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I took a long breath, trying to fight down the sick feeling rising in my throat. There was zero reason for it. Nothing except… well. “And what does that book say?”
She made a face. “That he still loves me. That he fears me. But above all else… that he’s not physically violent. Yelling and manipulating and making someone question their own perception of reality—no doubt. I’m not saying he’s a good person. But he would never lay a hand on someone. Nor get someone else to do it for him, before you try to find a technicality.”
I drank long and slow from my champagne, watching cars streak by below us. “But… that’s not ruling out that he might try to do something else devastating.”
“Devastating?” She glanced at me. “Like what?”
“He knows about us,” I said, quietly, my voice thick. She furrowed her brow.
“So?”
“So? You’re…” I gestured, dropping my voice lower. “Cameron’s a public figure. A… married woman.”
She scowled. “In name only.”
“No—I know that.” I shifted closer, whispering. “I’m saying, what if he starts talking about us? To other people? It would be terrible for both of us.”
“Why… would he do that?”
“Why—” I shrugged. “Because he’s petty? Because he hates that you’re with me? Or…” I caught myself, my stomach sinking, and I looked back away, over the railing. “Hates that we… well, you know.”
She winced at the slip of wishful thinking, following my gaze out to the distance, but she kept her expression hardened. “He’s not going to do anything like that. He’s not that kind of person.”
“He certainly seemed like that kind of person to me.”
She drank the champagne quietly, a heavy tension hanging between us, and I simmered in the frustration—wanting to grab back everything I’d said, and at the same time wanting to grab her hands and not let go until she understood what she was turning a blind eye to.
“I’m sorry he came after you,” she said eventually, her voice firm. “I had a chat with him about that.”
I glanced at her. “You did? He wasn’t pissed off?”
“He’s not as violent as you seem to think he is.” She shrugged. “I told him he can be angry with me if he wants to, but to leave you alone.”
My chest pulled in two directions. “Cam—”
She nudged me.
“Amelie,” I said. “It’s not about him coming after me or anything like that. It’s just—”
“He has no motivation to sabotage us. He doesn’t stand to gain anything from it.”
“People like that don’t need something to gain from—”
“What is people like that, London?”
I burned suddenly hot, an angry flush at being up against him—and then in blink of confusion, I simmered the feeling out, feeling myself come down, hands quivering.
I wasn’t normally like that. Jealous and angry—it wasn’t my look. That was his look. And I didn’t want to be him.
I didn’t know what this was doing to me. But it scared me.
“Sorry,” I said, quietly. “I’m just wary and going off one interaction with him. I trust you… Amelie. So if that’s what you say, then I believe you.”
It was the right thing to say, and the wrong thing at the same time—her expression melted, and I saw a string of emotions play out on her face before she looked away, with that look she would get when she was about to kiss me.
“I… should probably be on my way,” she said, quiet, breathless, stepping away from the railing. “But I’m glad I got to see you here.”
“Amelie…” I turned to where she was turning back towards the door. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you—”
