Bang (Blast Brothers #2) - Sabrina Stark Page 0,68
with Mason himself.
If I were smart, I decided, I'd have this conversation sooner rather than later.
And boy, was he gonna love this.
Chapter 41
Mason
On the phone, Cami said, "There's something I need to tell you."
I'd figured as much. She'd sent me a text maybe ten minutes ago, asking me to call her when I had the chance.
No emergency.
That's what she'd texted.
But now, judging from the tone of her voice, her news wouldn't be good.
It was just past eleven o'clock at night, and I was alone in my hotel suite after a full day of swinging a hammer in front of the cameras.
The construction work, I liked. The cameras, I could do without. All I wanted now was to get the hell out of here and return to business as usual – except my thoughts hadn't been on business, and there was nothing usual about my state-of-mind.
In fact, it was so unusual, I'd been on edge all day. Yesterday, too.
The truth was, I'd been off-kilter for a while now. And it wasn't getting better. It was getting worse.
Into the phone, I said, "Just tell me."
"Well, first, let me assure you, everything's fine."
I frowned. As soon as anyone says, "Everything's fine," that's when you know, everything's gone to shit. Was it about Willow?
My grip tightened on the phone. "What happened? And first, cut to the chase."
Cami paused. "What do you mean?"
"Tell me how it ended."
"Alright," she said with a shaky laugh. "It ended with everything being fine. How's that?"
My fingers relaxed, and I almost smiled.
Nobody ever teased me.
Nobody but Cami.
Whatever she was calling about, it was no disaster. I knew this, because I knew the caller. Cami wouldn’t be joking if Willow were in trouble.
"Point taken," I said. "Now tell me the rest."
I listened as Cami explained that her psychotic friend – the new nanny across the river – had knocked on the back door of my house earlier today and had started asking questions about what she'd seen the other night.
Cami went on to say, "We were holding hands, remember?"
Hell yeah, I remembered. I wasn't the hand-holding type. And yet, holding hands with Cami had felt different. Better. Nice.
I wanted to do it again – that and other things. But Cami – she had other ideas. No more physical stuff between us.
Logically, I agreed. We'd be smart to call it a one-time thing and move on.
Hell, it shouldn't have happened the first time.
And yet, I wasn't feeling very logical, not when it came to Cami. In a careful voice, replied, "I remember."
"And when Livia asked if the two of us were an item, you said, 'yes.' You remember that, too, right?"
Oh yeah. I remembered all too well. It had been messing with my head ever since. The truth was, I hadn't meant to say it. But once I'd thrown it out there, I hadn't wanted to take it back.
This, too, was messing with my head.
I'd been on travel for two days now, and I'd been corresponding with Cami by text – not about us, but about household stuff, checking in on Willow and her schedule.
At least a dozen times, I'd pulled out my phone, intending to call Cami and hash things out between us. There was just one problem.
For the first time in years, I didn't know what to say.
And the thing I should be saying – that she was right to make it a one-time thing – well, it wasn't sounding so good. But neither was anything else.
My fault. Not hers.
I'd grown up in a messed-up household, with parents coming and going even when they promised to stay.
And me? I was majorly fucked up.
I knew this, just like I knew I wasn't capable of love – or at least, not the romantic kind.
And why? It was because I didn't believe in it.
Love was just a word. It was the term people threw around when they wanted to make someone feel better about their own shitty choices, or when they wanted to bang some boxer in Miami instead of staying in town to care for their own family.
In my mind, I could still hear my mom telling me, "But I love him" as Willow slept in the second-hand crib a few feet away.
At the time, I'd been twenty-one. I'd been too old to be living at home, except I was the one paying the bills and making sure my brothers kept out of trouble, especially Chase, who kept raising hell, even while taking marketing classes at the local college.