by Sky Winters
“Don’t let it fool you. I can be brutal when I need to be, but not with you, never with you, Mandy.”
“I know,” she replied, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the forehead.
Mandy hated to leave once the weekend ended, but she reluctantly said goodbye to the solitude they had enjoyed the past few days and his mother’s home cooked meals.
“Don’t be strangers,” his mother told them as they left. “We’ll expect to see the both of you again soon.”
“Oh, you will. You’ll be seeing both of us for a long time to come,” Cameron told her.
“I like the sound of that, son,” his father replied, waving to them. “Goodbye, Mandy. We’ll see you again very soon.”
“See you soon,” Mandy replied with a smile.
“Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad,” Cameron said as they climbed into the car and left.
“I had a fantastic time,” Mandy told him as they pulled away.
“I did too, baby. I am so looking forward to many more trips here with you in the future.”
Mandy smiled and reached for his hand as he headed down the road leading away from the house. He squeezed her hand in his and smiled at her briefly before turning back to focus on the road ahead. This was what it felt like to be happy. After all the bad experiences with men that weren’t right for her, she had finally found the one man she had been meant to be with all along. Wasn’t that alone a miracle? She watched the distance float by as they headed back home, quietly enjoying one another’s company as the trees faded away and became the steel and concrete of the city once again.
***
“I have to leave for a few days,” Cameron told her the following week.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, frowning. Something was a bit off about him.
“No, babe. Nothing’s wrong. I just have to go check on that job for the woman who wants me to redecorate her studio for her. I’ll only be gone until the end of the week and then I’ll be right back here in your sweet arms,” he said, pulling her to him and kissing her.
“Okay. I’ll miss you though.”
“Not nearly as much as I will miss you, but I won’t be gone long. I’ll be back and we’ll have our entire lives together.”
“I suppose I can survive a few days without you, but it will be awful, just awful.”
“It will be just as awful for me. I’ll get back to you just as soon as I can though. I promise. This is a big job and I need to do what I can to land it. You understand that, right?’
“Of course I do, Cameron. It was bound to happen that you’d have to go somewhere away from me eventually. It won’t be the last time, I’m sure. I suppose I best get used to it, especially when you really make it big. People are already clamoring for your pieces. It’s only going to get busier for you.”
“Yes. I hope so. Still, I promise you that I will always have time for you. You’re always my first priority. Always…”
“I know. You go and do what you need to do. I’ll be here waiting for you when you get back.”
“Naked, I hope.”
“However you want me to be.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” he told her. “I need to pack. I’m going to have to leave on an afternoon flight tomorrow night.”
“Okay, she told him. She kissed him goodbye before he left to go back to his place and pack his bags. “Will you be back?”
“No, not tonight. I need to pack and I need to put together some things to take with me for presentation and selection. Will you be okay without me?”
“I suppose one more night won’t be any more painful than the few that follow,” she laughed.
He grinned wickedly at her. “I’ll make it up to you when I get back. I promise.”
Cameron kissed her on the forehead, stopping to look at her as he pulled away. She could see the love in his eyes, but there was something else too. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on and it bothered her. Still, she smiled and said her goodbyes, already hating not having his arms to sleep in for the rest of the week.
Chapter Four
The following morning, Mandy awoke with a feeling that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Cameron hadn’t called her to tell her goodnight and that was unlike him. Usually, they were together at night, but on the rare occasions that they hadn’t been, he’d always called her to tell her to sleep well and that he was lonely without her. Last night, nothing. Opening her phone, she sent him a message before heading off to the shower.
“Hope you got some rest last night. I missed you. Did you get everything done for your trip?”
Stepping into the shower, she tried to shake the inexplicable uneasy feeling she had. There was no reason for her to be concerned really. Cameron loved her. She could see it in everything he said and did. Perhaps he had just fallen asleep or his phone had gone dead. A small part of her said something might have happened to him, but he was a wolf shifter, for cripes’ sake. She seriously doubted there was anything he couldn’t handle.
“You’re just being ridiculous,” she told herself, dismissing her thoughts as she washed her hair beneath the steamy stream of water.
Stepping out to dry off and dress for work, she picked up her cell phone. There was no message. But it was early, he could still be asleep. She chastised herself again for being so needy. Wasn’t that what it all boiled down to? She wanted him there with her and he wasn’t? She shook her head and put the phone back down, doing her hair and makeup before slipping into a skirt and blouse for work. By the time she was ready to go, there had still been no response from Cameron, but she forced herself not to be a basket case over nothing.
Walking down the path to work, she glanced up at the overpass. Though the graffiti Cameron had put there months ago had been long ago whitewashed by the city, there was still a faint glimmer of the words through the thin coat of cheap paint they used. She smiled thoughtfully and continued on her way, quickly becoming absorbed in her work once she arrived. When her phone buzzed, shortly before lunchtime, she was certain it was him. No way would he get on a plane without calling her first. Instead, it was from her friend Kellye, asking if she wanted to go to lunch.
“Why not?” she mumbled to herself, sending back a reply that she would meet her in the cafeteria at noon.
Cameron hadn’t said anything about having lunch before he left and she realized she wasn’t even sure what time his flight was. For that matter, he hadn’t even told her where he was going. It all seemed a bit odd now that she thought about it more, but she was sure there was a logical explanation for it. She tried to push it out of her mind again and finished up the article she was editing for the morning edition before heading down to meet Kellye.
“You haven’t heard anything from him since last night?” Kellye said over salads and water.
The cafeteria served the water in large tea glasses with ice and a twist of lime, but everyone knew the water here came straight out of the tap, unfiltered. It was for this reason that Kellye always ordered bottled water, but tap water didn’t bother Mandy at all. She drank it at home and it came from the same place as it did here. She never saw the need to be pretentious or paranoid. The thought made her smile, realizing that she was being extremely paranoid at the moment.
“I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m just being a big baby. He’s always around these days and I’ve gotten used to it. I need to learn to handle him having to travel without me sometimes.”
“You’re most likely right. You know men, they sometimes like their space. It means nothing. They spend a few days without you and can’t wait to get back to see you. Just think about the ‘missed you’ sex!”
“You’re right. It’s all new to me. I’ve never been one that needed or even wanted someone around all the time. That’s just how it’s turned out. He wanted to be with me every day and I wanted him there. It just seemed natural. I guess I’m just freaking out a little because I’ve gotten used to that.”
Kellye smiled at her, shrugging. �
��It’s been less than a day, Mandy.”
“Yes. You’re right. I’m just being fickle. That’s why I like you, always keeping me in check when I get crazy.”
Mandy walked away from their lunch feeling better. It was just that she missed him so much already and that was only going to get worse. At least hearing his voice would make it better. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she wasn’t this clingy, demanding woman that she felt like at the moment. He was only gone for a few days and he was busy getting things done. No doubt he would call her soon.
***
“He still hasn’t called,” she lamented to Kellye a few days later on the phone.
“Have you tried to call him?”
“Yes, once. I got his voicemail and just left a message that I was calling to make sure he made it there okay, wherever ‘there’ is. I don’t even know that. I didn’t want to seem like I was spazzing out or anything, but I am. I’m completely panicking. What if something happened to him?”
“Well, you’ve only been together for a little over a month, right?”
“Yes.” She put her hand on her forehead. “I know what you’re going to say, Kellye. It’s too soon for me to be so attached to him, but you don’t understand. Everything with him was perfect. It will seem too quick to you, I know, but he told me he loved me. He was talking about living together, mentioning kids one day. He even took me to spend the weekend with his parents!”
“I don’t know, Mandy. Just call him. Tell him you can’t find the toothpaste or something and need to know if he knows where it is. You know, a reason you need to contact him and get an answer other than you’re a worry wart.”
“I hate games. I don’t want to play them. Why wouldn’t he have called me already? It’s not a matter of checking in. Why wouldn’t he want to call me? Doesn’t he miss me as much as I miss him? Oh God, what if something did happen to him?”
“Whoa, slow down there, girlie. You’re getting yourself all worked up without any facts. Maybe you’re right and you should just call him and tell him you were worried because you haven’t heard from him. There’s nothing wrong with that if you have gotten that close. I just thought it was a lot more casual than all that.”
“It wasn’t…isn’t.”
“Then, call him and see what’s up.”
“Okay. I’ve got to go.”
“Call me later and let me know how things went.”
“I will.”
Mandy ended the call and immediately opened her speed dial to call Cameron. Once again, she got his voicemail, but it was still early and he might be with his client. She left a message for him to call her when he got a moment, telling him she was very concerned that she hadn’t heard from him. When hours went by with no reply, she grew even more concerned that something was wrong. She contemplated calling the police and reporting him missing. Was that too extreme?
Instead, she opened her computer and went to his Twitter page. He had posted nothing there. The same was true for his Facebook page, which was unusual, as he usually bantered there a good bit with friends and family or posted works in progress so that he had more public visibility for his art. He really must be busy. She noticed that another woman had posted on his page. It was nothing significant, just a funny cartoon about starving artists, but she had never seen the woman before. Looking at his friends list, she noted she was listed in the recently added section. How recently, she wondered. She had never noticed her before.
“Don’t be a stalker,” she mumbled to herself, but it was useless.
She clicked on the woman’s profile, but it was blocked to all but friends. All she could see was the woman’s picture. She was an attractive brunette. Mandy switched to Twitter, the woman was there too. She could see that she had been added within the last week based on a contact before her, one that Mandy remembered him adding while they were talking about his work as an author. This felt bad, really bad.
Mandy held her breathe as she went to his ComeShift dating profile. It was still there. While she had deleted hers several weeks into their dating, he never had. She hadn’t thought to check because things were going so well and even if it had been there, it could just mean he hadn’t bothered dumping it yet. Now, she could see that not only had it never been deleted, it was showing that it had been updated. Her heart ached as she stared at the screen where it read “Last online: Today”
She continued to stare blankly at the screen, at the new picture he had added. It was a great full length photo of him that had been taken on a cliff overlooking a deep forest in the valley of Mount Evans. She knew because she had taken it during the trip to his parents. What was going on here? Was he cheating on her? And how could he have the audacity to use a photo she had taken during a presumably happy trip?
Her emotions ran the gamut between anger and hurt. How could he do this to someone he claimed to love? Was it something he had been doing all along and she had just been blind to it? When would he have even had time? She asked herself why endlessly, blaming herself for it. Why hadn’t she been enough for him? What was she going to do when he came back? Should she confront him? Doing so would force her to reveal she had been nosing around like a jealous school girl, but how could she not say anything and still see him in the same light?
As the hours flowed away with no return call from him, no texts, no emails—she laid on her bed and cried herself to sleep. The night brought no answers, only a restless slumber filled with bad dreams. She awoke the following morning looking and feeling like one of those hideous blob-fish things lurking in the depths of the ocean. Her eyes and face were equally as puffy and distorted from crying all night.
“You look like hell,” Kellye said flatly when she stopped by her office the following morning.
“I know. I tried to fix it with some ice and lots of makeup. Now, I just look like Adele after a night of binge drinking. I wonder if she felt this bad when she wrote all those gut wrenching songs.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s all that bad, but what happened? Did he call you?”
“No. I decided to do a bit of digging though.”
“Oh, my. That never goes well.” Kellye pulled up a chair. “Tell me what you found.”
Mandy told her what she’d seen on his ComeShift page and about the girl on his Facebook and Twitter.
“Yeah, but you have no idea who she is. She could be an old friend, a client…hell, she could be his cousin for all you know.”
“What about the dating profile?”
“That’s a different matter. He’s obviously looking, but maybe it isn’t that bad. Maybe he just has cold feet. Let him look around and chat with the usual lot of liars and freaks that exist behind their computer screens, and he’ll see that he got lucky with a very real girl who loves him.”
“I don’t get why he would even look. He seemed so happy with me. I’m not the one that was pushing for more, not ever.”
“Perhaps that’s the problem. Maybe he thought you weren’t as into him as he was you? He could have been frightened by that.”
“No. I don’t buy that. It doesn’t make sense. He could have just talked to me if that was the case.”
“Yes, he could have and he should have, but not all men are able to relate on that sort of level. You have to ask yourself that if he can’t even discuss a concern with you, if his answer is just to reach out to other women instead, is that really someone you want to be with?”
“I suppose you’re right, but it’s hard to reconcile what I’m learning with what I’m feeling,” she said, almost in tears again.
“Okay. Okay. Just breathe. You’ve got a long day ahead of you. Try to just focus on work and we’ll meet for lunch and talk through some of this. Maybe he will call in the meantime.”
“He’s supposed to be back today I think. He said a few days, so I assumed three. Do you think he’ll come to see me?”
“I don’t know, honey. If he’s being so evasive, I think that you might have to at least steel yourse
lf for the possibility that he won’t. Just keep your chin up and I’ll see you in a few hours. Okay?”
Mandy nodded sullenly, getting up and following Kellye down the hallway toward her office, but parting ways to go into the women’s restroom to try to gather herself up a bit again. She felt like she could barely move or breath. There was this huge weight that sat squarely on her chest and compressed everything. She walked on legs of jello, pushed forward by the momentum of her racing heart. The anxiety was unbearable. The looming depression insufferable. Combined, they were akin to being in hell.
Chapter Five
Two weeks passed with no word from Cameron. At first, Mandy looked at his social media, trying to find answers, but there were none there for her. The only thing she found online was more pain. While she was devastated, he seemed to be moving forward with life as if she had never existed.
“I was talking to someone about what happened to me and she said I’d been ‘ghosted’,” she told Kellye over their usual work salads.
“Ghosted?” Kellye said, an eyebrow raised.
“Yes. Apparently, it’s become pretty common these days. People just disappear. There’s no formal split or decision to not see one another. One just decides to be done with it and goes away.”
“That’s awful!”
“You’re telling me?” She stabbed a piece of lettuce with her fork. “It’s maddening. I went through days of worrying about him and then of beating myself up about anything I could think of that I might have done to make him do something so drastic. Turns out, it’s not that uncommon for men to do that these days. I don’t understand it. It’s so hurtful and disrespectful to just treat someone like they never mattered.”
“Do you think he was lying the whole time?”
“I don’t know, Kellye. I honestly don’t know. The way he was with me, the way he looked at me, even the way he touched me… I felt like he loved me. I never doubted it for a moment. If he was lying, he’s very good at it. Do you think he’s some sort of sociopath?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only ever heard you talk about him and you always talked about him in a positive way. I never met him.”
