Four Night Stand, page 23
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.’
‘It wasn’t—’ He shoots her a look and she drops the platitudes. ‘Okay. The delivery wasn’t your best, but the actual content was really good. If those Cable people didn’t take copious notes, then they missed out.’
He pushes open his door with a heavy hand and she follows him inside.
‘Content is only half the presentation,’ he drops his stuff on the table, not caring as it spreads out messily. ‘I was meant to make up for my dented professionalism with the Cable people, and instead I proved how deserving I was of demoting myself to Infinity. They’re probably glad I don’t work there anymore.’
He tugs the suffocating tie off and throws it away, then drops into one of the desk chairs, running his hands through his hair and messing it up. Like he did with his presentation.
‘Their loss,’ Jules says, walking over to him. ‘Infinity is lucky to have you. Patricia thinks you’re a marketing genius.’
She massages the tight muscles of his shoulders and it feels good, it does. Physically. But.
‘I’m not in the mood, Jules.’
‘That’s okay. We can just do this.’
She continues working the muscles in his shoulders but he doesn’t get any less tense. ‘I don’t want to do this.’
‘No worries.’ Her hands fall away. ‘I have no idea how to give a proper massage anyway. What about a walk down to Circular Quay? Another ice-cream on me? Or one of those sugary coffees you like.’
‘No. Not this.’ He sucks in a breath, digs his own fist into his stomach. Spits out the words with his back turned so he can’t see her expression. ‘The fling.’
‘What?’ The word carries mixed emotions, enough he can’t pick any single one out.
He spins the chair to face her. Her lips are parted and her brow is furrowed. She stares at him, her blue eyes the shade of a summer sky.
He fumbles the top two buttons of his shirt open. ‘It was a bad idea from the start. Mixing work and relationships never works. I know that. I’d forgotten temporarily because you …’
‘Because I what?’
‘Distracted me.’ He curls his fists on his thighs. ‘You saw my presentation. That’s what happens when I let myself get distracted.’
‘Hang on.’ She shifts her weight on her feet and frowns. ‘Are you blaming me for how your presentation went?’
‘I’ve been spending all my free time with you.’ There’s an annotated schedule on the table behind him that will attest to that. ‘I only ran through my presentation once last night because of your ridiculous dance suggestion. And you spent the night here.’
‘Because you asked me to stay.’ Her voice gains a harsh edge and his insides jolt and jar.
‘Well I shouldn’t have.’
‘You were—You were the one who offered to be in this fling with me that first night.’
‘And now I’m taking it back.’ The words fall like granite boulders into the heavy air of the room. Hurt as much lurching out of his throat, too. ‘This fling is over.’
Jules takes a few steps away from him, crossing her arms over her body and pursing her lips together.
He can’t look at her, at the defensive state he pushed her into. On purpose. Because he has to if he wants to protect himself from destruction. So he’s pushing her away, pushing her so far back they’ll probably never even get back to what they had before this.
He stands and starts sorting his desk, gathering all the wasted paper of his presentation speech and programs into a pile. They’re going straight in the bin. Or maybe he’ll take them home and set them on fire. Seems fitting.
Because he’s annoyed and watching something burning down to ash could be poetic. Annoyed at Jules, sure, a little, but mostly at himself for getting played again. He’s the one who offered to be her fling on that first night, who can’t resist his urges around her, who let his feelings grow beyond his control and ended up getting himself into the same fucking mess that tanked his relationship with Braden and his career at Cable in a matter of days.
Even now, as he glances over at her, he finds her alluring as fuck with her flushed cheeks and fiery eyes, but he can’t go there. Infinity is going to hear about how much he bombed his presentation and it’s going to be another smear on his professional name. He can’t fall back any further after the step down he took to leave Cable. He’s got some kind of wall around him? Great. He’s going to shore it up so he doesn’t put his job at risk by letting his focus be pulled.
So he has to stop being with Jules. Fling, friendship and all. Now he’s aware of his feelings, he can’t be anything less than all or nothing with her. And she obviously doesn’t want all of him.
‘There’s still another day of the conference.’ Jules moves to stand on the other side of the desk from him, braces her hands on the surface.
‘You haven’t had enough sex already? Worked me out of your system?’ He yanks papers from beneath her splayed hands. They rip but it doesn’t matter anymore.
‘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.
Her breath rattles into her body unsteadily. Sex and pillow talk. What a ridiculous idea. She should have been honest from the start and told him she liked him, because now, even when she did tell him it was more than sex for her—fought through those stomping ants crawling all over her skin, in her lungs and down her throat to tell him—he didn’t believe her.
And why would he? She has been focusing mostly on sex this week. Initiating it in his shower, at the Opera House, letting her body drive her instead of making him rehearse his presentation last night.
A sob breaks through and she squeezes her arms tighter around herself.
She should message Cat and Tori. They’ll make her feel better. But her phone is in her room and she can’t find the energy to move. She may throw up if she does.
Thinking about Cat and Tori at least brings some clarity to her stuffy head. There may have been those sexual interactions, but there was other stuff between her and Cameron too. Their dinner date and their breakfast chats and their discussion last night. He even said himself he was opening up to her, getting emotional. Has he forgotten those moments or—
Another sob and the tears start sliding down her face. He can’t have forgotten something that happened less than 24 hours ago. It mustn’t have meant anything to him, except maybe regret. It doesn’t matter what he said in bed last night now, because he’s made his feelings clear. It was only about sex for him.
She keeps her arms wrapped around her torso and lets the tears drip off her chin.
***
The next morning is tough. After a restless night, she wants to stay in bed and avoid Cameron and her feelings, but she’s made commitments. To have coffee with James and to get that replacement bottle opener for Samantha.
She tries to focus on the positives from yesterday, remind herself how invigorating talking with James was, but it all comes back to Cameron. Being with him made her confident in voicing her wants. Without him providing inspiration with his own story, she wouldn’t have been so open with James, or told Samantha she was thinking of looking for a new job.
But she didn’t have the confidence when it really counted. To be honest with him sooner.
She slips quietly into the breakfast area after scanning the tables for Cameron and not seeing him. She avoids the muesli station and sits at a table facing away from the entrance, or else she’ll be looking for him every second. She doesn’t want to know how he’s coping. She doesn’t want to see his expression when he sees her. Dismissal, anger, friendliness without heat.
She plays with her food more than eating it, until a voice interrupts her brooding.
‘Jules?’
She moves her head slowly, looking up at the man beside her table.
‘Matteo. Hi.’ She sounds like she’s got feathers shoved down her throat.
‘Hey. Mind if I join you?’
She has no energy to feel either way on the request, so she gestures to the free seat.
Matteo drops into it. ‘So. Cameron told me you guys ended your fling.’
The words are unexpected. Her knife scrapes against the bottom of her plate. She waits to feel strange that Matteo knows about what she’s been doing with his friend, but she doesn’t feel much of anything except resignation.
‘You’ve seen him already?’ Maybe she does want to know how he’s dealing with the end of them.
‘Gym this morning.’
‘Oh.’ So Cameron felt normal enough, unaffected enough to get up as usual and head to the gym, while she snoozed her alarm five times and had to talk herself into a shower. Great. If she was hoping he was as distraught by their break-up as she was, it doesn’t seem like it.
‘So you know what happened?’ she asks.
‘I got an incredibly truncated version from Cameron and I’ve filled in the blanks with my own observations.’
‘Which are?’
‘That he made a mistake and he still wants you. Wants to date you.’
Jules laughs harshly, dropping the cutlery and giving up on eating. ‘Doubt it. He told me it was only about sex.’
Matteo swears and runs a palm over his shaved head. ‘He didn’t tell me that part. What a self-sabotaging bastard.’ He drops his hand onto the table. ‘Look. I know Cameron, so I’m certain that was a lie.’
‘He sounded pretty sure to me.’
‘He’s good at talking himself into believing something, even if it isn’t true. Besides.’ He leans in and whispers, ‘He told me yesterday morning he wanted to be with you properly.’
