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“Darling… I didn’t want to do this. But you know as well as I do that it’s for your own good. You’ve always done this—doing something just because someone told you not to, drawn to something just because it’s forbidden. But you’re never happy in the end when you do, are you?”
“It’s—” Cameron started, but he kept going.
“Really. Can you think of a single purchase I’ve talked you down from that you regretted not getting? Can you think of a single event I convinced you that you didn’t need to attend that you regretted missing?”
Cameron let out a long, shaky breath. The tension in her shoulders, the hard lines coming in around her jaw—this side of her that only came out in front of Kevin, the version of Cameron he’d created, I wanted it to never have to come out again. I put a hand on her arm, speaking in a low voice. “I can think of several,” I said. “Things we’ve been enjoying… Cameron being happy. Been a while for her.”
“And you don’t know anything about the situation,” he snapped. “Can you say you knew Cameron before she was Cameron Mercier and all the things that entails? You know how it changes a person. Can you really say you know her?”
“I know her better than you’d think,” I started, and he spoke over me.
“Six years together,” he said. “Married for four. And you’ve—what? Been on a fling with her for a couple of months now? And you’re trying to tell me what she’s really like—”
“Yes, I am,” I snapped. “Because you don’t know her—spent all those six years together, if you really want to count the last one, denying who she was, trying to change her—”
“According to who? Cameron? The person living a fleeting life, searching for the next hit of dopamine from another woman, another expensive home, that she won’t hold onto for long, while she’s trying to justify her decisions?”
“She’s not a child,” I growled, feeling like—like my voice wanted to rip itself up out of my body and physically fight him. “And maybe you couldn’t possibly know the ways we know each other—”
“You don’t think you’re trusting blindly?”
“No, I don’t. Maybe I know her better than you do because I’ve cared more about her in two fucking months than you would in ten fucking years—”
“London,” Cameron started, and Kevin spoke over her.
“You know how many women have been in the same place now?” he snapped. “How many people she’s found looking to scratch the itch, kill the ennui, people who thought they really meant something to her—”
“Go fuck yourself, Kevin,” I spat, loud enough to make him recoil, throwing him off. “You’re a sniveling weasel trying to make yourself look important if you have to lie through your teeth, cursed by your success to be a sad, miserable lump of imitation personality and all the character of mass-market manufacturing, and when you die, there won’t be a soul who’s loved you enough to remember who you really were.”
The room suddenly was deathly silent, Kevin and Cameron both looking at me with wide eyes, parted lips, the sound of the rain against the windows a distant stream.
“You aren’t—” Kevin started, and I spoke over him.
“You know as well as anyone that it’s true, and that’s why you’re here looking to kill the fucking ennui by harassing a woman you miss having under your thumb. Why you’re projecting everything about being spiteful, contrary, desperate to have—”
“London,” Cameron said, her voice soft, as she squeezed my hand. I swallowed, only then realizing what I’d actually been saying. Not that I regretted a word of it, but… hadn’t even meant to say it.
Kevin tightened his expression, taking a long breath steadying himself before he spoke, but Cameron spoke before he could.
“Tell me what you’re here for, Kevin. Please. Let’s drop the pretenses and cut to the chase. I take it you talked to Weber.”
He dragged his eyes slowly off me, going with some reluctance to force them back to Cameron. “All right,” he said. “We can get down to it. You have until midnight before Weber submits the movement to cut the agreement. I want us to work something out.”
Cameron sighed. “Do you even want me back, Kevin? Is it not demeaning to force a woman who doesn’t want to be with you?”
He spoke quietly, his gaze steady on her. “You misunderstand. I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing this for you. How long have you been drifting, suffering in this lonely haze? It’s time to come home.”
I swallowed back the biting rage that flared up, but it still spilled out. “Even with it staring right into your face, you still act like—”
“London.” Cameron squeezed my hand, and she sighed, again, slower this time—more to herself than anything else. “I’ll have to… go talk to my team again. Goodbye, Kevin. It’s been a pleasure.”
My stomach dropped. Couldn’t work out what talking to her team meant, but I wanted to believe… even in the face of all this, that she’d do the right thing. Wanted to hope. Kevin narrowed his eyes, glaring at me, before looking back to Cameron.
“Make the right choice, darling,” he said, quietly. “For yourself. For everyone on your team. And honestly… for London.”
He turned and headed back for the elevator—not a moment too soon, because one more word and I might have actually thrown a punch. Once the door slid shut behind him, Cameron sagged against a wall, looking down, her eyes heavy and lidded.
“Cameron—”
