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‘Thank you.’ I didn’t want to look at him, keeping my eyes on the rim of the cup as I took a sip. Everything had been upended, and it left me feeling like I wanted to climb into the closet and hide until home time.
He took the spot next to me in bed with his own coffee and we sat in an awkward silence for a few minutes, sipping and looking anywhere but at one another's faces.
‘I get it, Maeve. My father is a shithead, too. You don’t need to be embarrassed. These past few weeks have been a lot.’
‘Are those scars on your back from him?’ I snuck a look at him, just a tiny one, and saw him grimace.
With a sigh, he leant back against the headboard. ‘Yeah.’
‘And you were forced into this marriage like I was.’
‘True,’ he said, swiping a hand through his hair and looking like he wanted to escape the conversation.
‘Yet you didn’t melt down like a jelly left on a windowsill.’
Cameron met my gaze, his eyebrows knitting momentarily. ‘Why do you think I was out punishing myself in the gym? It’s my version.’
‘Oh. I thought you were mad at me.’
‘I was mad at myself. For helping you, for not hating you hard enough to leave you on that trail, for sleeping next to you without wanting to hurt you. I don’t know what my father’s plan was sending me here, whether he was fucking with me or whether he hoped I’d man up and put you in your place. But it’s been hard.’ He toyed with the handle of his cup as he spoke. ‘I thought I’d just ignore you for a week here and then ignore you back home until you left me alone.’
‘It’s just all shit, isn’t it?’ I said, putting my coffee on the side table and twisting my fingers into the blanket.
‘Pure shite.’
‘I’m not sure I still completely hate you. Your father is the worst man I’ve met, and I’ve met a fair share of absolute whoppers through the family business. But I can’t like you either,’ I said.
‘You said you wanted to destroy me.’
‘Yeah. I still do. Not you so much, I suppose. And not Katie. I found myself warming to her a bit. But I want to blow up your father’s world and tie him to the top of the burning pile. I want him to suffer. I want him to hurt.’ My voice shook as rage spilled into my words.
Cameron smiled the first genuine smile I think I’d ever seen from him, and it was like being hit with a ray of pure golden sunshine. Fuck, he was hot when he was moody, but he gleamed with a smile. ‘Katie is the only reason I’m still here. I couldn’t leave her. As for my father, you’ll need to join a long queue. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last to want to take him out.’
‘Will you tell him?’
‘No.’
‘Would you help me?’
‘Take down my father? No.’
It had been a long shot. I only hoped he was telling the truth and wouldn’t tell Harold. I probably wouldn’t live long if he did.
Cameron put down his coffee and leant back against the headboard. He put his hands behind his head and watched as the sun set outside.
‘God, our lives are shit, aren’t they?’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed.
‘I can’t believe I’m on my honeymoon with a sworn enemy, and all I’ll have to remember it by is a sore ankle and some scratches.’
He let out a throaty laugh and flicked those amber lined eyes at me. ‘What did you want to remember it by?’
My cheeks heated at the memories of his fingers in my hair and tracing over my neck, not to mention on my thighs. I sent those thoughts packing as soon as I could. I didn’t want that. But the connection, could I brave asking for that? He’d held me twice and neither of us had burst into flames. My stomach tensed as he stared at me.
‘Do you think that, just for tonight, we could pretend like we aren’t kids of crime lords destined to hate each other for the next, however many months? Maybe just for tonight pretend that we are normal people, with normal families?’ He raised an eyebrow as I hesitated. ‘Do you think, just for one night, we could cuddle?’
‘You want to cuddle me?’
