Page 30 of What He Always Knew

“They’ve got their priorities wrong.”

He chuckled at that, opening the door that led into the hotel lobby. When I stepped inside, a wave of familiarity washed over me, and I frowned.

“I’ve been here before.”

Cameron smirked, dropping our bags by my feet as he dug out his wallet.

“I’ll go check us in. Be right back.”

He made his way to the desk as I looked around the run-down lobby, wondering why it felt so familiar. I also couldn’t help but question why it had been the place Cameron chose for us to sleep that night. To say it was a little shabby for his usual taste would be an understatement. The carpeted floors were stained, the lighting low and dingy, with various bulbs burnt out and not replaced. We were one of very few cars outside, which didn’t surprise me being that our university was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Still, I was surprised we hadn’t driven back into the city for the night, to a more grand hotel.

Then again, I’d given up on trying to figure out any of Cameron’s moves that night.

From planning a spontaneous weekend trip to singing in the car on the ride out to Garrick, he’d surprised me. What had surprised memostwas how he’d managed to turn my entire night around — maybe even my entire week.

It had been surreal, driving around campus, seeing all that had changed since we were students there. He’d wanted to take me to the old bonfire pit at the end of the night, after dinner at the small diner on campus, of course, but the pit had been demolished and replaced by a modern, all-glass and steel building.

So instead, we’d sat at the edge of the dock on the campus lake and recounted all the nights we’d spent around that fire pit, from the night he’d nearly punched one of his fraternity brothers for ogling me to the night he’d told me about his parents.

That was the night I told him I loved him.

He’d taken almost three months to say it in return.

I didn’t mind waiting for him, though — not back then. With Cameron, his word meant something to him. There was so much thought and intention behind every sentence that left his mouth, and I knew that if and when he did tell me he loved me, he would mean it.

Maybe more than anyone had ever meant it before.

And when he did tell me, I’d felt every part of my heart squeeze at his words. We were napping between classes one lazy, rainy afternoon, and he woke up before me. I opened my eyes to find his there staring back at me, and he swept my hair out of my face, told me he loved me, and leaned in to seal that confession with the sweetest kiss of my life.

I was smiling at that memory when Cameron returned from the front desk, holding up a key card between his thumb and index finger.

“Come on,” he said, picking up the bags again. “Let’s get you to this room.”

“Anxious to get me alone there, Mr. Pierce?”

Cameron eyed me. “You were stark ass naked in the seat next to me for the last half hour of our drive into campus, and I couldn’t touch you. Does that answer your question?”

I flushed, biting my lower lip as he reached for my hand and dragged me down the hall to the elevators. “It was your idea to play Stripes,” I countered. “To be fair.”

“There’s nothing fair about you being naked when I can’t touch you.”

I laughed, but inside my stomach flipped inside out. The last time he’d tried to touch me, I’d rejected him — the same way he’d rejected me so many nights in the last five years. It wasn’t that his touch didn’t still elicit a need within me, but that night, Reese had been the main man on my mind.

I didn’t want to touch Cameron when I was thinking of Reese.

We shot up to the top floor of the hotel, and I stared at the buttons in the elevator, something about them triggering a memory, too. But it wasn’t until Cameron opened our door and ushered me inside our room for the night that it hit me.

“Oh my God…”

I balked at the horrid floral wallpaper lining the room, a wallpaper I couldn’t forget even if I tried. My eyes trailed the large bed next, the white comforter lined with a red bed liner at the bottom, rose petals spread across both. I found the wide balcony next, but just barely glanced at it before my eyes stuck on the large jacuzzi tub in the corner.

“Cameron, is this…?”

“The room we stayed in after our first bonfire at Garrick together?” he finished for me.

“It is, isn’t it?!” I laughed, running my fingers over the wallpaper as I looked around. “God, it hasn’t changed a bit.”

“It might be the only thing,” Cameron said.