“Me neither.” He sighed. “I really wish we could be alone tonight.”
“Me too,” I said wistfully, suddenly wishing we could do just that. After spending the last few nights falling asleep next to him, I hated the idea of sleeping alone. “You could sneak into my room. It’s upstairs, and my parents’ room is downstairs. They’d never know.”
“Andi, that is a dangerous offer. With the way I’m feeling right now, I might just take you up on that. A little reassurance wouldn’t hurt.”
I pushed up on my toes and kissed him. “I swear, you really don’t need it, but I’ll be happy to do all the reassuring you need.”
He smiled. “I like that idea. Come on,” he said, taking my hand. “Let’s go back inside.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as we walked back into the house together. We were okay. I hated fighting with anyone, but fighting with Cam was worse. I had such strong feelings for him that I didn’t like seeing him upset.
“Everything okay?” Gabe asked. Dane was nowhere to be found, and Chris was watching us expectantly, but he didn’t say anything.
“We’re good,” I said as I leaned into Cam, listening to the soothing sounds of the Airborne Toxic Event song playing in the background.
Cam took a seat on the couch and tried to pull me down onto his lap, but I pulled back. “I’m going to use the restroom. Be right back.”
“We’ll be here,” Cam said playfully.
I was glad he was back to his normal self.
When I returned a few minutes later, I snuggled in next to Cam on the couch as Dane returned with a tray of fresh drinks in his hand.
As he passed them out, Cam turned to me, my cell phone in his hand. “This rang while you were in the bathroom. And you got a few texts.”
The look on his face was passive, but I could see something more in his eyes as I took my phone. I looked down to see a missed call from Reid and two text messages.
It was great to see you tonight.
Excited for that drink you promised me. How’s tomorrow?
I looked up at Cam who was watching me expectantly, his face an unreadable mask.
“This doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re meeting him for a drink?”
I shook my head. “No. I just said that to be polite.”
“Maybe you should be a little less polite. He might respond better to a direct message.”
I swallowed hard as I nodded, knowing that’s what I should have done. “I know. I will.”
“Good,” he said as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forehead.
My stomach ached as the closeness that I knew was tinged with hurt. I hadn’t wanted to hurt Cam, and I had – unintentionally, but it still happened.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Me too,” he said softly.
“So, Cam,” Dane said to him, pulling us out of the moment.
Cam looked up as he put his arm around me and pulled me against him. “Yeah?”
“Tell me about this band you’re in. I hear they’re pretty popular.”
I looked up to see Cam flash his stage grin, the one he used when he was trying to look happy and excited. I knew he wasn’t.
“Sure, man. What do you want to know?”
* * *
Late that night we got back to my parents’ house. After Chris had gone into the room he was staying in, Cam followed me into my room. But he didn’t attempt to drag me to bed like he’d done for the past few nights. I could tell the whole Reid thing was still affecting him as he sat down on my bed and watched me pull off my boots.
“Talk to me,” I begged him as I took a seat next to him.
He turned and pressed a kiss to my forehead. Then he sighed. “I think I’m going to fly home tomorrow.”
My eyes got wide as he said that. “What? What are you talking about?”
This couldn’t be about Reid. No way. I really hoped it wasn’t.
“Cam, please don’t be upset about Reid. It’s honestly nothing. I swear.”
He shook his head. “It’s not. It’s just, my mom texted me during dinner, and she was really upset that I wasn’t going to be home for Christmas,” Cam explained. “I feel like I need to be there.”
Well that was just plain confusing.
“But your mom seemed fine with our plans when we told her about them.”
“She said she was fine, but I knew she wasn’t. It’s the first Christmas I haven’t been home, and she still thinks of me as a kid. Now that tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, I think it’s hitting her that I won’t be there to open presents with the family.”
“Oh, okay. I didn’t realize she felt that way.”
“Yeah, she does, and she’s even more emotional about it since it’s Parker’s first Christmas, plus it would upset Ella and Asher. She felt like it wouldn’t be a real Christmas if I wasn’t there.”
“Then you should go,” I said, knowing I’d miss spending Christmas with him, but it was more important for him to be with his family. “I understand, and my parents will too.”
Cam smiled. “I’m glad to hear that. I would hate to disappoint them,” he said in a way that made me question if he was being sincere. But then he kissed me, erasing my question as I dismissed it, figuring I’d just been hearing things.
“Well, I can tell you they’re going to be disappointed,” I told him when I pulled back from his kiss. “I heard my dad talking about taking you and Gabe hunting the day after Christmas.”
“I think he probably just said that to be polite. I’m not sure hunting is really my thing, and I have a feeling he knows that,” Cam said in a way that made me think he was probably right.
My dad always went hunting with Gabe and his dad the day after Christmas, so it made sense that he would invite Cam to join them. He probably wouldn’t have been thrilled if Cam didn’t have fun, and knowing Cam, he would have faked his way through the whole day. It might have been relatively disastrous.
“So, what about after Christmas?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m off work until the second of January, and I figured we’d head back to New York for a few days. Do you want to meet me there? Would your mom be okay with that?”
He smiled. “Yeah, she’d be fine with that, but I might actually have to go back to L.A. There’s this appearance thing that Dillon and I are going to do on New Year’s Eve in Vegas, so I have to meet with my stylist and my agent beforehand.”
“Oh, really? You didn’t tell me about that.”
“I didn’t?” he said, making me question the validity of what he was saying. I’d never done that before, but I’d also never had a reason. He was just acting so odd.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Oh, well, it’s this thing at one of the clubs out there. They’re paying us to host their New Year’s Eve party. It should be cool.”
“Yeah, it actually sounds like a lot of fun. Which hotel is it at?”
“I, uh, I can’t remember. Gus sent me the details, but I didn’t really look at them. I’ll just show up, do my thing and then head out. It’s standard hosting stuff. We’ve done it before.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure what was happening. “But didn’t we talk about spending New Year’s Eve together?”
Was he not going to invite me to go to Vegas with him?
“We did, but that was before the job came in, and I can’t really turn it down. There’s been some negative press around Phillip’s sudden disappearance and the fact that we had to pull out of our original New Year’s Eve plans, so I feel like this will drive some positive media attention.”
I nodded, and then I waited for him to invite me to go with him, the silence that followed making my stomach ache. I would have gone in a heartbeat, but as we stared at each other, Cam didn’t say a word, and the knot that had formed in my stomach grew to the size of a grapefruit.
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” I finally said, even though I
was thoroughly confused.
He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Thanks for understanding.”
“Of course.”
“So, I think I’m going to head to bed. I’m beat.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be alone tonight?” I questioned.
Cam looked sheepish. “I don’t, but we’re at your parents’ house. I can’t stay in here.”
“Yeah, you’re right. So I guess I’ll see you in the morning? What time are you planning on leaving?”
“After breakfast. I want to be home by lunchtime.”
My heart felt heavy as I said, “Okay,” because what else could I really say?
I wasn’t okay with any of this, but I had to be understanding. I just wished I didn’t feel like there was more to Cam’s decision that I didn’t know. I wished he’d tell me, but he wasn’t doing that at all.
Cam leaned over and kissed me before he rose to his feet. “Sleep tight, Andi. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Goodnight,” I said softly before he slipped out of my room.
In that moment, I knew something had shifted. I just wasn’t sure what it was or why it had happened, but I went to bed with a feeling of dread that things were about to get really bad. I just wished I knew why. Everything was so good, and then it wasn’t. I’d never been more confused. It couldn’t have been about Reid. It was too ridiculous that an ex-boyfriend’s pointless crush would hurt what I’d thought was a pretty great relationship.
If only Reid hadn’t texted me. If only I hadn’t told him I’d meet him for a drink. I should have been honest, especially since if he’d stopped by my parents’ table at dinner, he would have met Cam and would have already known that I had a boyfriend. This wasn’t a big deal, but it suddenly felt like things had spun out of control in a matter of hours. I just hoped they’d right themselves by morning and that after a good night’s sleep Cam would be the same guy he was when we’d arrived in Atlanta. If not, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
Chapter Nineteen
Cam
“You okay, man?” Chris asked me when we got in our rented SUV in Detroit.
“No. Not really.”
He didn’t know what was wrong, because I hadn’t told him. I’d just announced that I was heading back to Detroit, and he’d made the arrangements for us. Then I’d been quiet the whole flight, because I’d spent it thinking about things that were way out of my control. I hated that. This whole situation was pure shit, and I had no idea what to do or think. So I’d bolted.
Saying goodbye to Andi had sucked. She’d cried, and I’d held her outside her parents’ house, not wanting to let her go as I held back my own tears. I hadn’t cried in a long time, but after what had gone down with her parents, I felt like breaking down.
The more I thought about it, the more it got to me, but worse than that was the fact that I’d lied to Andi. That fact alone was eating away at me. I felt like a torn shell of the guy I’d been a few days earlier when I’d been excited to call her my girlfriend. It was amazing how things could change in twenty-four hours.
Leaving was wrong, and I knew that, but it wasn’t like I could tell Andi that her parents had politely asked me not to spend Christmas with them. How could I tell her that? I couldn’t, so I chose the easy way out. At the time I’d figured it was better to cut and run than risk getting my heart broken when Andi realized she didn’t want to be with me, but in the end I was leaving with a pain in my chest that felt an awful lot like heartbreak, so I hadn’t avoided anything.
So many factors had finally pushed me over the edge, but in all honesty, it felt like this had been coming for a while. I’d been teetering on the edge when we’d been in Detroit. Andi had pulled me back a little when she told me she wanted to be my girlfriend, and I’d flown high for a few days until her parents had brought reality crashing back down on me. Once again I felt the same pain I’d felt every time my past came back to haunt me, and I knew in that moment that regardless of my success in life, a girl like Andi would never end up with a guy like me. I figured I might as well cut my losses.
Her parents hadn’t even given me a chance. They’d made up their minds long before they’d even met me it seemed. They knew what they wanted for Andi’s future, and I didn’t factor in. They might not have told her, but they definitely didn’t want me seeing her.
They’d actually had the nerve to call me trash. To my face and with a restaurant full of people around so I couldn’t even say anything in response. I’d just sat there like a moron, smiling a polite smile that matched theirs and wishing I could teleport myself outside. I’d never wanted to leave a place so badly in my life.
And I’d been the one dumb enough to tell them about myself when we’d first sat down at dinner, opening up the floodgates for their judgment and scrutiny. I should have known when I’d told them my father managed an auto body shop and my mother was a flight attendant that their tight smiles were a cover for what they were really thinking. Andi’s mother had made a comment about how someone needed to serve the drinks on airplanes, and Andi had squeezed my hand under the table, an empathetic smile on her face.
I figured telling them about Westside would go over well, but they didn’t seem at all impressed by that either, asking questions about the ‘seedy world of rock ‘n roll’. Andi had chastised her mother for that comment, telling her she was wrong, to which her mother had said, “Dear, aren’t most rock stars addicted to drugs?”
I’d responded to Andi’s mom by telling her that I never touched drugs, but I had a feeling she didn’t believe me. It didn’t matter anyway. I’d known in that moment that I was doomed. They didn’t like me, and there was nothing I could do to change that. I just hadn’t expected them to come out and say it directly when Andi left the table with Gabe.
Poor guy. He’d gotten his share of heat for still being single, and his mother had started making a list of all the girls she’d set him up with. I watched him gripping the table until his dad pried his hands away and told him to settle down in a knowing way, like this wasn’t the first time the same topic had been brought up.
It was odd, because his dad seemed cool. He was an ex-NASCAR driver, he knew cars, and he seemed to take an interest in my dad’s shop. But he wasn’t the person I needed to impress, and when I’d looked over at Andi’s dad when I’d been telling everyone about my parents, I could see that he was less than thrilled to learn that my dad had worked his way up from being a mechanic to running the place, so I quickly ended my conversation and kept my mouth shut.
Then Andi and Gabe had left the table, and while his mother was grumbling about how she didn’t understand why her son was so moody, she’d stood up and left the table. His dad had followed suit, going after her, and suddenly I was alone with Andi’s parents.
I’d swallowed hard, my nerves getting the best of me as Andi’s mother’s eyes lit up in excitement as someone approached our table.
“Reid!” she’d gushed, getting to her feet to hug the blond guy who looked a little stiff in my opinion. “How are you?”
“I’m good Francine,” the guy, Reid, said as he hugged her. Then he turned and shook Mr. Cutler’s hand. “George. Great to see you. How are things?”
“Doing well, son. How are you?”
Reid beamed. “I’m just great. Is Andi with you?”
My ears perked up as he asked about Andi with a level of interest in his eyes that I recognized all too well.
“She’s just outside, dear,” Mrs. Cutler told him. “I’m sure she’s going to be delighted to see you. Have you spoken to her recently?”
Reid shook his head. “Not for several months, but I did hear that she was single again. Is that true?”
I had no idea who this guy was, but I didn’t like him. He obviously had feelings of some kind for Andi, and I was eager to see the look on his face when her parents told him that she wasn’t single and, in fact, her boyfriend was sitting three feet away. But they didn’t do that.
�
��Oh, you know our Andi,” her mother said in a teasing way. “She’s always playing the field. I know she’ll be excited to see you, though. You two should get together while she’s home.”
Say what?
Reid’s smile turned into a grin. “I think that’s a great idea. I’m excited to see her as well. It’s been a long time.”
Andi’s mother beamed. “Oh, you two were just the cutest couple.”
Shit. He was her ex? I hadn’t expected that.
“Hey man. How are you?” I asked, my mouth having a mind of its own as I stuck my hand out to Reid.
He looked down at me in confusion, like he hadn’t even noticed I was there.
“Do I know you?”
I shook my head, figuring this guy definitely wasn’t a Westside fan. “Probably not. I’m Camden – Andi’s boyfriend.”
“Oh,” he said. The confusion on his face as he looked back and forth between Andi’s parents and me was sort of amusing. “I thought she was single.”
“She’s not,” I said quickly, getting more territorial than I’d expected.
“Oh, well, you know Andi,” her mother quickly chimed in, shrugging slightly. “She’s our wild child, dead set on have some fun before she comes back here next summer and settles down.”
Next summer? Settle down? What?
I looked at her mother in confusion, but she wouldn’t make eye contact with me.
“That’s great news,” Reid said. “I didn’t know she was moving back so soon.”
“She is,” Mrs. Cutler said, her eyes alight. “I’m sure it’ll be no time at all before you two rekindle what you had.”
Reid smiled, and I wanted to punch him in the face.
“Andi’s outside talking to Gabe,” her father said to Reid. “You should go say hi to her.”
“I’ll do that,” Reid said as he glanced down disdainfully at my high-tops that were now visible since I’d turned in my seat to face him.
When I saw the look on his face, I’d never regretted wearing those shoes so much in my life and wished I’d had the forethought to pack dress shoes. I just hadn’t thought Andi’s parents were so formal. I was lucky I had a jacket to wear to dinner since Andi hadn’t told me that jackets were required at their country club.
Westside Series Box Set Page 31
