CHAPTER 16
CAMILA
Jason got to his feet slowly, brushing dog hair from his shirt, trying hard to maintain the dignity he lost in my eyes one year ago. He looked at me across the shop.
“Camila, listen to me.” he growled. How dare he even raise his voice? I felt like taking off my sandals this time, and throwing them at him from across the cafe. “You’re in danger. I’ve been looking for you for a year. I only found you yesterday.”
I stared at him.
“Is this some fucking spy movie, Jason? Is that what we’re doing?”
“I know how it sounds—”
“You think you can walk into my life whenever you feel like it and lie to me again.” I picked up my pile of books. “Just go.”
The door opened behind him. Mr. Kamau, my first regular customer every morning, stepped inside, took one look at the atmosphere in the room, and stopped.
“Everything alright, Camila?”
“Perfectly fine.” I smiled at him. “The usual?”
He nodded, still watching Jason with a mild wariness and obvious curiosity.
As Mr.Kamau paid for his breakfast, Jason placed himself right behind his short posture, and pressed his hands together. He mouthed: five minutes. Please.
I looked at him for a long moment.
Audrey appeared from the café side, read the room in the way she always did, and put her hand on my shoulder. “I’ve got the café. If you want to give this person,” she said, with the diplomatic precision, choosing her words carefully in front of Mr. Kamau, “a moment to speak.”
I set down my books.
I jerked my head toward the back door.
The bookshop garden was small — a courtyard really, with terracotta pots and a bougainvillea that had taken over the back wall. It was the part of Dog-Eared I loved most.
I stood in the middle of it with my arms crossed and let Jason talk.
The story that came out of his mouth was so convoluted and so fucking fake, I started to wonder which Hollywood movie he took it off from.
He was under witness protection? He was blackmailed by Scarlett and her body-guard, and forced into having wild sex with her? He had an entire cartel thirsty for his blood? And mine? And he was here to protect me?
I listened to all of it without interrupting.
Then I looked at him.
“Do you have any idea,” I said, very quietly, “how shitty your story sounds?
Jason said nothing.
“I only knew you as a cheating asshole. That was bad enough. Now you’re standing in my garden telling me you’re a witness protection case who was sex-trafficked by a cartel woman and the whole thing was actually an act of love.
” I laughed — a short, hard laugh. “That is the most shitty Hollywood script I have ever heard in my life.”
“It’s not a script, Camila. I know it’s almost impossible to trust me after what you saw. But what you saw was not the entire truth. “
“What I saw, Jason, is an entire forty five minute video of you as a masked intruder, tying up your lover and pounding her. You didn’t look like a man who was being blackmailed.
You looked like a man who loved fucking another woman while your wife was getting ready to go to her anniversary dinner.
You looked like you were having a lot of fun, Jason, so don’t come whimpering here like a dog with your bullshit story. ”
Something moved across his face at that. He clenched a muscle on his face, and looked absolutely pathetic and full of shame.
“I know what it looked like,” he said.
“Then don’t insult me by telling me it was something else.”
He looked at me with those eyes. The dark, steady eyes I had spent three years believing in completely, the ones that, at one time would make me melt with desire, the ones that spoke a thousand words, before he spoke any.
But now I realise, all those words were just lies coming out of the mouth of a cheating bastard of a husband.
I had been wrong about this man.
I was not going to be wrong again.
“Camila.” He said it simply. “I can’t make you believe anything you don’t want to believe.
I understand that. But you are in danger — real danger, whether you believe the rest of it or not — and I am asking you to let me protect you.
That’s all. Not forgiveness. Not a conversation.
Not anything you’re not willing to give.
Just let me stay with you for a few days. ”
I laughed again. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Camila—”
“I don’t need someone like you to protect me, Jason. Just fuck off. Fuck off out of my garden, Jason. And then fuck off out of my street, and then out of my island.”
I turned to go in. I’d had enough.
His huge frame came around me. He was just there, the sheer size of him filling the space between me and the back door.
“Move the hell out of here, or I’ll call the cops.” I said.
Jason had his arms crossed and looking at her with piercing eyes.
“Cops cannot do shit, Camila. You’re up against the cartel. I’ll have to come into your house and protect you, whether you like it or not. If anything, anything happens to you, I’ll…”
The rage in his eyes was real. At whatever he was imagining happening to me — but I didn’t care. Not anymore. I only cared about the space between us and the door.
“Move the fuck away.” I said again.
He stepped aside.
I went back into the café and put my apron on and did not look at him again.
Thirty minutes later, he came in and sat at the corner table by the window.
He walked up to Audrey and ordered a black coffee and a croissant, all the while pinning his eyes on me.
I mouthed “fuck off”.
Audrey glanced at me. I shook my head very slightly, which she correctly interpreted as don’t ask.
Then he went into the bookshop.
I watched — because I couldn’t entirely not watch — as he moved along the shelves with methodical patience. He took out a book from the third shelf from the bottom: a thick green paperback. He held it up slightly as he carried it to the counter, just enough that I could see the cover clearly.
Securing Your Home in a Week.
I felt my jaw tighten.
He paid Audrey, went back to his table, and opened it.
He sat there for the rest of the day.
Five black coffees. Two croissants. One sandwich.
He read the book from cover to cover. Luna, who had apparently decided that her professional obligations of growling at a stranger were over, migrated to a sunny patch beside his chair at noon and allowed him to scratch behind her ears without complaint.
I was furious at Luna.
At four o’clock I hung up my apron, hugged Audrey, and walked out into the afternoon without looking at his table.
He had left ten minutes before me.
Good riddance.
My cottage was a seven-minute walk from the cafe. I walked in the warm late-afternoon light, my sandals on the pavement, the bougainvillea going orange in the sun.
I turned the corner onto my street.
Jason was standing at my front door.
I stopped walking.
He looked at me across the small distance of the lane with his hands at his sides and a pleading expression on his miserable face. There was something steady about him, the steadiness that had been the thing I loved most about him, once upon a time.
“I’m not going inside if you don’t want me to.” he said.
“Of course I don’t,” I snapped.
“I’ll sleep out here if I have to.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
“I’m going to go into the shower. I want you gone by the time I am done.”
Then I went inside and locked the door.