CHAPTER 22
CAMILA
Noah was already at the beach when I got there, sitting on a striped towel with a cooler bag, looking out at the ocean.
I want to be clear about Noah. He wasn’t my boyfriend.
Not really. He was a struggling writer from Nassau who came into Dog-Eared every Thursday for an oat milk latte and wrote his manuscript.
He had asked me four times before I said yes.
He had been patient with me when I said I needed more time to make our relationship official, and that was six months ago.
He had brought up the question of the identity of our relationship many times since then, but each time I wanted to take a step further with me, I’d pull myself two steps back.
This is how much Jason had messed me up.
I knew that. But I also knew I was recovering from his betrayal.
I knew that despite Noah’s lack of a plan in life, despite his habit of freaking out at the smallest of things, and despite the fact that he was thirty two years old and still shared an apartment with a roommate, I liked Noah.
I was almost prepared to take our relationship to the next level, to call him my boyfriend and not just someone I liked and slept with.
But then Jason arrived and fucked up everything again.
I had told Noah briefly about being married once. He didn’t know any details, and hadn’t really asked me any either.
He was Noah, he was pleasant, he was good in bed, and that was enough.
For now.
I ran across the sand toward him. Behind me, at a distance I was acutely aware of, Jason was taking strides with his ridiculously long legs and was easily able to catch up with me at an unhurried pace without appearing to try.
“Stay back,” I called over my shoulder, without turning. “I mean it. Give us space.”
Noah stood when he saw me, smiling in that easy way of his, and I ran faster and let him pull me into a hug. His hands went to the small of my back, then on my ass, and he kissed me. I teased him with my tongue and his kiss got deeper and longer.
I was aware of exactly where Jason was standing.
When we broke apart, Noah looked over my shoulder.
“Who’s that?”
Jason was standing right behind me, arms crossed across his broad chest, eyes fixed on Noah.
Completely expressionless. In his black t-shirt and with that professional expression on his face, he looked more like a bodyguard from a mafia movie and not a real estate mogul who was living in a tent on his ex-wife’s lawn.
Which in some sense was true. He was nothing more than a bodyguard to me.
He was here to “keep me safe”, and that’s about it.
Our history should have nothing to do with this.
Noah was eyeing Jason and looked at me with a curious look on his face.
I took a deep breath. “Noah, this is Jason. He’s my… my…”
“Bodyguard.” Jason interrupted, as if he was reading my mind. “She has an active threat, and I’m here to give her protection against it.”
Noah’s face went through several expressions very quickly, and rested on a mix between dread and surprise. “A threat? Cam, what kind of threat?”
“I’ll explain later. The short version is that Jason thinks I have a threat. From the—” I paused. “The cartel.”
The color left Noah’s face with remarkable speed.
“The cartel?” He looked at Jason again, then back at me, then at the open beach around us. Panic was pooling into his eyes. “Babe. Babe. We’re just — we’re just out here, anyone could see us, anyone could just—” he lowered his voice into a whisper “— shoot us.”
“No one is shooting at us, Noah.”
“How do you know that? How can you possibly know—” He was already reaching for his beach bag, his movements accelerating toward frantic.
“Why else would a man who looks like that—” he gestured at Jason with a sweeping motion that I found irritating, “—come all the way here to protect you? This is serious, Cam. This is serious and we should not be out in the open.”
I closed my eyes for two seconds.
This was Jason’s fault. All of it.
The entirely reasonable Saturday afternoon that had been derailed first by Jason following me around like a puppy and now by a grown man dismantling a beach picnic with unbelievable speed. A woman with a dog stopped to look at Noah with great curiosity.
Noah grabbed the cooler bag with one hand and my wrist with the other. “My roommate has his girlfriend over, we can’t go to mine. We’ll go to your home. Come on—”
“Noah—”
“Come on, come on—”
I looked at Jason over Noah’s retreating shoulder.
He was watching Noah fold his striped towel at high speed with a carefully neutral expression, but I could see the faint smile he was trying very hard to suppress.
I looked away before I did something unhelpful, like hit him with Noah’s picnic basket.
Noah packed up this stuff in the trunk of his rusty old convertible. Jason came over and gave me a solid parental look. “I have to come with you, Cam.”
“Firstly, you cannot call me Cam. Like, ever. And secondly, I’m driving home with Noah.” I threw my keys at him, and he caught them without comment. “Follow us.” I said, and sat in the front seat with Noah.
Noah’s convertible smelled like surf wax and the coconut air freshener shaped like a palm tree that hung from his mirror.
He drove with careful, slightly overcautious energy.
Every few seconds, he looked at his rear view mirror with panic in his eyes.
At a traffic signal, he kept looking over his shoulders to take account of his entire surroundings, and eyed anyone who happened to look at him with suspicion.
I stared at him.
By the end of the night, one of these two men was going to get strangled by me.
Noah adjusted his rear view mirror for the seventh time. I rolled my eyes at him.
“What babe? Come on, don’t be mad. We could be getting followed by the cartel goons right now. Or maybe someone already has a target on our car.”
In the rearview mirror, Jason followed us at a steady distance.
Noah recovered over pizza.
By the time the boxes arrived and we were sitting at my kitchen table, he had returned to something resembling his normal self — mostly, I suspected, because the cottage was locked and Jason was in the room with us.
Noah had invited him to join us for dinner, and before I could say anything Jason was already sitting across from us.
Something about Jason looking like he’d stepped right off Men In Black seemed to be working its magic on Noah. He was talking to Jason like a starstruck ten year old meeting his pop idol for the first time.
“Have you ever bodyguarded a celebrity?” Noah asked as Jason poured wine for all of us.
“No, I’ve never bodyguarded a celebrity. I’m only bodyguarding Camila.” Jason’s eyes met mine. He smiled at me.
Was he making fun of my almost-boyfriend? How dare he?
I moved closer to Noah, and rested my hand on the back of his, and rubbed my fingers. I wanted Noah’s attention on me, not on Jason. Noah stopped talking to Jason and looked at me.
Yes. It had started to work.
I inched closer to him and whispered, “Are you going to waste this perfectly beautiful evening talking to another man or do you want some fun?”
Noah smiled, and his expressions changed from chatty to downright horny in one second. I leaned in closer to him, grabbed his hair and brought his lips close to mine. He started kissing me. I teased his mouth with my tongue, and he mouth me deeper in response.
Maybe Jason was watching. Correction. I knew Jason was watching, and I didn’t care.
I was not the Camila standing on the deck of a cruise watching her entire life shatter in a matter of minutes.
I was the Camila who did what she wanted to do unapologetically, who didn’t ask for anyone’s permission to take up space, who didn’t care that her ex watched while she made out with another man.
I leaned close to Noah’s ear and whispered “Let’s go upstairs and fuck the hell out of each other.”
He smiled. He stood up, took my hand, and turned to Jason. “Hey man, it was great meeting you. Thanks for the security.”
“We’re going to head up,” I said, to the room in general.
Jason lowered his eyes, and stared at the table.
Noah’s hand was warm on my ass as we went upstairs, and I didn’t look back.
Noah was a good kisser.
We were both naked on the bed and he was kissing me on my neck. His kisses were unhurried and attentive, and I focused on that. Or at least I was trying to.
Noah kissed my neck, and sucked behind my ears, and a wave of lustful anticipation went through my nerves.
I was horny, and I wanted him inside of me.
I spread my legs wide, and Noah pulled me by my hips.
He rubbed his cock up and down against my thighs and my waist and then in between my legs.
I was completely wet. I needed to by fucked.
I wanted it so bad. I curled up my thighs tightly around his crotch.
He pushed his hard cock inside me, and I bounced back against him.
I didn’t want anything else at that moment. I only wanted to get fucked hard.
“Yes, yes Noah. Fuck me, fuck me hard.” I screamed as he pounded me.
The bedroom window was open. And I knew I was loud.
I knew Jason was right outside on that side of the house, and I definitely knew he was hearing every single scream of mine.
But instead of feeling shy or guilty about it, I felt a weird sort of satisfaction. I felt victorious. I had heard AND seen worse. Maybe tonight I could make Jason feel a tiny fragment of what I felt a year ago.
Noah was pounding me and my screams kept getting louder. I was gathering up a blissful orgasm and was just about to come, when I heard a loud noise outside.
Not Jason’s voice. This voice had a louder baritone, and a strong Latina accent. Then there was a crash, low and hard, and then Jason’s voice, sharp and commanding, cutting across it.
Noah stopped fucking me and froze in his position.
Jason. Jason could be in danger.
I pushed Noah away from me and ran to the window. I was completely naked but I didn’t care.
What I saw in the garden below turned the blood cold in my chest.
Two figures. One of them Jason, who had one man’s arm twisted behind his back and his knee on the ground. The other — a second figure, emerging from the shadow of the garden wall with something in his hand that caught the moonlight with the specific, unmistakable glint of metal.
Pablo Moreno.
Scarlett’s bodyguard.
At my garden gate, barely visible in the darkness beyond the motion light Jason had installed, a third figure stood watching — dark hair, straight as a blade, arms folded.
She had found me.
They were here.