Chapter 26 RIGHT BEHIND YOU
Chapter twenty-six
RIGHT BEHIND YOU
I reach out instinctively for Cameron in the dark, and he releases my thumb to wrap his arms around my waist to pull me in close. “The generator should kick on any second,” he says, his voice thick from everything that he’s already said, and what still remains unspoken between us.
The air in my lungs starts coming out in shallow breaths, as the totality of this moment sinks in.
With everything that Cameron just said, and the way that I fit perfectly in his arms, I feel completely safe, both emotionally and physically, making the juvenile crush I had on him seconds ago morph into something much deeper.
Part of me wants to rest my head against his chest until the lights come back on, but the other part of me has the overwhelming urge to see what would happen if I lifted my chin, instead.
Would he rest his forehead against mine, or lean in for something more?
I shake the thoughts away as soon as they come, because that can’t be right.
We just shared a profound moment in admitting that we are responsible for our parents’ deaths, and that is not something that you kiss about right after.
Plus, he already established that the reason he was so intent on finding me at multiple times around the retreat was to admit to me that he read my article, and nothing more. And yet . . .
“There you two are,” a female voice says while shining a cell phone light in our faces.
I push away from Cameron like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and wince at how much it hurts my thumb.
Delaney laughs sardonically from across the room. “I already saw you guys, so there’s no need to pretend,” she says. “Although I already knew that you two were together the second that Drew arrived with that Eagle Lake coffee cup in her hand.”
I find it hard to believe that something as small as showing up to the retreat with a coffee would be enough to make Delaney think that we were together, so I look to Cameron for clarification. In the dim light from her phone, I only read anger on his face.
“Relax, Cameron,” she says, the end of her words still mildly slurred from alcohol. “I’ll be out of here tomorrow morning so that the two of you can officially take over this thing together. I just came down here to turn on the generator so that my phone isn’t dead in the morning.”
She heads towards the accordion doors and pauses when she reaches them to pull her fluffy robe closer around her before unlocking it.
“It’s not safe to be out there right now,” he says through clenched teeth. “And the generator should have already kicked on by itself, so there’s probably something wrong with it.”
“Cam, you there?” Ollie’s voice calls from somewhere near the front of the house.
“In the kitchen,” Cameron calls back, and Ollie’s phone flashlight soon joins Delaney’s in illuminating the dark space.
“Doesn’t this house have a generator?” Ollie asks.
“It does, but it’s old,” Cameron says.
Delaney grows impatient and cracks open the accordion door, letting in the sounds of the pounding rain and distant thunder.
“Don’t go out there in your robe, Delaney.” Ollie takes a step towards her with his arm outstretched. “Let Cam and me handle it once the storm dies down.”
“See, that’s the thing, Ollie,” Delaney says, raising her voice to be heard over the storm.
“Unlike Cameron, who hasn’t shown his face around here in a very long time, I’ve been here almost every weekend for the past five years straight, working retreats.
So he’s right, the generator did die, last year, and the new one needs to be turned on manually.
Hence why I am going out there right now. ”
Cameron frowns. “I can’t imagine that my parents would replace the generator with one that needs to be turned on manually during a storm. There has to be some other way to start it.”
Delaney wrinkles her nose. “Yeah, awkward. They had this one put in temporarily while they priced out an entire new system late last year, but then it never got finished because . . . well . . .”
Ollie and I both grimace at how flippantly she refers to the death of Cameron’s parents, but apparently, she was just getting warmed up, because she adds, “Actually, I guess I was wrong, Cameron. I almost forgot that you did show your face around here recently, about six months ago, right?”
“Shut up, Delaney,” I say, and take a step towards her. I am not typically the confrontational type, but I could easily deck her and not lose any sleep over it for throwing his parents’ deaths in his face, not just once, but twice now.
“Yeah, that’s enough,” Ollie warns her, as his easygoing nature is quickly replaced with a fierceness that is slightly terrifying.
I turn back to Cameron in the dim light and see that he is trying to put on a brave face, but it’s clear that her words had their intended effect.
In that moment, I don’t care if she gets soaking wet or has to turn on the generator by herself in the dark; I just want to get Cameron out of here, and as far away from her awful words as possible.
I close the distance between us and take his hands back in mine.
“Hey, let’s go and wait this out upstairs. I can’t see very well in the dark, so can you lead me up there, please?”
“I should go get Val too,” Ollie says. “I told her to wait for me in the game room, but it looks like it might be a while until we can go out there safely.”
“I’m right here,” Val says, and we all squint in the darkness behind us to see where she stands in the shadows of the hallway.
Delaney appears thrilled that we are leaving, but right as she takes the first step outside, a powerful cluster of lightning strikes nearby, and the peal of thunder that follows is deafening. She closes the accordion door and promptly steps away from it.
“I’ll wait in the living room until it passes,” she says, and disappears down the hallway.
Val retreats a second later, and Ollie follows after her, so Cameron and I are once again alone in the kitchen.
“Wait here,” he says, and leaves me by the sink to go into what I think is the butler’s pantry, since it’s too dark without the phone flashlights for me to be sure.
He pulls a few drawers open, and then I hear faint clicking noises before he curses under his breath.
“Flashlight batteries must be dead,” he says, followed by a thud and the closing of a drawer.
His footsteps approach, and he asks, “Are you afraid of tight spaces?”
“Not necessarily.” I reach out for him. “Tight spaces combined with total darkness are a different story, though.”
He chuckles as our hands reconnect. “There’s a back stairway off the butler’s pantry that leads directly to the library next to the primary bedroom. It’ll cut the distance we have to cover in half.”
“Like a secret passage?” I smile.
“Exactly.”
“Then count me in.”
I let him lead me through the dark, and after a few disorienting steps, he stops.
The sound of a pocket door sliding open fills my ears, followed by the stale smell of a poorly ventilated enclosed space.
He pulls me into him and then turns me around so that my back is to his front, and places both of my hands on a wooden railing.
“I used these stairs earlier, so there shouldn’t be any spiderwebs. Use your toe to feel for the first step. I’m right behind you.”