Page 24 of Teach Me
“I didn’t say that.” I’d sure as hell been curious, though.
“Wow,” he breathed out. “You do. Alright, that’s fair, I guess. Which means I might assume you’d do the same.”
“No.” My tone was sharper than intended, and a shadow passed over his expression as I lifted my hand placatingly. “I told you already I’ve never done that before. Thought about it? Sure. Fantasized about it, absolutely. But I did it on a whim. I can’t imagine doing it again now.” Why was I fucking telling him this?
“So why won’t you believe me when I tell you the same thing? You were…arethe only person I’ve ever done that to. With. Whatever.”
“What a fucking mess.” We were both quiet for a stretch, and then he drew in another breath.
“So can you let me finish?” Cameron quirked a brow. “Although finishing each other is sorta how we got into thispickle, huh?” His laughter bordered on hysterical, and for some reason, that made my heart seize up. I wished, in that moment, that I could have been in any other position than the one I was currently in.
“And a very poor judgment call on my part.”
“Trust me, I know about poor judgment calls,” he muttered, a hint of bitterness in his voice that made me want to ask more, but I pushed it back. I needed to keep things professional.
“Then I’m sure you understand.”
He met my gaze, and once again, the paradox of his mannerisms and the piercing directness of his eyes caught me off-guard.
“I do and I don’t because, see, I’m not your average college student. I don’t give a shit about drama, or partying, or—” Cameron waved the paper in his hand through the air vaguely. “I don’t stir the pot. That’s not my style. I’m low-key. Discreet.” He cut a glance toward the darkening window to the left of my desk, then back to me. “Like I said, I’ve been thinking this over, weighing it out in my mind, and I have a proposal.”
I forced a light chuckle. “I’ve already been married once. I’m not inclined to do it again.”
He dropped off and chewed on his lower lip. I knew I should’ve cut him short there, but I didn’t. “I want you, and I’m pretty sure you want me. Or you did. I know what you’re gonna say—you already said it,” he forestalled me when I opened my mouth to say what I should’ve seconds before, “but I don’t want what’s around me. I want what we’ve been doing. I don’t want to have to worry about strings or relationships or getting attached or whatever. I want someone…” He sucked in another breath. “I want someone who will experiment with me, do the dirty shit we’ve been doing, be into it the way we both are, because I know you are. I won’t ever make a fucking peep, and you can trust me on that. I don’t want anything more than physical release, and Ihaven’t met anyone I feel comfortable being like that with until you.”
The fierce resolution in his eyes was beguiling. I turned away to stare out the darkened window and met my reflection with the hazy rendition of him nearby.
“Cameron,” I said, finally, and knew the regret in my voice was a mistake.
“You’re better than that spiel you’re about to give me on guys my age. I’m twenty-three, not twelve. I pay my own bills, pay my own tuition. I work hard to pay that tuition, along with my rent. I’m not some ignorant college kid just fucking around.”
I jerked my head back in his direction at his perspicacity. “Maybe I was about to give that spiel in regard to myself.”
He shrugged. “Then you would’ve already told me to go.”
“You’re frustrating.”
“I’m direct. Sometimes to a fault, I’m starting to think.” Cameron licked his plump lips, and I caught a glimpse of hesitation in his eyes before he came around the desk to stand beside my chair. Having him tower over me was unnerving and riveting at once. He was such an odd combination of vulnerability and brashness. “What do you want right now? If you tell me to go, I’ll take you at your word and do it, and I’ll never bring it up again.”
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my hands over my face. What I wanted was to touch him again, without a wall between us, wanted to revel in the strange chemistry of him: the bold and the tentative. I sighed, considering every decision I’d made that led me to this office, and then I let them fall away as I swiveled in my chair to look up at him.
“I want you,” he repeated. “I’m done playing the games most people do when it comes to all that shit. It seems pointless.”
Where had that self-awareness come from? What was his story that he could stand there in front of me the way he wasand speak so plainly, eyes blazing with such earnest intention that I could easily project him a decade forward in a boardroom, a classroom, a courtroom. But more than any of those, in an office much like mine, helping people figure out what they truly desired out of life, just like he said he wanted to. My heart ached and burned at the same time.
Beneath the miasmic swirl of my thoughts was the irrefutable fact that I wanted Cameron, too. Badly. And I knew he knew it.
But I couldn’t have him.
I met his eyes evenly, absorbing the heat in them, the war of certainty and uncertainty, and how they dimmed as I picked up a pen off my desk and turned away. “You need to go, Cameron. That’s my answer.”
He didn’t leave immediately. His gaze fell on the side of my face like the crack of a palm, and somehow, the sting felt deserved. How many things had I wanted in my life and denied myself for one reason or another? Add Cameron Taylor to the list.
Then he picked up his backpack and left without a word or a backward glance.
Once the door closed behind him, I tossed the pen onto the desk and sank back into my chair, rubbing the center of my forehead where a headache was gathering steam.
The scent of his detergent lingered in the air until I snapped out the desk light and went home.