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‘Worked you out …’ She jerks her head side to side. ‘When have I ever given you the impression that I only wanted you for sex?’
He laughs harshly. ‘The fling was a bit of a giveaway. How about all the sexting? When you stared at my ass when I got out of bed this morning? The text before my talk about having a quickie.’ The list is easy to assemble, everything right there for him. What a fool he’s been to think they could have had more.
‘I was trying to distract you! Get you to relax.’
‘And instead I bombed my presentation.’
‘That wasn’t—That’s unfair to pin that on me.’
‘I’m not pinning it on you. I’m at fault, too.’ And Braden. The papers buckle in his hands. ‘Which is why I’m taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘No.’ She straightens up and stares him down. ‘You’re running. From this. From us.’
He never should have told her about the running thing. Her throwing it in his face now, like she knows him, hurts. The grinding in his chest kind of hurt.
‘There is no us.’ Listing all those anecdotes, it’s clear he never had an opening with Jules, no matter what Matteo and his sisters thought they saw. They were outside observers. He got the real inside look. ‘This was a one-week fling and it’s over now.’
The table between them may as well be a continent.
He watches Jules’s expression morph from anger and determination, through something like disappointment, skirting around hurt, before her eyes start glistening.
‘Cameron, please. Don’t. This isn’t …’ Her voice is choked and barely above a whisper. She looks around the room, searching for what, he has no idea, but the more she lingers, fighting for them, the worse he feels. Shouldn’t she be saying ‘this sucks, but fine’ and walking out? All she’s losing is another day of sex. He’s losing a potential relationship and a friend.
He grabs the edge of the desk tight so he doesn’t walk around to fold her body against his. Whisper reassurances into her silky hair and smooth his palm down the curve of her back.
Moments pass, Cameron’s stomach grinding itself down, until she focuses back on him.
She faces him front on, takes a breath so big he sees her chest push out. Can’t she just go? So he can get on with moving on? From her and his disastrous talk and his poor decisions. He can see it in her stance though, the way her fists are curled by her side, the way her eyes don’t glisten anymore. She’s going to fight for them.
A flurry inside his chest attempts to dispel the grinding, even before she speaks, slow and steady like she wants every word to be chiselled into his brain.
‘It isn’t just sex, Cameron.’
‘Yes it is.’ The reply is automatic. And a lie. He wouldn’t have fallen for her if it was true.
In her eyes, determination fights with vulnerability. The slight tremble in her hands makes her next words all the more precious. And all the more painful. ‘Not to me.’
Something inside his body pangs, the part that wants to believe. But how can he when all evidence points towards him being her fling and nothing more.
He can’t have hope. He’s already fallen so far. He can’t let the temptation of Jules exist. He has to end things permanently.
‘It was to me.’ The words are charcoal on his tongue. ‘It was just sex.’
He sees the words hit her and her eyes become watery again. She jerks like he’s gone over there and punched her in the gut.
Part of Cameron wrenches off inside him, the hopeful part, and plummets painfully into his gut like a sheet of ice into the sea. He knows exactly how she feels in this moment because he’s been in her shoes before, with Braden.
He’s an asshole for turning it on her but he knows it works, and sure enough, Jules gathers herself with her arms folded around her middle and walks away from him.
Chapter 27
Her hands wrapped around her middle are the only thing holding Jules together as she enters her hotel room. If she uncrosses them, she’ll fall apart. Her skin feels thin and insubstantial, and her insides swollen and tender.
She makes her way out onto the tiny balcony and slides down to the floor, tilting her head back to chase the warmth of the sun. It reaches her as if through layers of glass. Muted and dull. The fresh air doesn’t help either, because she can barely get a proper breath in. Her stomach shifts, nausea creeping up her throat.
So much for her perfect track record. Goodbye one hundred per cent success rate.
Cameron doesn’t want her. Never really wanted her in the way she did him, and now even their fling has been ripped from her. It’s like Todd all over again, right down to the stabbing pain between her shoulder blades.
