The words were quiet but they went through him like arrows. Piercing his brain. His chest. His dick. He was embarrassed even thinking that word around her. But he couldn’t stop.
With you how? he wanted to ask. As your boyfriend? As your friend?
Again, after long, long, looooong practice, he thought the thought and put it away.
“That’s more than five questions,” he said.
“Cam—”
“Let’s talk about this in the morning,” he said and smiled at her. “You need help getting upstairs?”
Please say no. Say no. Please.
He’d touched her more on the way from the car to the house than he had in years, and the whole left side of his body was raw and electric, and his dick was half hard. He felt like an animal and the luckiest guy in the world.
“I’m fine,” she said, and pushed off the wall, overcompensated and nearly fell into the stainless steel table in the center of the room.
“Sure you are. Come on.”
Girding himself, trying, like it was even a thing that could be done, to remove all sense of feeling on the side of his body touching her, he put his arm around her back and lifted her until she was standing.
“Hi.” She smiled at him and his heart bobbed.
“Hi.”
He walked them through the dark kitchen into the big main room with its fireplace and the wall of windows. Moonlight slid in great blocks across the floor, making their skin seem ghostly.
Cameron was painfully, excruciatingly aware of Josie’s body against his side. The press of her leg. Her arm around his shoulders. He could smell her. Summer night and sweat and whatever sweet thing she’d been drinking. Something with cherries, probably. And green Jell-O shots. If he kissed her she’d taste like an artificial fruit salad.
When he’d had this brilliant chauffeur idea, he had not considered this. This being alone with her. Soft and pliant and happy and smelling so sweet. He had not considered the hell of the bright red filaments of her hair stuck to his neck in the heat.
And he knew it had never occurred to him because he’d gotten so good at not noticing this stuff about her. Because he’d done everything in his power the last year to not be with her like this. To be just friends.
Not touch her.
Not be close enough to smell her.
Or feel her.
Not think of her pretty eyes or the way she looked when the sun hit her just right. Or how her laugh, when she really got going, was like a gong that echoed through his whole body.
And now she was drunk and he felt like an absolute asshole because he was absolutely soaking it in. Like he could not get enough of her skin on his.
Dude. She’s drunk.
There were plenty of people in his life, in this town, who thought the worst of him because of his mom and dad. Who wouldn’t be surprised if he groped a drunk girl. But the Riverview folks—Alice and Max, they believed the best of him.
Max had even said it to him before Cameron left with Josie that night. I trust you with my daughter.
Cameron wasn’t going to betray that trust. Ever.
So he tried, as best he could, to put distance between them somehow.
Up the stairs. To her room. Goodnight and get the hell out of here, man.
“Cam.” Her voice was low as they made their way toward the stairs. “I need to tell you something…”
“Yeah?” he asked, trying to shift her just a little. He could feel the sweat on the insides of her arms and it was so far from gross, he wanted to run his hand from her wrist to her elbow, gathering all of it in his palm. He wanted to lick his hand.
He wanted to kiss her shoulder and taste her. God. He wanted to taste her.
“I love you.”
The words sent sparks through his body and everything he felt for her—all the pent-up shit he’d been dealing with since she was a kid—it was dry kindling. It was explosives. A barn full of fireworks.
He laughed, ruthlessly stomping out the spark. “All right, drunky. You love everyone.”
They made it to the first landing and he braced her against the wall, getting away from her as best he could.
“No,” she said, grabbing onto him. Her hands clutching his shirt. His arm. “I mean, sure. But… “ She took a deep breath. “I love you especially.”
He turned his face away. Cameron didn’t pray. His mother did and he saw how that had gotten her a whole bunch of nothing. But right now he prayed for the strength to say no to this.
I trust you with my daughter.
“Do you think of me…like that?”
All the time. Every minute. You would be horrified to know what I think of you. You would blush so hard you’d just be ash. And saying it out loud would make me blush so hard I’d be ash.
“Josie. You’re drunk. Let’s not talk about this now.” He pulled her off the wall. The room she liked to use in the lodge was three doors down. Fifty feet. If that. He just needed to get her into her room and himself away from her.
Pulled by him, she stumbled forward, colliding with his body.
“Careful,” he murmured, trying to keep her upright. And then she did the impossible. The disastrous. She grabbed his face. Forced him to look at her. Right at her.
Growing up, he hadn’t believed in love. There had been no sign of it in his house. No proof that it existed. After coming here it had taken some time to believe that all this love the Mitchells had and tossed around like it was all so easy was even real. It felt, at best, fake. At worst like a trap. And he’d believed for as long as he could that every single Mitchell was a sucker.
But then Alice had won him over.
And then Max.
And Patrick.
The rest of them.
But it wasn’t until Josie that he’d believed in real love. The kind that changed the way his body worked. And his brain thought. The kind that opened up an idea to him he had never had the guts to think about.
Cameron wasn’t cheesy, and he would never say it out loud, but he believed that he and Josie were as close to soul mates as two people could be. It was the only way he could explain not just what he felt for her, but the long and strange and totally unlikely road that had brought them together.
A thousand near misses and different decisions, and they never would have met.
“I’ve loved you for so long,” she whispered. And she kissed him.
It was every single thing he’d ever wanted. And he gave himself just one second. One impossible taste of it. He allowed his hands to touch her hair. His body to register the feel of her against him. He was an absolute asshole but he kissed her back.
He kissed her back hard.
She moaned and he could taste the booze on her, and he hated himself.
She’s drunk. This is not consent. It’s not anything but drunk.
He pushed her away.
“Josie, you are drunk and now…”
She tried to kiss him again and he stepped back.
He watched her face go white and he realized she was embarrassed. That she thought he was rejecting her because he didn’t like her. Didn’t want to kiss her or touch her.
When that’s all he’d wanted to do for so long now.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and started down the hallway.
“No, Josie. It’s not like that.”
“This is embarrassing,” she said, pulling her hand away when he grabbed it. “Just…let me be embarrassed.”