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Jules holds his gaze with steady blue eyes. He could lie or obfuscate, but she just spent the afternoon telling him he made her confident to be honest with him. He did promise her the same, though at the time he’d been thinking only of sex. Yet sitting in this restaurant with her now, he doesn’t want to lie to her. She doesn’t deserve that. And she obviously cares about not hurting his feelings.
Tightness snaps around his chest. He’s out of practice with this whole emotional vulnerability stuff. He and Jules are good again though, so why burden her with more of his messy past. They’ll be back to normal in a few days anyway.
Jules waits patiently and like the jealousy geyser when Matteo held her hand, the truth is born out on a rush of something needy that burns away the tightness in his chest.
‘You said you liked my personality more than my body.’
Exhaling slowly, he focuses on her face while his intestine tries to tie itself into even more of a knot.
‘Oh.’ Stillness, then a slight frown. ‘Do you … not want me to compliment you?’
‘No. No, please. It made me feel …’ Alive. Happy. Valued. Worthy.
The words are on the tip of his tongue, but voicing one feels like a big move. Like a relationship move. So he goes for the joke. ‘My ego likes it.’
It’s a pitiful answer, and he can tell from the slight tilt of Jules’s head she’s joining dots again. Does he want her to connect these ones?
He goes for his drink, tips back a large mouthful. It doesn’t taste like anything. Neither does the next mouthful.
‘Alright.’ Jules’s forehead smooths, dot-joining completed or abandoned for now. She smiles at him and bumps her knee against his under the table. ‘I’ll try complimenting your personality more in future.’
‘Thank you. And if you could call me ‘cute’ some more, that’d be great.’
Jules rolls her eyes, thankfully missing how his hand trembles faintly as he returns his drink to the table, trembles because he’s starting to join his own dots in the back of his mind, and the picture it’s turning into, one of him and Jules, doesn’t resemble the one he saw at the start of this week. No, it looks an awful lot like the one that’s been coming in flashes when he least expects it. Flash-forwards.
Chapter 21
Cameron suggests taking the scenic route back to the hotel and Jules agrees. Anything to keep this portion of the night going. Cameron is finally opening up. Granted, she was hoping for more about the Cable stuff, and less about his fear of spiders. But he did confess about his running away thing, which she could tell was a big deal. It’s not the most hopeful trait he could have confessed to possessing, and since he did there’s been a persistent prickle on the back of her neck, because running is exactly what Todd did.
But nevertheless, she’s learning more. Though she practically had to force it from him, since her own opening up didn’t inspire immediate reciprocation. Which in hindsight, of course it didn’t, because Cameron was right. Emotional vulnerability isn’t ‘tit for tat’.
But the ache in her chest is filling in more tonight and she loves him.
No. It. She loves it.
Shit.
Where did that word slip come from? She’s only just realised she wants to try for something long-term and serious with him, but you don’t go from liking to love, just like you don’t go from flirting to sex. Which, bad analogy. She did that this week. But it’s still skipping a bunch of points in the plan.
And she had that scare today when he shut himself off, so really, she should be taking a half-step back, if anything, not racing a hundred steps forward. What if he runs again? Like Todd had? He confessed tonight that’s something he does.
‘Let’s get gelato,’ she says. A brain freeze should shock the L-word out of her system. It’s way too early for those kinds of feelings when they’re not even actually dating, just going on very date-like outings. It’s probably because they haven’t had sex since … actually, it’s only been a few hours. But maybe if she reminds herself this is a fling?
Jules taps Cameron on the shoulder, then plants her lips on his when he turns to her. He makes a little oomph noise but kisses her back eagerly, hands locking around her lower back. A familiar heat spreads through her limbs. She licks at his lower lip then slides her tongue inside his mouth, tasting curry, kissing him until all thoughts of that word are out of her head. Until all she’s thinking about is racing back to the hotel and getting naked.
There.
She pulls back, satisfied in one way, thoroughly unsatisfied in another.
Cameron looks stunned. Wide eyes with blown-out pupils, hair mussed and lips slightly parted. Now she definitely needs that gelato since she’s on fire.
She pulls him over to the gelato stand and orders a butterscotch in a waffle cone.
‘What flavour?’ she asks him.
‘Uh …’ Cameron’s still looking at her lips and he doesn’t look away when he says, ‘caramel.’
She’s not sure why he’s so fixated, they’ve kissed plenty of times before, but she doesn’t hate it, even though her skin is now probably as pink as the raspberry gelato.
