Love me. Be proud of me.
“Anyway, I used to be so embarrassed by that kid but now…I’m almost fond of him.”
“I was pretty fond of him, too,” she said. But she looked out the window instead of meeting his gaze. “It’s true for me, as well. I mean, it feels like part of me is still that girl. And maybe that’s just how people feel when they get older. Like they keep adding to the person they were, piling versions of themselves on top of each other.”
“Like those Russian nesting dolls?”
“Yeah. I mean, I can still feel that scared little girl who first arrived here, so angry at her mom. So worried about her dad. Confused about everything. She’s still…” She put a hand to her neck. “Here. Her voice still comes out of me.”
“You had a pretty traumatic event,” he said. “With your dad.”
“Thank god for therapy,” she joked but he didn’t laugh. They were getting closer to the inn, the glow of the main lodge visible over the trees.
Thank god.
“I think about my dad sometimes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “About the kind of man he was and what parts of him are in me.”
“Josie,” he said. “You’re nothing like your father.”
“Well, I’m not a murderer.” Again she tried to make things light but Cameron was not having it. He knew how she was trying to deflect. “But I have his height. And his skeptic’s nature.”
“Stop,” he said as they pulled into the back driveway. The truck bounced over the snow and potholes, and the inn, even from the rear, was so pretty. He’d forgotten how pretty it was. Particularly this time of year.
“And he was a person who tore things apart, you know? He loved destruction. It made him feel strong and in control. And sometimes I’m scared that I have that part of him, too.”
He slammed the truck into Park and then, shockingly, he grabbed her hands where they were clenched in her lap. His skin was warm, his palms rough with calluses. And then, maybe because she didn’t pull back, he touched her face, her cheek, the edge of her lips.
Her lips parted on a broken breath and his thumb touched the damp of her mouth and it was so fucking exciting he couldn’t stand it. It was too much and not nearly enough.
“You built me up,” he said. “Knowing you gave me the confidence to do everything I’ve done. You are a builder. Like Max. Your mom. And I can’t thank you—”
“Cameron,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“Let me thank you, Josie. Please.”
“Look at what I did to you. That night—”
“I owe my life to you and to that scared girl who befriended that scared boy so full of attitude. I do. It’s a fact. That night didn’t change that. And it made what happened next possible.”
The words I love you almost slipped out. Because he did love her, like the dearest friend he had. But the words were loaded between them. Dipped in other feelings, complicated by what might have been.
A kiss hung in the air. The possibility of them. He wanted her with something close to pain. An ache.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and got out of the truck.
12
CAMERON
Look. Sex was easy. Sex was the easiest thing in the world. Sex, in Cameron’s purview, was always the end. The goodbye. It was the thank you and take care between two people. It was the exclamation point on an evening of flirtation. A weekend of banter. Not that he didn’t take it seriously. He did. Of course he did. But sex made everything simple. Biological. It left out the brain and it left out the heart.
The brain and the heart were where things got messy.
And everything with Josie was messy and the last thing he needed was to think about sleeping with her. And it was all he could think about.
He watched her that night with the family as they ate dinner. He watched her laugh with Helen and tease her brother about his hair. She and Delia sat back with glasses of red wine and talked, the Christmas tree lights reflected in their hair and eyes.
What a shock to realize he still wanted her. He’d chalked up all the feelings he’d had for her to boyhood. To young love and constant proximity. But a day alone with her in that truck and he was feeling it all again. But sharper. Fiercer.
The breaking of her breath when he pulled her hair in the bathroom. It would have been so easy to tug her closer by that bun. Against his body. He could have shut the door and pushed her against that sink. Or at any point today he could have pulled that truck over on the side of the road and kissed her in all the ways his teenage self had dreamed of.
That list was in his head, the carefully crafted list with all the places on her body he wanted to touch and kiss and bite.
Yep.
Maybe this was how they could have the goodbye they should have had. Without the shame. Without the anger. And all the years of silence. Maybe this was a way to rewrite their ending.
It had a kind of poetry to it. A do-over in the best possible way.
And it had the added benefit of putting everything in order. His feelings. His thoughts about what she’d said in the truck about being a person who tore things down rather than building them up.
He didn’t understand how she could be so wrong about herself.
“They make a pretty sight, don’t they?” Max asked Cameron as he cleared dishes from the table. He and Alice had served Mateo’s smoked ham with green beans and Alice’s legendary Gratin Dauphinoise.
Cameron felt himself blush, uncomfortable to be caught by Max staring at Josie with these thoughts in his head.
“Hey,” Max said, his hands full of dishes. “You want to give me a hand in the kitchen?”
Yeah, Cameron was no dummy. He knew what waited for him in that kitchen, and there was no way he was going in there for a heart-to-heart.
“I’m not your employee anymore,” he said, as cold as he could be, and he got up to join Helen by the fire.
The next morning was much the same as the day before had been.
The smell of coffee pulled him from his bed and down into the kitchen with Alice. Who greeted him with a smile, a mug, and a list of things they had to do.
“We’re supposed to get a storm later today,” she said, looking out the windows at the low sky.
“Then we better get moving,” he said.
They began to assemble the lasagnas and pulled the focaccia out of the fridge where it had been kept for its second rise. The cold kept the rise slow and created a better flavor.
“Hey,” Alice said. “I want another shot at Five Questions.”
He thought of what Josie’d said about him and people with whom he had chemistry. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. So when can we do it?”
“Well, we’re a little busy right now,” he said, hedging.
“I won’t bring up your mom,” she said, and he glanced up at her. She looked as contrite as Alice ever looked. “I’m sorry I did last time.”
“No,” he said. “It’s okay. I mean…it just surprised me is all.”
“We can pretend like we don’t even know each other,” Alice said in a cheery voice that made his soul cringe. “We can—”