by J. Sterling
The mattress dipped next to me as Dalton sat down and propped a bunch of pillows behind his back. I moved a little, angling myself more toward him so we could face each other somewhat while we talked. Part of me still couldn’t believe that he was sitting this close to me after all this time. Tiny streaks of nerves surged through me as my brain raced a mile a minute, my emotions all over the place, feeling so many different things.
“So—” he started to say, but didn’t finish his thought.
“So?” I asked, giving him the go-ahead to start.
He looked up at the ceiling, his jaw tense before his green eyes met mine. “God, Cammie, I want to know everything you’ve been doing for the last ten years. I want to talk about what that went wrong when we were kids. I wanted to be much cooler about all of this, but I can’t. I don’t even know where to start.”
My heart started to pound out beats that rivaled a drummer in a rock band. I wanted to talk about everything from senior year too. I longed to clear up all of that, but in this moment, all I needed to know was where he’d been since we graduated. Senior year was important, but not as important as filling in this ten-year gap that existed between us. Ten years was a long time to be apart, and I wanted to know how he had changed since then, or what had changed him.
“I want to know where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing since high school. We could start there?” I tried to smile, but it was tough when I was trying desperately not to crawl into his lap. The connection that had always existed between us was still very much alive, and it was a hard thing to resist when you didn’t actually want to.
Dalton’s shoulders relaxed a little at the safe topic. “I went to school in New York. I moved right after high school and majored in criminal justice. What about you?”
“I can’t believe you moved across the country for school. I stayed here and went to State. Double majored in Radio/TV/Film and Communications.”
“And you work for the Tom and John Show now?” He smiled, and I felt my eyes widen.
“How do you know that?”
“I listen.”
“You do?”
“Every once in a while since I moved back. But every morning since I realized you worked there.”
I sucked in a breath. He’d been listening to me on the air, which meant he had heard me talking me about him. “Did you hear?”
“All the reunion talk?”
I nodded and felt my cheeks warm.
He grinned. “Yeah. Who were you talking about? I wanted it to be me. Just lie and tell me it was me,” he said, putting his hand over his heart.
I smiled through my embarrassment. “It was you. I just didn’t want to say your name. I had no idea where you were or if you were married or not.”
“I’m not married.”
So we’re actually going there. Thank God. “Girlfriend?”
“Not anymore.”
“What happened?” My heart lurched a little as I wondered how long they’d been together, or if she was still a part of his life.
“It was what my friends like to call my ‘Ross moment,’” he said.
“What’s a Ross moment?”
“Like from Friends, the TV show. I was having a heated discussion with my girlfriend at the time, and in the middle of my apologizing to her, I said your name.” He winced a little as he confessed this to me. “It wasn’t my finest moment.”
“You said my name? How?” My expression must have looked like a mixture of confusion and shock, because that was how I felt.
“I basically said, ‘I’m so sorry, Cammie.’”
“What was her name?”
“Jill.” He swallowed before grimacing slightly.
I struggled between feeling bad for Jill and silently loving the hell out of what he’d done. Because it had been my name he’d said, not some other girl’s. And that had to mean something.
“Oh. What did she do?”
“She told me that I needed to figure out exactly who it was that I loved because she didn’t think it was her.”
I shifted on the bed, pulling one of the pillows against me. “When was that?” I asked, my eyes looking everywhere but at him.
“Three years ago.”
I shifted my gaze to his. “Three years ago?” I assumed that he was talking about something that had happened months ago, or at the longest a year. Not three.
He shrugged. “Sorry it took me so long to get here.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. In that moment, I didn’t care that it took him so long. All that mattered was that he was here now. It’s funny the little details you get hung up on when you’re missing someone . . . and then those tiny things all but fly out the window when you’re face-to-face.
“So, when did you move back from New York?”
“Almost a year ago. My partner, Tucker, and I both moved here. The case we’re working on had a change of location, and I volunteered to relocate.”
I remembered that my dad had worked the streets, always driving around in his cop car looking for the bad guys, but he never talked about working a case. “So you’re not a normal cop then?”
He half smiled. “Undercover.”
“You’re an undercover cop?” I wasn’t sure what it was about the word undercover, but it made him seem ten times hotter than just being a regular cop.
“Thanks to you,” he said, and my breath stilled.
“Thanks to me?” I all but choked out.
He shifted again, as if uncomfortable. “Cammie, you made me want to become a cop.”
“I m-made you?” I stuttered on those shocking words. “How? Why?” I had no idea at all how I could have made Dalton want to become a police officer. My mind struggled as I tried to determine what he meant.
“It was the day of your dad’s funeral,” he said, his voice so sad that my throat closed up, making it hard for me to breathe. Thinking back on that day was difficult, because it was such a blur . . .
• • •
I’d stood in the front row of the funeral home’s chapel, my mom barely able to function as she sat next to me, her eyes glazed over and her cheeks red and chapped from days of crying. She’d blown her nose as tears spilled down her face, just as they had since we found out my dad had been killed. She hadn’t taken the news well, and I’d found her in the back of her closet, buried under a pile of Dad’s clothes on more than one occasion.
As torn apart as I was, it was awful to watch my mom crumple in the wake of it all. It made me feel like I needed to be strong for both of us, but I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t even fake it. My dad had been my hero, and now he was gone. He’d never walk me down the aisle, or see me graduate from college, or anything that I had always assumed he’d be around for.
When you’re a kid, you never think about losing a parent. You need them too much and assume they’ll live forever, that they’ll always be there for you. My mom’s withdrawal from life—from me—devastated me, making me feel as if I was losing them both at once.
The sounds of soft conversation and muted grief filled the room, and when I turned around once to look behind me, I noticed that the room was completely packed with people, but I didn’t really see anyone. There were a lot of men in police uniforms, but that was the only detail I really noticed. Aside from some family members and Kristy, I had no idea who was here, although we were informed later that hundreds of people had stood outside and filled the parking lot because there wasn’t enough room for everyone inside.
It all seemed like a bad dream I desperately wanted to wake up from, but couldn’t. Kristy wrapped her arm around me, her own tears flowing. My dad was her second dad, and I knew it was a painful loss for her as well. Everything around me seemed to move in slow motion, my mind unable to process any of it. I was completely numb and out of it, going through the motions robotically because it was required of me, but not really absorbing any of it. I just wanted my dad back, and no one could ever make that happen for me. It killed me to think tha
t I’d never be the same girl ever again.
I suddenly wondered—can you still be Daddy’s little girl if you don’t have a dad anymore?
• • •
I shook my head to rid myself of the memory and rejoined Dalton in the present. “You were there? You came to my dad’s funeral?” My eyes continued to fill and I tried my best to hold back the tears, but failed as two fell.
Dalton nodded before reaching out and wiping the tears away with his thumbs. “I don’t mean to make you sad. Please don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it. But go on,” I said. “I want to hear this.”
“I was there. The whole school was there. I’m not surprised you don’t remember, you seemed pretty out of it. But then you gave that speech. I don’t know how you pulled it together to speak, but I was so glad you did.”
I barely remembered that either. I mean, I knew I talked at my dad’s funeral, but I couldn’t remember anything I said. It was like being in a fog, a day thick with emotion and so much sadness that the air felt almost too heavy to breathe in.
“What did I say? If you remember, I mean.”
“Oh, I remember.” Dalton sucked in a breath and his eyes closed for only a moment before reopening. “You said that every little girl was supposed to idolize their father, and that you were no exception. But that you didn’t only love him because he was the best dad ever, you loved him because he was a good man. You called him a hero in every sense of the word. You said that your dad was a great police officer because he wanted to protect people, he believed in right versus wrong, and he was a man of good character.”
More tears spilled as I nodded. “He was the best man I ever knew.”
“I know.”
“I can’t believe you were there.” I didn’t remember Dalton being there, and I would have remembered that because even in my zombie-like state . . . well, it was Dalton. “And I can’t believe you remember my speech.”
“It sort of changed my life, so—”
He looked away, and when he said nothing else for a moment, my curiosity forced me to prod him.
“But why?” I asked, wanting to make sense of it all. “Why did what I said about my dad mean so much to you?”
Dalton’s face tightened and he blinked rapidly, staring at his hands in his lap. “Because I grew up in a shitty house, Cammie. When you were up there saying those things, I couldn’t relate at all. I didn’t feel an ounce of what you felt for my own dad, but I wanted to.” His voice cracked on that last part, and he lifted his gaze to mine. “I mean, I hoped that someday I’d have my own family, and I wanted my kids to feel about me the way you felt about your dad. I wanted to be someone’s hero. I wanted someone to love me the way you loved him.”
I couldn’t fight the tears at all by this point and I finally stopped trying. I couldn’t believe that I had affected Dalton’s life choices to that extent. It was more than a little overwhelming.
Dalton reached out and touched my cheek. “Seeing you at the funeral damn near killed me that day. It hurt me to see you in so much pain. You had no idea, but I wanted to protect you from that moment on. I did a really shitty job of it, obviously, because I couldn’t even protect myself back then.”
He wanted to protect me?
“Aside from that,” he said, “your speech inspired me. You inspired me. I never had anyone to look up to, but I wanted to be the kind of man that others did. You gave me that hope.”
“But you always were,” I insisted.
He frowned and shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone looked up to you in high school. I don’t think you saw yourself how we all saw you. You’ve always had this energy about you that was so charming, so captivating. People wanted to be around you, and they trusted you, Dalton. If you said something, people believed it.” I frowned at him, a little shocked that he didn’t know this already. To me, it was so obvious.
He shrugged, as if unsure. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
He slanted a glance at me. “Did you want to be around me?”
“Are you kidding me? I’d been in love with you since English class our freshman year.” When he leaned away from me as if I’d just struck him with something, I asked timidly, “Did I say something wrong?”
“No. I just had no idea how you felt about me.”
Now it was my turn to feel sucker-punched. “What?” I choked out. “How is that even possible?”
“You always acted so nonchalant when it came to us. I kissed you every chance I got, but—”
Amazed that he’d thought that, I blurted, “I always figured you never really liked me. I assumed you didn’t want to be a couple or anything serious like that, but I liked you so much that I didn’t care. I was taking whatever you’d give me because you were the only thing that made me feel. I went numb after my dad died. It wasn’t until you that I could feel anything at all.”
“Do you remember the day in the darkroom?” he asked.
“Which time?” I said with a laugh.
“The day I asked you if you wanted to define what we were? Do you remember that? When you asked me what we were doing?”
I nodded as the memory came flooding back. “I do.”
“You said that you didn’t know and that we didn’t have to,” he huffed out, clearly exasperated.
“Oh my God, I lied! I was totally lying. Of course I wanted to define us, but I was too scared to tell you that,” I admitted.
“I didn’t know you were lying!” he all but shouted.
“Of course I lied. I’m a girl,” I said with a shrug. “I was just trying to play it cool and be what I thought you wanted me to be.”
“Well, I’m a guy. And guys believe what you tell them. We’re not good with hints, or beating around the bush, or any of that shit. We ask a question, you give an answer, the end.”
“Shit,” I breathed out on a slight laugh.
Dalton sighed and shifted on the bed, turning so he was completely facing me. “And while we’re being honest, I was terrified to push you too hard. I mean, I wanted us to be together officially, but I thought that if I pushed you for that, you’d bolt. And I didn’t want you to run away.” He reached out his hand and looped his index finger around mine.
His touch was warm and sent tingles throughout my body. Curling my finger around his, I said, “And I thought that wasn’t what you wanted at all, so I pretended that I didn’t want it either. But I did. Why didn’t we ever talk about all this back then?”
“Well, my excuse is that I grew up in such a dysfunctional house, so I figured not talking about things was normal. I never wanted to lose you, Cammie, but in the end, I did anyway.”
“We’re a mess,” I admitted as Dalton’s phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket.
Glancing down, he muttered a curse. “I have to take this. Sorry,” he said before I waved him off. “What’s up?” he barked into the phone, then listened. “Right now? He is? You’re sure? Yeah, I know. Got it. Thanks, Eddie.”
He ended the call and moved from the bed. “I’m so sorry, Cammie, I have to go. That case we’re working on. I can’t say anything else, but, well, I have to go.”
“It’s okay.” I let out a frustrated breath, pulled between being disappointed that our night was ending already and respecting his profession. “Go.”
He reached out his hand for me and tugged me from the bed before pulling me against his chest. “You’re so little without your shoes on.” He looked down at me and I grimaced.
“You’re so . . . Ah, crap, I’ve got nothing.” I laughed as a comeback escaped me.
“Here.” He moved me away and shoved his phone in my hands. “Put your number in my phone. I’m not letting you get away this time.” He stared down at me, giving me a mock stern look. “I hope I’m being clear.”
I typed my information in his cell, smiling like an idiot the whole time. “You want my phone number, you’ve got it.”
“I wan
t more than your phone number, Cammie. But I guess that will have to wait until I see you again.” He smiled, tucking his phone back into his pants. “I’ll call you as soon as I can. I want to see you,” he said as he backed away toward the door.
Torn, I stood there speechless for a moment. I wanted so badly to chase after him and pull him to me, but my feet refused to move, and all I could do was mumble, “Okay.”
Admiring the man he had become, I watched as he made his way to the door. He reached for the handle, turned it and started to step out, then pivoted and took two swift strides back toward me. Before I could even think a single thought, his lips were pressed against mine, his tongue begging for entry.
I opened my mouth and allowed him in. Dalton had grown more skilled in the last ten years, his kisses no longer frantic or rushed or sloppy. This was a man who took his time doing things. Our mouths moved in sync, our tongues caressing each other’s, the heat between us growing. His hand splayed across my back and I leaned against it, reveling in his strong touch. His lips were so soft, a stark contrast to the way his prickly stubble felt as his mouth moved against mine.
I wanted to pull him back on top of the bed and never let this moment end, but he moved us apart slowly, breaking our kiss. Leaning his forehead against mine, he said softly, “I couldn’t leave without doing that. Hell, I’d been waiting to do it all night. Call you soon.”
Dumbfounded, I lifted a hand to my lips and said nothing as he walked out and pulled the door shut. As my heart filled with joy, I stood there and replayed the kiss in my mind until it was burned there, overriding every other kiss that had come before it.
Silently Swooning
Cammie
Reaching for my cell phone, I sent Kristy a quick text to tell her I was in the room and wasn’t coming back downstairs. Dalton had left, and to be honest, I’d done enough socializing. I had just gotten comfortable, changed into a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top for bed, when my phone beeped with a response from Kristy.
Kristy: Are you still with Dalton?
