Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-Four
I don’t go back.
Not even when I reply, How do you know? And he says, Because I’m outside.
My head snaps up. I’ve been sitting cross-legged in my vast bed, browsing Miami boat charters on my phone.
Campbell brushes aside the gauzy curtain that floats in the open patio door and steps into my room.
He’s in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt—soft gray, thick cuffs at his wrists.
Barefoot. The cool ocean breeze follows him inside.
“Can I come in?” he says.
I set my phone down in front of my crossed ankles. “Seems a bit late to ask.”
He leans against the windowed door and slides his hands into his pockets. Smiles in a shy sort of way that starts something humming under my skin. “Can I come in further?”
I hold his gaze. I’m in pajama shorts and an enormous tie-dye T-shirt from a fundraiser at Ava’s school years ago—Wicker Park Academy Waffle Breakfast in huge, cartoonish letters right across my chest. Lev volunteered all four hours, ladling waffle batter into the iron as sticky-fingered five-year-olds peered up at him over the plastic table.
“You’re asking permission?” I say, quietly. “That’s unlike you.”
“Well”—Campbell lifts one shoulder—“we established last night that you’re in charge of me.”
I draw a long breath. I want to fling myself across the room into the solid wall of his body.
I want to hide my face in his neck and forget this whole day: Ava’s disbelief on the phone, the afternoon I spent twisting my brain in knots over the pitch with Dexter and Iris, all the reminders of the certain truth—which is that we can’t do this.
That my entire career has felt like a blood-drawing effort to get ahead of Campbell, and that giving in to this can only tear it all apart.
“Tell me,” Campbell says, softly.
I pick at the bottom hem of my shorts. “Tell you what?”
“What you’re thinking.” He smiles, then makes the same noise he made in bed last night. “Whirring, whirring.”
I roll my eyes, and Campbell rights himself in the doorframe. “If I can’t come in,” he says, “will you at least come here?”
He extends one arm into the room, fingers stretched toward me. The suite is so big there’s practically a football field between us—the entire length of the lounge, the stairs, the dresser, the closet. But still, I feel the shift in the air as he reaches for me.
“Campbell,” I say. I surprise myself, with how sad it sounds.
“Mattie.” He curves his fingers. “Come here.”
I only waver for a beat before unfolding from the bed and crossing the room toward him. I stop a foot away, and he drops his hand. In our bare feet, as always, we’re the exact same height.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. I find myself physically incapable of looking at him as I say, “I think it was a mistake.”
When Campbell’s silent for five full breaths, I peek at him through my fingers. He looks vaguely amused.
“I think you’re wrong.”
I drop my hands and groan. “Campbell, we have so much work to do. Against each other. If anyone finds out—”
“No one’s going to find out.”
I shoot him a look. “But if they do? And what about the pitch? We aren’t on the same side, here.”
Campbell considers me. “It’s only ten days. To me, it’s worth the risk.”
“Is it?” I press. “Because I’ve been a mess today. I’m so distracted, so paranoid someone saw us last night, so preoccupied.” My voice is gaining in pitch. “And then you show up here, and I just—you make my insides do this thing that feels like, like—”
Campbell smiles, watching me fight for words. “Organ failure?” he offers.
“Yes,” I practically wheeze, and he reaches for me. Hands framing my ribs, spread steady and wide. Every blurring churn of my mind is stilled by the immediacy of his skin on mine.
“I know.” Campbell steps me backward, backward, until the table bumps my legs. “It’s always felt that way for me.”
I lower onto the table, Campbell’s hips slotting between my thighs. “What do you mean, always?”
His hands slide upward, skimming my breasts through the T-shirt, to finally frame my face. “I mean, always.”
I know I’m blushing—not coquettishly, not charmingly. Furiously. There hasn’t been a time since I’ve known you exist that I haven’t wanted you. When I look down at my lap, Campbell lifts my chin.
“Don’t hide from me,” he says. “I mean when we were interns, I mean when I saw you crying at the Diversey stop, I mean when you told me at the airport that I’m your enemy. I know you’re scared, Mattie—”
“I’m not scared—”
“But it’s only ten days.” Campbell ducks his head, just a little, to make sure I’m looking at him. “Please.”
Plenty of people don’t want that, he said on the beach. I don’t believe in soulmates, back when we were interns. Besides, love is more painful than it’s worth.
Here in my hotel room, coming apart against the hot press of his body, I decide that Campbell means: it’s only ten days.
I decide that he’s saying: neither of us wants a big, life-changing love.
He’s saying: this doesn’t need to be anything serious, or career-altering, or risky. This only needs to be ten days.
“Are you begging?” I manage. For ten days, maybe I can keep a grip on the upper hand. “Because I do like that.”
His smile underscores his gaze as it moves to my mouth. “Please, Mattie.” He kisses me once, light but lingering. “Please.”
When I twist my legs around his hips, Campbell tilts me flat-backed onto the table and holds my jaw steady.
He licks his way into my mouth and I feel it through every centimeter of my body—slow and deep, like there’s no part of me he’s willing to leave untouched.
“Please,” he says into my lips, my throat, the collar of my shirt.
His hips rocking into mine. “Please, please, please.”
I wind my fingers through his hair and Campbell groans against my mouth.
I want to listen to that sound forever. I want to hold on to every bit of the way he moves in reaction to me, like our bodies are two stories only we know the words to.
“Okay,” I tell him. His head cupped in my hands, his heart hammering above my own. And my eyes pressed shut so, so tightly against the thought that none of this—not one single part of it—feels small enough to fit into ten days. “It’s only ten days.”
I have done yoga twice in my life. It’s much more Ava’s bag than mine—the speed of it (slow), the tone of it (gentle), the prominence of its brightly colored Lycra attire.
The first two times were at free community classes she guilted me into attending in Lincoln Park.
I thought the third time would be in Miami, when I plan to surprise her with a private sunrise class on the beach.
But it turns out the third time is today. With my coworkers.
“Please collect a bottle of ionized cucumber water and bring it to your mat.”
I blink at the yoga instructor, who’s sinewy and practically glistening, like they already completed a full vinyasa flow though it’s only eight a.m. and class hasn’t begun.
They gesture to the table nearby, covered in wood-capped glass water bottles with cucumber slices floating in them.
Each has the Wicksteed logo printed in white on its side.
I glance at Dexter, who’s already cross-legged on a yoga mat in the sand. He holds up his own bottle in greeting, then yells, “It’s yummy!”
“You’ll want to be hydrated,” a low voice says from behind me. When I turn, Campbell’s smiling into the high morning sun. One hand in his shorts pocket, the other holding a towel over his shoulder. “I’ve heard this gets sweaty.”
He left my room past midnight, shirtless with his hair so disheveled he looked like I’d plugged him into an outlet.
I couldn’t let him stay the night—couldn’t have sex with him, certainly couldn’t sleep beside him again.
When his thumbs had hooked into the waistband of my pajama shorts, his eyes rising to mine with the question, I’d wrestled with myself for a long, torturous beat.
The way I wanted Campbell was scorching.
Wild enough to raze me. And if this was only going to be ten days, all I had to cling to was my quickly diminishing resolve.
If I was this far gone after sleeping beside him one time, after seeing his toiletries and his morning face and his glasses, what would become of me if I let this go where I wanted it to? Where he so obviously wanted it to?
“Sleep well?” he asks, now. When he reaches around me for a water bottle, our forearms brush.
“No,” I say, honestly. I’d spent all night tussling my mulberry silk sheets, craving him. The word comes out more sharply than I intended, and Campbell grins wickedly.
“Me, neither.” He takes a step toward the water. “See you out there, Mattie.”
I glare at him. “Not here—”
“Oh, okay,” he says easily. He dips back toward my ear and whispers, “See you out there, French.”
I let out a rush of an exhale and watch him cross the sand toward Soraya and Nolan.
Iris is on the phone at the edge of the surf, and Lucia is talking to Suni Ma from their own yoga mats.
If working with Campbell was torture before, it’s going to be something else entirely, now.
When he kneels on the mat next to Soraya and glances back at me, I feel his smile like a muscle cramp. A deep, slow twist of longing.
“Friend of yours?” the yoga instructor asks, when I’m still standing in silence staring after Campbell.
I nearly jump. “Uh, sort of. I mean, no.”
They raise their eyebrows. I snatch a water bottle off the table and hurry over to Dexter before I can embarrass myself any more thoroughly.