Into You Series: The Complete Collection

39. Cameron

CHAPTER 39

CAMERON

W e shower that night after sex and take a quick round two in the process, but the entire time my stomach is growling, Grace’s as well, and we can’t stop laughing long enough to finish up.

I’ve never met a girl like Grace. Abby and I, whenever we did have sex, would do the deed and continue on with our lives. She would head to a different room and browse her phone, and I’d be left with a feeling of something missing. I’m now wondering if maybe that something had been Grace the whole time and I just didn’t know it yet.

Grace runs to her apartment to bring over Hank, and then we’re both moving through the kitchen, trying to scrounge up anything to eat. Unfortunately, I’ve reverted to a bachelor lifestyle since getting my own place, and Grace is not much of a cook either. All we’re left with is sugary cocoa cereal. I expect her to be put off, but she brings out the bowls and spoons as if this were a gourmet meal ready for the taking. A girl after my own heart.

Buddy bounces between the two of us, rising on his hind legs, begging for food from anyone one who will bestow pity upon him, while Hank is in the corner of the living room trying his best to set a good example. Or maybe that’s his clever way of playing the “good dog” card and conning us into food as well.

I go to the living room and plop into my bean bag chair, patting the brand new one next to me.

“You bought another chair?” Grace laughs, situating herself in it, adjusting my big t-shirt before it swallows her in the process.

“I bought it during lunch today.” The new bean bag chair is bright red and not exactly the same shade of Grace’s hair, as she’s a bit more orange-y, but seeing her in it is exactly what I imagined when I picked it up.

She matches. She fits in my life.

“What a gentleman,” Grace says, taking a spoonful of cereal and crunching it in her mouth, making her cheeks big.

“Okay, squirrel.” I laugh.

“I was going for hamster,” she mumbles through the bite before swallowing. “They’re cuter.”

“Nah, just be you. You’re the cutest,” I cheese, leaning forward to kiss her cheeks, but she recoils.

“Ew! Gross, you can’t be mushy.”

To be honest, I’ve never really thought of myself as a mushy type, but she brings it out in me. I want to treasure every moment I can because eight hours of every day I pretend I don’t even see her beyond being my employee. I need to make up for that lost time.

“Speaking of mushy, you promised you wouldn’t play favorites!” she says, pushing me.

My eyes widen and my smile falters. “What?”

“Telling me new clients want me,” she scoffs. “Come on, Cameron. That was sweet, but?—”

“I wasn’t joking.”

I wasn’t.

I had a meeting with our new client the day before, and he said exactly what I’d told her before Ian’s interruption: “Mr. Feldman says you have a girl here that we would be stupid not to use as a team lead.”

I found it hard to disagree. All I did was follow the necessary steps to get everything approved through HR so the ball could get rolling faster. I only want to admire the look on her face when she receives the news.

She squints at me. “You’re a liar.”

“Not at all.” I say, taking a bite of my cereal. “Your work speaks for itself, and everyone knows it.”

Her small smile turns into a wide grin. “So, I’m going to be a team lead?”

“Unfortunately for me,” I say with a smile.

She lets out a small squeal and leans back into her beanbag, beaming up at the ceiling. I let her take in the feeling.

“Okay, so, now what do we do with you?” she asks.

My dick gets hard at the possibilities, and I crouch out of my beanbag, resting my weight on my hand to get closer.

“What do you want to do with me?”

“No, Cameron!” she says with a laugh, pushing my chest away to sit me back in my chair. I don’t understand what she means by this now, but I’m still intrigued.

“What do we do about your architecture?” she asks.

Intrigue gone.

I groan—and it isn’t the type of groan I wish she’d elicited out of me.

Ian’s pushed me about pursuing my architecture dream before, and he learned a long time ago that it was a lost cause. But Grace has been relentless. By the way her eyes dart between mine and the sketches hanging over every inch of my wall near the corner desk, I know we’re diving into yet another one of those conversations.

“Let’s not talk about it.” I shovel more cereal into my mouth. “Let’s talk about you some more.”

She gets stern, arching an eyebrow. “No. I think you’re so talented. Why don’t you go for it? What are you scared of?”

“It’s too much risk.”

“Ugh, you and your risk.”

“I’ve built this career,” I continue. “I’ve invested time. I’m a director, for God’s sake.”

“It was a lot of risk for me to quit my old job,” she says. “I didn’t even have a job lined up.”

“Well now, that is just irresponsible,” I tease, but she doesn’t smile back. “Grace. It’s complicated.”

“It’s really not.”

“Hey, I just don’t take chances,” I say, huffing. “I don’t like long-term, life-changing commitments. You know I’ve never gotten a tattoo?”

“Well, yeah,” she says. “I think I would have found one hiding somewhere by now.”

“Exactly,” I wink. “Why do you think I never married or had kids?”

She shrugs and I see her smile falter a bit.

No, no, don’t make that go away.

“You’re the biggest chance I’ve taken in years,” I continue, setting my bowl down and taking her hand. It’s soft, just like the rest of her. She may put on this act of a hardened soul, but if you get past her fire, she’s just a golden retriever puppy waiting to come out. “And I’m not even sure if that was the smartest thing.”

The words were meant to be a joke, but the moment I see her face, I know I’ve made a mistake. My stomach drops as she rips her hand from mine and gets up.

“No, Grace, wait.” It’s all happening so fast: She places her bowl in the sink and rushes to the bedroom. “You know what I meant.”

“No, I don’t.” She pats her leg, harder than she probably should have in her fiery anger. “Come on, Hank.”

Did I say she was soft? I definitely underestimated her. As usual. Hank looks at me as if apologizing and then follows his owner.

“Hey, let’s get a time machine and restart,” I plead.

“You can shove your time machine up your ass, Cameron Kaufman,” she says, whipping around to me. “Our relationship was a bad decision. I know that. I’ve risked a lot sleeping with you. But I also love my career, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

“Listen, I know,” I say, lifting myself from the chair as if trying to tame the beast in front of me. “I get it. We both have?—”

“No, you don’t get it,” she snaps. “I chose you. I had a choice, and I chose you.”

The apartment is silent. I can hear a car honking outside that breaks some of the tension, but the rising and falling of her chest and the heavy breaths that accompany them is a symphony of regret.

It dawns on me that she’s right. I’d never considered it was a choice, but now it’s perfectly clear: It was a decision between our careers and each other. And we chose each other. The difference is that I don’t care about my job. I wanted her and everything else was just noise.

“I need to choose myself for once,” she says. “Joe made me think I was only good enough for dumb ass call centers, and now that I’m doing what I love—what I’m actually good at—I’m risking everything by sleeping with my boss. And for what? You don’t even want anything more.” Each word hits me harder and harder. Tears gather in her eyes but don’t fall. “No kids? No marriage? Nothing?” She sounds so defeated it breaks my heart.

We hadn’t discussed marriage or kids. After Abby, I’ve been left with this idea that bringing it up would only cause issues. But with Grace, it wasn’t that I just didn’t want to bring it up. It’s that I hadn’t even considered it. We’ve been so caught up in each other—in the pure happiness of being around each other—that kids or marriage hadn’t even been on my radar. I’ve been too distracted by her.

I fumble through my thoughts, trying to grasp at straws.

“It’s complicated,” I say. “Maybe if we’d talked about it beforehand …”

That was dumb. What the heck am I even saying?

She closes her eyes and brings one hand to her temple.

“What a dumb question to ask my boss,” she snaps. “Want marriage to accompany this ass, Mr. Kaufman? Want to throw in kids, too?” Her voice is mocking. “Or how about you have some stupid two-month fling with your most junior designer and get all of it for free? Then, how about everyone finds out and your junior designer loses the one thing she’s worked hard for and you’re good to continue working on your lost dream?”

I sit there for a few moments, taking in the headache of it all. I’ve been living in some make-believe fairytale for weeks. I’ve been soaking in this idea of a happily ever after, but what in the world am I thinking? That we run away and never go back to work? It’s unfair to her and her dreams. And my selfish ass hadn’t even considered that.

But I can’t answer; the words just aren’t there.

“Exactly,” she whispers. And with that, she and Hank are out of my apartment.

That all happened so fast.

I grip my head in my hands and pace the living room.

I’m in a career I’ve grown to hate, doing less creative work and more management paperwork than I ever wanted, and I’m so unhappy that I almost threw it away for some fling?

But is this even a fling ?

No, it’s not.

If I know anything, I know that this means so much more than my stupid job.

Grace is the first woman to get me—really get me. This is beyond some funfest between coworkers. It’s something big and I know it. But she’s right. She’s getting her life in check, and maybe I need to rethink mine as well.

What have I always wanted? What would make me happy?

I take my hands from my face and look up to see all the blueprints hanging on my wall. These papers represent hours and hours of extracurricular work from the past couple years that have given me nothing. There’s been no payout and no pats on the back. So why have I continued to do these?

I’ve put in so much effort. And for what? For them to just hang there?

I reach over to my phone and dial, putting it on speaker phone as I pace between the drawings, tracing a finger over their lines, analyzing their strokes.

The phone continues to ring.

Wait, what am I doing?!

I run back to my phone and my finger twitches over the red disconnect button, but I’m too late.

“Hello?”

I let out a small, desperate, laugh.

“Hey, Abby.”