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He turns away from Braden. He needs to be away from this. He’s said what he needed to and he needs time to process the realisation.
‘Wait, Cam.’
His fists curl but he turns around. Braden looks smaller than she ever has, a dejected curve to her shoulders.
‘I hope you know … You are the kind of person someone would be lucky to settle down with. I hope you find her.’
He inhales slowly and counts to four. It’s scarily close to what Jules said, but hearing it from Braden is … He shakes his head. Incomprehensible. He doesn’t pay attention to the quiet whisper from the part of him he thought had wrenched off earlier, the part that’s been slowly reattaching itself throughout his conversation with Braden: that he’s already found her.
When he pushes the breath out, he tries to expel all the negativity holding onto his breakup with Braden lined his body with. He can’t carry that and his breakup with Jules. His body isn’t made for it. ‘I hope you find your person, too.’
He doesn’t wait to see her react beyond a shallow nod before he turns and heads for the lifts, glancing once at Jules’s closed room door, gut twisting as he forces himself to walk past without stopping.
Chapter 30
Getting closure feels crap. Like he’s a sponge that’s been wrung out by a giant pair of hands. His chest is tight and there’s a pounding in his head. Yet as he loads his luggage into the hire car, those feelings turn into the kind of ache he gets post-workout. One that lets you know you’ve done something worthwhile for yourself.
His mind clears too, all the racing thoughts condensing down to the biggest, most important few.
He’s got his closure with Braden.
He and Jules are done.
It’s better this way.
Who’s he kidding? The thing stuck on his mind is that Jules and Braden are different people.
Carrie said it to his face. Matteo said it to his face. They’re different people.
Their actions may have been similar, but that doesn’t mean their motivations were. He knows that, because Jules told him what was driving her choices, and god knows it was the exact opposite of what Braden’s were.
He was given all the information he needed to make him and Jules work like he’d wanted them to yesterday morning, and he still screwed himself over. And Jules.
The clean break he was after? Yeah. Not so clean now. For him, at least.
He has to do something to fix this.
Thankfully, they’ve got an entire three hour car ride to sort things out. He’ll apologise. He’ll explain. He’ll come clean, finally, about the Braden stuff while he can’t physically run away. He’ll tell Jules how he felt yesterday morning and the night she slept in his bed, that warm whirlwind inside him. He should’ve trusted that feeling instead of listening to his frightened brain banging on about Braden.
He leans against the open boot, waiting for Jules, planning it out. He’ll tell her how he feels right now in this moment, how his chest hurts, a band of tightness snapped around his ribs because he knows she’s hurt. Then he’ll start from the beginning, with their first phone call and how it was sunshine on an otherwise grey day. He’ll confess to avoiding her because he didn’t trust himself not to catch feelings. He’ll talk about every time he leaned into her, because it felt impossible not to.
She’s going to be pissed at him and he deserves it, but if he can just make her listen, then maybe he has a shot at erasing the past 24 hours and all the shit he said.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out and his gut drops.
Jules: Don’t wait for me to drive back. I’ll make my own way.
His hand clenches around the phone, shoulders bunching. Fuck.
Now what?
He can’t say everything he needs to in a text. Would she even read it?
His gut sinks like an anvil in his torso. What if it’s too late? He didn’t chase her and he didn’t pull any punches when he broke them up. He fucking told her to her face it was only about the physical, and that seeds doubts that undermine an entire relationship. If he’s any indication, you need an entire year to get over those, and you don’t want to get back with the person who made you feel that way once you do. An apology text won’t cut it. And wasn’t he the one saying he wanted to talk with her, not to her? Yet he chose to end things in a way that made conversation impossible. He took that option from her.
Not wanting to leave her without a reply, he sends a simple ‘okay’. He wants to add more, but no written words seem enough to convey his feelings. ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I didn’t mean it’, which the anguished yearning in his belly is screaming at him, loud and clear.
Of course he didn’t fucking mean it. Only being interested in Jules for the sex? He rubs his fist in a circle over his aching chest. That’s not what it was. How could it be, when from their first phone call he’d been avoiding her because he knew he’d fall for her if he didn’t.
