4. Camille
— ? —
Camille
Diane Whitmore’s office smells like leather and money, the kind of old-world power that comes from decades of winning battles most people don’t even know are being fought.
The walls are lined with degrees, awards, and framed newspaper clippings that read like a trophy case of destroyed men: “Attorney Secures Record Settlement in Tech CEO Divorce.” “Whitmore Wins Landmark Infidelity Case.” “Cheating Husband Loses Everything in Precedent-Setting Ruling.”
The woman herself is sixty, silver-haired, with eyes like a raptor assessing prey. She listens to my story without expression, her manicured fingers steepled beneath her chin, and when I finish, she simply holds out her hand for the folder.
She reads for twenty minutes. Flips pages. Makes small humming sounds that could mean anything.
Then she looks up. And smiles.
“Mrs. Harrison. Your husband is an idiot.”
Despite everything, a laugh escapes me. “That’s... not what I expected you to say.”
“Most men who cheat are idiots. They think with the wrong head and assume their wives are too stupid to notice.” She taps a page in the folder.
“But your husband is a special kind of idiot. The offshore accounts are sloppy - he used his own name on half of them. The transfers are documented. And this-” She pulls out a specific statement.
“He used company funds to pay for a romantic getaway with your sister. Airfare, hotel, spa treatments. All expensed to his firm under ‘client entertainment.’”
My heart pounds. “What does that mean?”
“That’s embezzlement, Mrs. Harrison. His firm has a fiduciary responsibility to their clients. If we report this, he’ll be fired at minimum. Possibly face criminal charges.”
“You can prove that? All of it?”
“Every last penny.” Diane sets down the folder and leans back in her chair, looking at me with something that might be respect. “Your husband thought he was clever. He wasn’t. He was just married to a woman too trusting to check.”
“I’m not that woman anymore.”
“No.” Her smile sharpens into something almost predatory.
“You’re not. So here’s what I recommend: we report the embezzlement to his firm.
We also report his affair with a subordinate - your sister was his employee, correct?
Most firms have strict ethics policies about that sort of thing.
He’ll be fired. She’ll be fired. Then we proceed with the divorce while he’s unemployed and panicking. ”
“Do it.”
“Are you sure?” She holds my gaze, making certain I understand. “This will be public. Messy. His career will be over. There’s no taking it back once we start.”
I think about eight months of lies. About my sister’s hand on her stomach. About my parents asking me to “move forward” like I hadn’t just had my heart ripped out through my chest.
“I’m sure.”
“Good.” Diane stands and extends her hand. “Welcome to war, Mrs. Harrison. I think you’re going to be very good at it.”
***
That night, alone in the house that’s legally mine, I pour myself a glass of wine and stare at the wall, trying to process everything that’s happened in the past week. My marriage is over. My sister is dead to me. My parents chose her.
And somehow, impossibly, I’m supposed to figure out what comes next.
My phone buzzes. Unknown number.
I almost ignore it. But something makes me answer.
“Camille? It’s Nathan Cole.”
The name lands like a punch to the chest.
Nathan Cole. Jared’s best friend since college. Best man at our wedding. The trauma surgeon I’d been politely distant with for five years because something about him made me nervous in ways I never let myself examine too closely.
I’d always been careful around Nathan. Not because I didn’t like him - I did, actually, more than most of Jared’s friends - but because he had this way of looking at me that felt too intense, too focused, like he was seeing things I didn’t want anyone to see.
At dinner parties, I’d catch his eyes on me and feel my skin prickle with awareness.
At family gatherings, I’d find myself hyperconscious of where he was in the room, of the low rumble of his voice, of the way he moved with this quiet, coiled power that was nothing like Jared’s polished charm.
I told myself it was just discomfort. That some people’s energies don’t mesh. That there was no deeper reason my heart beat faster when Nathan walked into a room.
I was a good wife. I didn’t let myself think about other men that way.
But Nathan Cole had always made not thinking very, very difficult.
“Nathan.” My voice comes out rougher than I intended. “How did you get this number?”
“Jared’s phone. Before he changed his passwords.” A pause, and his voice drops lower, rougher. “I just heard what happened. I’m so goddamn sorry, Camille.”
“Did you know?”
“No. I swear to God, I had no idea.” Something dark enters his tone. “If I had, I would have told you immediately. And then I would have beaten the shit out of him.”
“That would have made you a pretty terrible best friend.”
“Jared stopped being my friend the second he did this to you.” The finality in his voice sends an unexpected shiver down my spine. “A man who cheats on his wife with her sister isn’t someone I want to know. He’s dead to me.”
The words shouldn’t make me feel as good as they do.
“You don’t have to take sides,” I manage. “This isn’t your fight.”
“Yes, it is.” A pause. “Have you eaten today?”
“What?”
“Food, Camille. Have you had any?”
Something about the way he says my name, firm and concerned and strangely intimate, makes warmth bloom in my chest.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar. Always have been.” Keys jangle on his end. “I’m coming over. Chinese okay?”
“Nathan, you don’t have to-”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to.” His voice softens. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
He hangs up before I can argue.
***
The doorbell rings at exactly 8 PM.
I’ve changed clothes twice, which is ridiculous because this isn’t anything, this is just Jared’s friend, former friend, bringing food because he feels guilty or sorry or whatever emotion drives men to show up with takeout containers when the women in their lives are falling apart.
When I open the door, the air leaves my lungs.
I’ve seen Nathan dozens of times over the years, but I’ve never really looked at him. Not like this. Not without Jared standing between us, not without the protective armor of being someone’s wife.
Now I look, and I can’t stop looking.
He’s tall - God, he’s tall - at least six-two, with shoulders broad enough to block out the porch light behind him.
The black henley he’s wearing stretches across his chest in ways that make my mouth go dry, the sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms roped with muscle and dusted with dark hair.
His jaw is sharp, shadowed with stubble, and his gray eyes are focused on me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
This is what I was avoiding, I realize with sudden, startling clarity. This is why I always kept my distance, always made sure not to be alone with him, always looked away before our eyes could meet for too long.
Because Nathan Cole is devastatingly, dangerously attractive in a way that my brain couldn’t process while I was married. The kind of attractive that bypasses logic entirely and goes straight to something primal. The kind of attractive that makes good wives do very bad things.
I’m not a wife anymore.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is lower than I remember, rougher, a sound I feel in my belly.
“Hey.”
We stand there for a moment, neither of us moving, and the air between us feels charged with something I don’t have a name for yet.
“Food’s getting cold,” he finally says.
“Right. Yes.” I step back, my legs unsteady. “Come in.”
He brushes past me, and I catch his scent, cedar and clean sweat and something warm underneath, and my whole body tightens with sudden, unexpected want.
It’s like a switch has been flipped somewhere inside me, like the part of my brain that spent five years categorizing Nathan as OFF LIMITS has finally powered down, and now I’m seeing him clearly for the first time.
Broad back tapering to narrow waist. Thighs that strain against his jeans when he walks. Hands that look big enough to span my entire waist, rough and capable and nothing like Jared’s soft, manicured fingers.
What the hell is wrong with me?
My husband was cheating on me for eight months. I should be crying into my wine, not ogling his best friend like a starving woman at a buffet.
But watching Nathan move through my kitchen, unpacking containers with efficient grace, those broad shoulders rolling under his shirt, I can’t seem to make myself stop.
It’s like five years of carefully constructed walls have crumbled overnight, and I’m finally seeing what I refused to let myself see before.
Nathan Cole is fucking beautiful.
Not pretty like Jared, with his salon-styled hair and his designer stubble and his carefully cultivated image.
Nathan is beautiful like a storm is beautiful, raw and powerful and slightly dangerous.
The kind of man who walks into a room and changes the air pressure.
The kind of man who could pin you against a wall with one hand and make you thank him for it.
Where did that thought come from?
“Plates?” he asks, turning to look at me, and I realize I’ve been staring at him like I’ve never seen a man before.
“Cabinet above the stove.”
He reaches up, and his shirt rides with the motion, revealing a strip of taut stomach, the cut V of muscle disappearing into his waistband. My face floods with heat and I have to look away, pressing my palms against the cool granite of the counter.
Get it together, Camille. You’re a thirty-two-year-old woman, not a hormonal teenager.