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Braden continues to smile at him, ignoring every signal his body is giving out, while he works to unlock his clenched jaw and tell her to stop touching him.
His phone starts buzzing in his pocket, giving him an excuse to move. ‘I need to go. I have to get to the conference room.’
‘Of course.’ She shrugs, removing her hand and her gaze dips down his body quickly. ‘I’ll catch you later.’
It’s not a question. It’s probably not meant to be a threat either, but with the way his insides itch and rub against each other, it feels like it.
He flees down the corridor with the superimposed image of Braden and Jules stuck in his head like the afterimage of a nightmare.
***
Cameron’s thoughts are all over the place as he waits at the side of the stage for his presentation to start. Jules in his bed that morning, in his shower. Matteo and his sisters telling him how he’s feeling. Him finally realising they’re right. His run-in with Braden, and the horrible tacky déjà vu sensation that history is repeating. He wanted more from that relationship too, just like he wants more from Jules now.
He tries to bat the thoughts away, the birds and anvils circling his head like a cartoon character, bashing into each other and ignoring all his attempts to centre himself and focus on his speech. No amount of blasting 80s pop through his headphones and rolling his shoulders makes it go away. Must be backlash from all the times over the last year he’s kept them bottled up. Feelings for Jules, and how things ended with Braden, and how lonely he was in Canberra. That bottle has completely shattered since he confessed he likes Jules to Matteo this morning. There’s nowhere for his feelings to settle now so they swirl around his body.
He smooths his shirt down and tugs at his tie. It feels like it’s choking him, but he can’t take it off or he’ll look too casual.
From the side of the stage, he spots Jules in the audience. She winks at him and gestures to his phone.
He pulls it out and sees a text.
Jules: Sorry I can’t provide a quickie in the wings, but just imagine what hearing that sexy voice of yours speak for an hour straight is going to do to me.
Jules: ;) ;) ;)
Cameron’s blood pumps thick through his veins, rushing south, his body responding by rote to Jules’s come-on even as a black hole starts seeding in his chest. Sex. She’s talking about sex right before he’s about to go onstage and give the presentation she knows is important to him.
There’s no ‘good luck’, ‘break a leg’, ‘you’ll do great’, ‘roll your shoulders’. His phone trembles in his hand. No emotional support. Maybe he’s an asshole for wanting it after the attitude he started this week with, but he craves it anyway.
Unable to blink or look away from the screen, he sees the Instagram notification pop up, covering whatever new messages Jules has sent.
BookyBraden has tagged you in a post.
His finger hovers over the notification. He shouldn’t, he knows it can’t be anything he’ll want to see, but his finger is already pressing the message.
Cameron winces as the picture loads, black hole sucking more of him inside.
In the picture, he’s lying on a beach towel, one hand braced behind his head and the other holding a book above his head to read. Braden has captioned it with an inoffensive description about the talk he’s about to give, but he remembers it being worse when she first posted. Something about strong arms and reading books. It weirded him out at the time, but after hearing her dismiss him and their relationship, he’d gone back through her profile and the Cable account and the words had hit differently. He remembers the sick, roiling feeling in his gut he got when he went through her profile.
He’s feeling it again now.
Because he’s done it again. Given a co-worker power over his heart and his confidence.
He’s been kidding himself with Jules, hasn’t he? All those mushy feelings and impulsive desires to kiss her forehead in the morning and sleep curled around her and buy her fucking marshmallows. Jules has been clear from the start. All they have is a fling.
Chapter 26
His presentation was shit. He knew it ten minutes in by the fidgeting of people in their chairs and the lacklustre laughter at his jokes. He used to revel in public speaking, the ability to connect to a hundred people at a time and bring them all along on a journey with him. But he couldn’t find that connection, no matter how hard he tried. As if the wall Chloe said he had against connection was operating at full force, invisible at the edge of the stage but tangible inside him. Maybe it wasn’t at the edge of the stage at all, maybe it was wrapped around him like a cloak, travelling everywhere with him.
He had seen Braden and his ex-Cable colleagues in the audience and his throat dried up and he stumbled over a sentence. Then he’d caught Jules’s gaze and his skin pulled tight and his focus slipped, thinking back to her texts and Braden’s Instagram post, and his stomach had twisted into even more knots, the black hole Cameron-sized and inescapable.
Now, as he heads up to his room, it feels like he’s swallowed an entire length of scratchy rope and it’s rubbing his insides raw.
Jules is leaning against the wall by his door, her long legs stretching out in front of her. She smiles at him. It’s pure seduction and it makes his stride falter. Where’s the awkward woman from the car ride over? Yeah, Jules confessed to being comfortable around him, but this look on her face is like … Like Braden.
‘Good job up there.’
And now she’s lying to him. His skin heats. ‘Don’t sugar-coat. It was crap.’
