eyes to Nadine to find her face flushed. I don’t know if it’s because of the kiss we almost shared or Valerie. Either way, I’d much rather find more ways to make Nadine blush than be on the phone with a woman I don’t care very much about.
She’s been on my ass lately, calling and texting every day, but I’ve been avoiding her, knowing we’d have to have this conversation.
Because I’m not that much of an asshole to call it quits over a text, I wanted to do it in person.
After more than two years together in this semblance of a relationship, I owe her that.
But I can’t keep pushing it off.
Clearly.
“I’m sorry,” I mouth to Nadine then turn away from her, taking this call outside on the terrace. It’s cool, and I pull the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head before lounging on one of the chairs. When I’m finally settled, I ask, “What’s up, Val?”
“What’s up?” she parrots, scowling at me. “I’ve been trying to plan this trip, and you won’t even give me an answer.”
“Because I don’t want to go.”
She screeches. “What?”
She’s been asking to go to the Caribbean for a while, and in a moment of delirium and grief after having just brought Paisley back here, I agreed when Valerie said we should get away. I told her we would go during my bye week. But now it’s bye week, and I don’t want to go.
“You promised,” she whines, and I rub my hand over the back of my head.
“I know, but I want to stay here. I want to be with Paisley.”
“You want to be with Paisley or with Nancy?”
I sniff out a derisive laugh. I didn’t date Valerie for her personality, but this is so childish. “You know that’s not her name.”
“Like I give a shit.”
“Clearly, you do. You’re jealous. Is that why you’ve been up my ass lately?”
“I’m up your ass because you won’t answer me. Because you’re too busy with her!”
I lift my gaze up from Valerie’s frown on the screen to peek in through the windows of my home. I don’t see Nadine, so I assume she went to bed. I’m glad of it. I don’t want her to hear any of this.
“You know she’s been helping me out. Nothing is going on between us,” I say, although it rings false. Something is going on, but nothing I can name.
“She’s around all the time,” Valerie snaps, refocusing my attention back on my phone. On her.
Valerie is objectively hot. She has some mix of ancestry that left her with hazel eyes, creamy light brown skin, thick black hair that is halfway down her back, and an hourglass figure.
But she’s too wrapped up in being famous, in documenting every second of her life for social media, selling every part of herself that she can.
And I’m not into it anymore.
“Nadine is around all the time because I can’t be. I don’t know why you’re so surprised. You were at my parents’ funeral. You were there,” I say, finally getting to the crux of the problem.
When I needed her, she wasn’t there.
In body, sure, but not in any real way.
She took no interest in my sister, didn’t help while I packed up my childhood home, and hasn’t bothered to even talk about any of it with me. She hasn’t once asked how I’m doing or feeling.
If she did, she’d know that I often cry in the shower and sometimes wake up in the middle of the night breathing hard with my heart beating in my ears, reliving the night of the accident.
I dream of winning the race and Malcolm holding his cell phone out to me.
That’s when I sit up straight in bed, my skin damp with sweat.
“I can’t take care of Paisley on my own,” I tell Valerie, and she huffs.
“She seems to be taking care of a lot more than Paisley.”
I rub my knuckle against my eye, thinking I’d like to take my contacts out. Valerie always hated when I wore my glasses. “I’m not going to argue about Nadine with you. This isn’t about her. It’s about us.”
“This is absolutely about her.”
“No. It’s you.”
On-screen, Valerie wrenches her head back. “Me? What did I do?”
I heave a sigh up to the night sky. “I’m in a different place in my life. I thought we might be able to stay together, but it’s not working for me anymore.”
“You’re kidding,” she says flatly.
“No.”
“This isn’t working for you anymore? It’s not like you put all that much effort into it to begin with.”
That’s fair, but she hasn’t either. “I need more than you can give me right now.”
“You need more from me or from her?”
When I don’t answer, Valerie shakes her head, lips pursed in an angry pout. “You’re going to regret this. When you realize what you’re missing, you’re going to come crawling back.”
I don’t know what else to say besides, “Okay, Val. I’ve got to go.”
She hangs up before I can, and I spend a few minutes in the night air, letting it cleanse me with every breath.
Valerie was the last piece of my past I needed to rid myself of.
The former Camden Long was an arrogant prick.
The new Camden Long is probably still an arrogant prick, but at least now he thinks about how his actions affect other people. Only, like, 75% arrogant prick.
Back inside, I check on the girls one more time, but I doubt they’ll be going to sleep anytime soon since they’re still wide awake in the media room, on to movie number two.
But I don’t care. They can stay up all night if they want.
It’s the most I’ve seen my sister smile since she moved here, and as long as she’s happy, they can do whatever they want.
I pass by Nadine’s closed bedroom door, half tempted to knock on it, but I’ve already asked so much of her today—hell, every day for the past few months—that I don’t want to disturb her peace.
Even though I know her feelings about me have changed, I don’t want to fuck up the good thing we have going by barging in there and doing what I want to do.
Fucking her up against the wall. Coming so deep inside her that my DNA will be dripping out of her for weeks.
I tug off my sweatshirt as soon as I step into my bedroom, on the opposite side of the penthouse. My skin is a little too hot, a familiar tingle building in my spine when I think about Nadine’s thighs smeared with my come. Marking her with it. Claiming her as mine.
I’ve never been one to care much for making a mess.
Physically or with feelings. It was easier to hook up with women who only cared about being with me because of who I was.
Didn’t take much for them to get on their knees or hike up their skirt.
Relationships went as far as I let them, only until I was tired of what they could give me.
I didn’t care about making them happy or reciprocating orgasms. I didn’t have to.
Yeah, I’m a dick, but no woman ever made me face it before.
Nadine is different.
What I feel for her is different.
I care about her. I care about her happiness and safety. I don’t want to disappoint her, and I especially don’t want to ruin the good thing we have going.
So all my fantasies about fucking her without a condom and making a mess of her stay inside my brain, let out only when I’m alone with my hand.
The knowledge that she’s asleep in my home makes my blood pump even faster, and I reach for the lube in my bedside table. I barely have my pants and underwear pushed down before my erection is in my hand.
I hiss at the first touch of the cool gel then unconsciously thrust into my fist, envisioning her naked and laid out for me. Pushing those thighs of hers apart. Knees up toward her chest.
Or maybe sliding into her from behind. Her ass up. Jiggling with every push. My fingers digging into her soft hips.
I’d make sure she liked it. Make sure she was begging for it. For me. For my cock.
Hear my name from her lips. Those winter eyes heavy with lust.
Yeah, she’d love it.
I grunt, closing my eyes, leaning over my bed, hand on the mattress, thinking of what it would be like to sink between her legs. Going down on a woman has never been on my list of needs in bed and none of them has ever complained about my not doing it, but it is necessary to put my mouth on Nadine.
Learn what she tastes like. If her pussy is as delicious as the biting words that fall from her lips. I know once I have it, I’ll never want to give it up. I think I might like to live down there with her thighs permanently attached to either side of my head.
I’d make her so wet from my mouth that I would slide right in.
Squeezing my fist tighter, I fuck harder, gritting my teeth, imagining the sweet clench of her. It would be so good I’d have to focus on not finishing too fast.
Because the tensing of her muscles as she wraps her legs around me would be heaven. Her skin flushed and damp. Hair a mess from my fingers. Nipples tight little beads that I nibble on until she’s bucking up into me.
“You like that?” I mumble to an empty room, though my mind is nothing but Nadine. Her familiar scent and the quirk of her mouth, the arch of her brow when she throws attitude my way.
That’s when I come, giving in to that perfect mix of sweet and sour, because I don’t want one without the other. I need her giving heart and her sharp tongue. I want her kindness and her ferocity. She is both tender and strong, yet unwilling to concede when she knows she’s right.
Which is almost all the time.
Because she is right about me. I am a jealous, demanding, conceited asshole.
And when I finally come, spilling inside her, I will stay there until it seeps out between us.
Only then would I slip out of her, except I won’t clean her up.
No, I’ll use my fingers to push it back into her.
Paint her thighs with it. Write my name across her skin.
Then I’d have her lick it off my fingers, tasting all that I left inside her.
Because she is mine.
Even if I don’t deserve her.
Even if I don’t deserve to touch her, let alone live out any of my depraved fantasies.
I’ve spent too many years being a person she hates.
And that’s what makes it worse, thinking that my whole trajectory and life might be different if that night at the Ritz had gone differently.
If she hadn’t overheard one stupid goddamn conversation.
If I’d kept my mouth shut or walked away.
If she hadn’t made assumptions about herself or what I thought of her.
If, if, if…
Maybe she’d be with me right now, smiling up at me with some smart remark, instead of me alone in my bedroom, cleaning up my orgasm from my hand.
In another timeline, in another universe, she would’ve fallen in love with me that night. It would’ve been the start of our life together. I’d have found something to keep myself anchored to instead of floating off into space, hoping to fill it up with fame and money.
In another timeline, in another universe, Nadine Rivera thinks I am perfect.
Perfect for her.