Page 31 of What He Always Knew

“I hated this wallpaper then. It’s even worse now.”

“So bad,” Cameron agreed, but he dropped our bags on the bed and crossed to where I stood, pressing me against the papered wall. “But it was the last thing on my mind that night.”

“And tonight?” I breathed, eyes falling to his lips.

“I hadn’t even noticed it until you said something.”

Cameron looked at me in that moment as if he’d walked through the desert and I was an untouched, natural spring. I flushed, and he leaned in slowly to press his lips to mine, that kiss sending a jolt of electricity to my core. I arched into his touch, his hands pinning my hips to the wall as he kissed me harder, but he broke the kiss before the flame could catch.

“I thought we could take a bath,” he said. “Like that night.”

I smiled. “That sounds nice.”

“I’ll get the water running. Why don’t you pop that champagne over there?” He nodded to a bottle cooling in an ice bucket.

But when he moved away from the wall and I pushed forward, half of the wallpaper came with me.

It stuck to my sweater, the ripping sound the only thing I heard before my eyes were wide and staring at Cameron, who was trying his best not to laugh. I turned, feeling where the paper was stuck to the back of my shirt, little strips of it connecting me to the wall behind me.

“Not exactly the magical place it used to be, is it?” I asked, laughing with Cameron.

He helped me unstick the paper before I peeled off my sweater, still wearing my blouse beneath it. Cameron’s eyes caught on my chest before he ripped them away and made his way over to the tub.

For a moment, the only sound was the water running as I untwisted the metal top on the champagne and prepared to pop the cork. I felt Cameron’s eyes on me, like they had been all night, but the anxiety they brought when we first left our house was gone, replaced by an easy comfort.

I was having fun.

The trip I’d been dreading with the man I didn’t want to spend time with was turning out to be exactly what I needed. I was out of the house, out of the town I hadn’t left for a while, and back in a place where I felt connected to Cameron.

But as much as I loved it, it also hurt.

Because now that I was alone with my husband, I couldn’t remember why I ever let Reese in my heart in the first place.

I thought back to when he first came to town, to how I was feeling then. I remembered still wanting Cameron, even on the night Reese opened up to me about his family at my parents’ house. But somewhere along the way, Reese showed me how unhappy I was. It wasn’t that I hadn’t felt that way before Reese came back, but he just put a magnifying glass to it.

And he asked me to do something about it.

He asked me to not settle, to not be okay with being unhappy. And so, I’d found happiness in him.

And I loved him, too.

That was the truth. I had wanted him when I was younger and those feelings were only multiplied now.

But he had Blake, and he didn’t tell me about her.Thatwas what weighed most on my mind now when I thought of him. I could no longer see him dropping to his knees to touch my scars at the Incline, or feel his hands on me under the sheets of our fort, or hear his voice whispering my name the first time he had me.

They were all muted by the woman he kept a secret.

My eyes met Cameron’s from across the room where he filled the tub. He offered me a small smile, and I knew without a doubt that he would have told me about Blake, had he been Reese. But he wasn’t Reese. He was Cameron — my husband, my family.

Then again, he’d kept secrets from me, too.

I poured the champagne into two flutes, dropping a couple of strawberries from the bowl next to the bottle inside each one before crossing to Cameron. He was frowning, his focus on the water when I handed him his glass.

“It’s not as hot as I remember,” he said, one hand feeling the water still as he took the glass in his other.

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

He lifted a brow. “Feel for yourself.”