Page 18

CHAPTER 18

JENNER

Y esterday and today felt like they had taken forever. I didn’t talk to Camden because after the game last night, I was busy then had to be to the field early for a team meeting. We’d both sent a couple of texts, but there wasn’t anything to them. No substance at all. Hers felt short. Like I could hear her voice when I’d read them and it was curt. So whatever was going on would best be figured out when I saw her after the game today.

She hadn’t come, probably because she had been spending a lot of the games with Harlowe, who hadn’t wanted to bring the baby to any yet. I got it. Kelsie was still tiny, but I would’ve loved to see Camden there.

Camden’s car was already sitting near the entrance of the youth development office, where we planned to meet to shoot the social media spots. I hurried in for two reasons. To see her and to get this over with so I could have her to myself.

When I got my first glimpse of her, I paused. She was wearing sneakers, jeans, and a button-down shirt that fell just past her ass. Nothing overly special, but man, did it look good on her. Her brown hair was down and wavy, the way she usually wore it.

Again, there should’ve been nothing special about the way she looked, except she still took my breath away. She was so damn beautiful .

I guess all of these years of fighting my feelings for her finally fell away and there’d be no going back.

A couple of the kids noticed me there and called my name, causing her to look up at me with those warm, hazel eyes. Except maybe they weren’t so warm with me today.

She had been leaned over setting something up, I assumed for the spots we were recording, but when she saw me and her gaze met mine, she stood and folded her arms just under her breasts. The breasts I’d had my hands on two days ago.

“Hi,” she said when I got over to her.

“Hi.” It felt weird to greet her like that, but what could I do? I couldn’t haul her into my arms and kiss her the way I wanted to. This was a professional thing. It wouldn’t have been appropriate. “How are you?”

“Great.” Then she turned and walked away from me. Now wasn’t the time, but it was really fucking hard not to drag her to a dark corner to figure out what her problem was.

Regret, most likely, but that wasn’t the total vibe I was getting.

When she came back, she said, “We’re ready if you are. Your script is written out on the cue cards. I assume you’ve done that before.”

“I have.”

“Good. Then let’s get started.”

Yeah. That was too formal for my liking. At least I’d be able to dig into it after this.

Marceline came over to get me seated the way they had apparently worked out before I’d even gotten here. Then she and Camden arranged the kids around me with Byron on one side and Wolfgang on the other. The two immediately started talking excitedly about camp. Camden came through for them. Then again, she always did. Once they quieted the kids, all I had to do was speak.

We got the first spot done in two takes.

Then it was time to rearrange and repeat until all three spots were done. Byron and Wolfgang stayed beside me the entire time.

Kimberly came over while Camden was talking to Marceline. “Thank you so much for doing this. I know you must be tired after a game.”

“I’m all right,” I said, shaking her hand. “You got everything you need?”

“We did.” She released my hand. “The team is going to work hard tomorrow to get all the post-production things done so we can launch this on Monday.”

“That quick?”

“We hope. That’s the plan, anyway. We’ll of course push it if something isn’t right, but we’d like to start fundraising right away. Camden will take a look at it before we hit go.”

Because I said I’d do whatever Camden wanted so she’d get the final say.

“Well, let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” Honestly, I could donate what they were looking to raise and I kind of was since Camden had told them I’d donation-match. But that wasn’t the point. The non-profit wanted to get the community involved. Get them used to donating once in a while because I couldn’t fund this thing on my own forever. I could do it this year, but what would happen once I was done playing and the income went away?

“Oh, thank you, Camden,” she said as she looked over my shoulder, causing me to turn to see her coming our way.

“You’re welcome,” she said with a pleasant smile. “I think it turned out really well and everyone will be happy with it.”

“I agree. I’ll send you the video files as soon as I have them.”

“Thank you.”

When Kimberly walked away, Camden looked up at me with hardened eyes then hurried herself toward the door as if she hoped I wouldn’t catch up when clearly I would easily.

We were out the door and halfway across the parking lot before I slid my arm around her waist, which made her stop in her tracks.

“What’re you doing?” she asked with a bit of anger brewing behind her words.

“What do you mean? Following you? Or touching you?”

“Both.”

I cocked my head to the side. “We’re still going to dinner, right? And I’ve touched you way more intimately than this.”

“No.” She began walking to her car again, a little more effort in her steps that stopped short of stomping .

“No, we’re not going to dinner or no, I haven’t touched you more intimately? Because I can definitely counter the second point.” We both stopped near the driver’s door of her car. “It’s been playing on a loop in my mind like a movie and it’s been making things really hard.”

Yeah. I meant it in all the ways it sounded, but she didn’t appreciate the innuendo when she tightened her lips into a thin line.

“We’re not going to dinner.”

“Why not?” Clearly, something had happened since I’d seen her last and I wanted to know what that was. “What’s going on with you? Why are you mad at me? We haven’t really even talked, so how could I have fucked up already?”

Camden took a deep breath that I hoped would calm her down. Don’t get me wrong, she was beautiful when she was angry, but I didn’t love being on the receiving end of that.

“I was at Brooks’s when he got home last night.”

“All right.”

Her teeth mashed together, tightening the corners of her jaw. “Anyway, he mentioned that you left with a woman, but it was weird because you hadn’t done that in a while, which is really good to hear since I stupidly wanted to go without a condom the other night. I’m not acting any particular way toward you. I’m acting how I always act. The other night was a one-time mistake that we won’t make again. That’s all. ”

What woman did I leave with? I wasn’t with another woman last night. Why would Brooks tell her that?

Oh shit. He’d left before me and he had seen me with another woman, though I still didn’t know why he’d tell her.

She turned to try to get into her car.

“Hold on,” I said when I grabbed her arm gently to stop her. If she wanted to get in there, I wouldn’t stop her. I wasn’t into manhandling women in that way, but fuck. I’d follow her to her house so she’d at least have to hear me out.

“That wasn’t what you think it was,” I told her. “Why the hell would he tell you that?”

Her face flushed. “So you’re mad that he told me, but not mad that you did it.”

“I’m not mad I did it because I didn’t do anything. It’s just weird that Brooks would tell you, given that he doesn’t know anything about us.”

The corners of her mouth turned up into an almost-evil grin. “How do you know he doesn’t know?”

“Because if you’d told him, I would’ve gotten shit in the locker room yesterday or today. Your brothers are shit at keeping that kind of thing to themselves.”

Before she could respond, the door to the building opened and some kids came running out into waiting cars that I hadn’t noticed sitting there. Which meant that some of these kids’ parents had gotten a front row to whatever this was. Fuck. If they had rolled their windows down, they would’ve heard us.

We weren’t yelling, but we weren’t quiet, either .

I assumed they were still inside but given that a bunch of parents followed them out, the other parent must’ve been there to pick them up.

“Can I please explain this to you?” I glanced around so she’d see what I did. “Somewhere others couldn’t easily be listening in?”

Slowly, some of that wall she’d put up between Thursday night and tonight started to crack. She sunk her teeth into her bottom lip and nodded. “Fine. Dinner, like we said. Where do you want me to meet you?”

Honestly, I wanted her to ride with me so we could come back for her car, but that was highly unlikely to happen.

“Why don’t we just go to my house? We can get food delivered. It’s not what I wanted originally, but it’s fine.”

“Fine. But I am hungry, so you will have to feed me,” she almost spat before sliding into her car

“Absolutely. Yes. Meet me at my house.”

Then she slid behind the wheel and started the engine like she wasn’t worried about me still standing there.

Well, hell. Camden when she was angry was a force, but when she was hurt? There wasn’t a Richter scale, hurricane wind scale, or Fujita scale that could measure her.

My initial thought was to have food delivered, but I stopped at a place close to my house and picked it up instead. Camden loved tacos, so that was what I got. There was a mom-and-pop taco place just a mile or so from my house and they were the best there was as far as I was concerned.

When I arrived home, she was sitting in the driveway messing with her phone but shut it off and climbed out of her car as soon as she saw me.

Neither of us spoke as we made it into the house and we both kicked off our shoes once inside. I handed her the bag of tacos and asked her what she wanted to drink then went to get it. Once we were all set up at the coffee table—that was where she sat, so I slid in next to her—I turned so I was facing her.

“So, explain,” she said, almost glaring at me.

There was a knot tied so tightly in my stomach that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat. Not because I’d done anything wrong because I hadn’t, but because she was angry and I wanted it to go away.

“Maybe you should eat a taco first.”

Her almost-glare turned full-on glare.

“I’m just saying.” I held both hands up. “You sound hungry.”

Camden had to fight valiantly to keep from smiling. “I’ll start to eat, but you start to talk.”

That was a compromise I could live with. Once she had a taco unwrapped and had taken a bite, I started to talk.

“The woman your brother saw me with is the daughter of my mom’s best friend. We’ve known each other a long time but aren’t particularly close. She met up with a group of friends—all women—at the game. My mom asked me to meet up with her afterward and make sure she got to her car safely. That’s all I did. ”

“That’s it, huh?” She eyed me suspiciously. “Just walking your mom’s friend’s daughter to the car.”

I held my hands in front of me. “That’s it, Camden. Now, did she indicate she’d be open to more? Yeah. She did, but that isn’t what I want.”

She grunted. “Sounds like your moms were setting you up.”

“No way.”

“Pft. That was a setup. To see if something could get started.”

Yeah. Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t really deny that, could I? I’d told Dad about trying to smooth things over with Camden but not my mom and he wouldn’t have told her. Sometimes, things were kept between us because neither wanted her to worry. “I know. I didn’t realize it at first, but then it was obvious. I didn’t bite because I didn’t want to bite and I called my mom and told her to knock it off.”

“Right.” She finished the first taco and dug a second one out. At least this meant she was probably staying. “I shouldn’t even have cared, anyway.”

“What?” I watched her as I started to eat as well. “Why not?”

She shrugged. “It was one night, Jenner. It’s not like… we’re together or whatever. By the way, I told Harlowe about it, so… that’s out there now.”

“I don’t care if you told Harlowe. Hell, I assumed you would.”

“Aren’t you worried she’ll tell Brooks?” she asked before taking a drink of her Diet Pepsi .

“Not at all. Hell, if your brother knows, it’s out there. The only reason I haven’t talked to Silas is that I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t. My brothers don’t get to know that part of my life. They probably still think I’m a virgin.”

I snorted. “If you were, you aren’t now.” But there was no way she had been.

“I wasn’t.”

“I don’t need to know that.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I watched you go from one woman to the next after you broke up with what’s-her-name, but you don’t need to know that I wasn’t a virgin before you?”

I dropped my head to the table with a thud . “No. I don’t. If you need to tell me, I’ll listen, but I’ll hate every minute of it. And honestly, I wish you hadn’t seen most of what you did.” I sat up and pushed my food away from me then turned so that I could pull her closer.

“I don’t need to tell you,” she said softly.

“Good.” Then I tucked some of her hair behind her ear so that I could cup her jaw. “This wasn’t a one-night mistake for me,” I told her, which made her cringe a little. “That’s not what I want it to be for you. The night you told me that you loved me… I had to say those things, Camden. Had to say anything I could to make you stop.”

Her eyes filled with moisture at the memory. “Why?” she asked quietly .

“You know that what’s-her-name tore my heart out when I found out she was cheating on me.” I knew her name but didn’t see a reason to say it. Camden nodded, so I knew she was following along. “That night, I was so afraid of losing you because I didn’t know how to love someone. I’d already spent how many years making sure I wouldn’t. I was also a tiny bit afraid of losing the best friend who’d helped me get through my mom’s illness the first time and you were underage. I couldn’t go there even if I wanted to. But I let that whole situation with what’s-her-name fuck me up, but one thing is for sure… I’d never cheat on anyone.”

Camden swallowed hard but didn’t take her eyes off me. “It wouldn’t be cheating because we’re not together.”

I scoffed. “I wouldn’t have done what we did the other night if we weren’t going to be together. There’s no partway with you, Camden. It’s all or nothing.”

A tear dropped from one eye and I brushed it away with my thumb. “What’re you saying?”

“That I love you and I hope you can still love me even though I got you stabbed by a tree.”

A laugh burst up out of her as she closed her eyes tightly. As long as she might’ve wanted to hear me say those words, I’d wanted to say them.

But I didn’t want her to say it just because I had, so I leaned in and kissed her softly. She let me and I felt her anger slip away .

Instead, she reached up to set a hand on each side of my neck as she scooted even closer to me until she was in my lap and I could hold her tightly against me.

Maybe this was where she would start to forgive me. Not for walking my mom’s friend’s daughter to her car, but for the things I’d said to her all those years ago and the fact that she had gotten hurt running from me.

That was the scariest night of my life, so having it behind us both would be a huge weight off our shoulders.

After I brought the kiss to an end, I kept her close to me. “I’m going to have to tell Silas about us.”

“Hell, no,” she almost yelled right away.

“I have to, Camden. It’s going to be so much worse if he finds out on accident. Remember how you felt when you found out Brooks had gotten Harlowe pregnant?”

“I’m not pregnant.”

But I shook my head. “I’m too old to be sneaking around. I have to talk to him. He’s my best friend.”

“Well, fuck,” she muttered, but at least she knew that I was going to tell him.

Beyond the fact that he was my friend and I wouldn’t want him to think I was taking advantage of her, I wanted this out. Public. I wanted her to come to my games and cheer me on. Once the two of us were in a room together with any of her family, it was going to be pretty obvious, anyway.

Because now that I’d admitted how I felt to her, there was no going back—and there was no way I was going to keep Camden in the shadows.