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Yep. There it is.
‘Afraid she’ll hurt you like Braden.’
‘Stop. Look, I—’ He takes a deep breath and pushes up from the bench. If he’s going to come clean, he doesn’t want to see the I-told-you-so look in Matteo’s eyes as he does.
‘I see it now,’ he tells Matteo. ‘Braden fucked me up for relationships. I do get scared.’
Claiming the truth isn’t empowering. It makes his bones shrink until he feels all of three feet tall.
Matteo hums. ‘She hasn’t fucked you up, there’s just some added internal complications now. Acknowledging it is a good first step.’
Cameron rubs a fist over his chest as he starts pacing again. ‘Running into her yesterday … it’s clear I’ve got some unresolved shit in my head about it.’
‘Not feelings for her?’ Matteo asks with horrified wide eyes.
Cameron’s gut spasms at the mere idea. ‘No way.’
Matteo tips his head up to the ceiling. ‘Thank fuck.’
‘Though she was clearly still interested in hooking up.’
‘Oh, damn.’ Matteo’s eyes widen again.
‘Yeah.’ His skin tightens remembering the clear interest in her face. ‘Thing is, it’s not great timing to figure my shit out. I’ve got my presentation today and I have to make up for the mess I left at Cable when I resigned. You know how important word of mouth and professional reputation is in this field. What if I can never get a job in Sydney again?’
‘You’re thinking about moving back?’ Matteo doesn’t hide the surprise from his tone.
‘That’s—’ He didn’t mean to say ‘Sydney’ instead of ‘Canberra’, but it’s true. ‘Yeah. Maybe.’ Cameron shrugs. ‘But that’s a whole other thing I don’t want to think about right now.’
‘Well, I’d love to have you here again, man, but only if it’s the right thing for you.’
‘Thanks,’ Cameron nods. ‘But yeah. I can’t be stressing about Braden hinting she wants to get back together. Or have sex again or whatever. I’ve already been stressing that leaving Sydney was a bad move. I’m trying to placate my sisters, who keep bugging me with texts about Jules. And Jules. I’m spending so much time with her it’s getting impossible to stop feeling things and thinking about her. So I really need—’
‘Hold up.’ Matteo throws his palms up. ‘There’s so much to unpack there. But first. Feeling things? What happened to your ‘you’ve got it wrong, we’re having a fling, it’s one hundred per cent sexual’ argument from, like, two minutes ago?’
Cameron’s heart thump-thumps hard in his chest, gearing up to say the words he won’t be able to take back. ‘I was lying. It stopped being one hundred per cent sexual.’
‘What? When?’ Matteo asks with a massive gasp.
Cameron shakes his head. ‘You’re as bad as my sisters. They’ve been pushing me to ask her out from day one.’
‘No dodging the question.’ He grabs Cameron’s arm and yanks him onto the bench beside him. ‘When did it happen?’
‘Yesterday.’ Cameron focuses on peeling Matteo’s fingers off his arm as he speaks. ‘She opened up to me, told me stuff about her past and her fears. It was … nice knowing she trusted me enough to share those things.’
‘Nice’ isn’t a strong enough word, but he doesn’t want to go too sappy and say ‘validating’.
‘Did you do the same?’
Cameron barks out a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Should have. But no. I did something bad.’
Matteo groans. ‘Please don’t tell me you said, ‘that’s nice’, and then shoved your dick inside her.’
‘Urgh.’ Cameron shudders and pushes hard at Matteo’s shoulder, regretting it when Matteo doesn’t budge and his hand ends up covered in sweat. ‘You seriously think I’d do that?’
‘I don’t know, man.’ Matteo hefts his massive shoulders. ‘You were the one saying ‘it’s a fling, it’s a fling’.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ He wipes his palm on his shorts several times.
