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‘Hey!’ Jules kicks her foot into his shin beneath the table. It’s a solid hit and he winces, hissing. ‘Shit. Sorry. Forgot I was wearing the pointy heels. Are you okay?’
She ducks her head below the table and pushes his pant leg up to his knee to check. He hopes she doesn’t notice he’s half-hard from the hand holding, and getting harder by the moment with Jules under the table for him, fingers pressing at his calf. Or maybe he does hope she sees.
A waiter comes around to check on them, clocks Jules under the table, and scampers away with an, ‘I’ll come back later’.
Jules reappears. ‘Oops.’ She pushes her hair behind her ears.
‘Prognosis?’ Cameron inquires, eying the flush down her cheeks and neck.
‘Fine. Only a little red mark.’ Jules gaze darts over his shoulder to where the server must be. ‘But we’re probably about to get kicked out of the restaurant. They probably thought I was doing something to you.’
‘You don’t need to be under a table to do something to me. You sitting there works just as well.’
‘Really? That’s …’ Jules blinks owlishly, the flush over her cheeks and neck growing darker. ‘Really?’
Cameron drops his voice. ‘Really.’
Jules swallows and licks her lips. ‘You too, you know.’ She leans across the table, gaze dropping to his lips, the V of his shirt, sending heat spiralling down his torso.
Then she stops.
‘I’m getting the evil eye.’ She looks past his shoulder, frowning.
Cameron looks over at the waiter. ‘That’s not the evil eye.’
‘I think it is,’ she whispers. ‘Tori does it all the time and it looks just like that.’
‘The light’s too low to tell. We’re fine.’ Jules is still fixated on the waiter, her fingers tapping on the table again.
‘What were you going to say earlier?’ Cameron prompts to distract her. ‘About coming back to something.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’ Jules picks up her drink and puts it down again without taking a sip. ‘Um, I wanted to ask—and I know you tried to move the conversation on with the music question, and we can go back to that after, promise—but you said you run away from problems.’
Cameron’s next bite of food goes down like a stone. ‘I did,’ he says slowly.
‘And I know you said I wasn’t the problem.’ She reaches for her drink, but spins it around on the tablecloth instead of drinking. ‘But did you mean that generally? I mean, maybe it wasn’t me, but was it something I did or said? I want to make sure I don’t do it again.’
Cameron frowns. She’s concerned about him when he’s the one who behaved like a dick?
But also, she wants him to talk about the whole running thing more? His body flushes cold, then hot. He did say he wanted to talk about his fears with her, but turns out unearthing those buried emotions is easier said than done.
Maybe this is what his parents are going on about when they talk about relationships being about communication and talking through issues. God knows he and Braden didn’t do that. He kept all his hesitations inside and then after one big problem he pulled the plug. Not that it’s comparable with now. He and Jules don’t have a relationship, they have a hookup with an end date, an arrangement that he’s worked hard tonight to revive.
His silence must have gone too long, because Jules starts talking like she had in the car ride over, quicker than normal and using her hands for emphasis.
‘I asked because I wanted to make sure things weren’t weird between us. I know this arrangement is … is temporary. But I don’t want to lose what we had before then when we go back to the office. Chatting on the phone with you. Guessing your soundtrack for the day. Because I, um, I care about you too, you know.’
Heat like sunshine flares in his chest at her soft words.
‘You won’t lose it,’ Cameron promises, meaning it all the way through. After tonight, he doesn’t think he’d be able to say no to anything Jules asked of him. A shocking thought, when it seems all he’d done today is throw up a big no to all her questions.
She nods, loosing a breath. ‘So you’ll tell me what I did?’
‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ he assures her. ‘I overreacted to something.’
Jules’s lips purse. ‘To what?’
Cameron tries to cross his ankle over his knee but there’s not enough room under the table. He settles for gripping his knees tightly.
