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Tandem Security wasn’t hurting for cash. They accepted the contracts they wanted, when they wanted, and without having to travel to do it.
“Trish can handle it,” Aaron said carefully, as if feeling his way.
“It makes more sense for her to stay here and handle the office while I go and deal with Nikki.” There. That was a nice logical solution.
That Aaron shot down without hesitation. “She’s too new to be left alone, and having on-site experience negotiating with a new client is an asset.” He paused.
“Unless there’s some problem neither of you have told me about?”
“No problem.” No way to get out of this without setting off Aaron’s internal alarms, either. He had no choice but to go forward with this trip. Cameron sat on the edge of his desk and stared hard at his closed door. “We have this covered.” He might not like the idea of being in close quarters with her—closer quarters, technically, since they’d been working together for over a week since the morning she overslept. It didn’t matter if they were going over notes before a client meeting or painting the boardroom. Trish kept a painfully bright barrier between them and deflected anything that might resemble flirting with a beaming smile and blatant change of subject. There was no sign of the temper she’d flashed before she took off in that cab, and the lack bothered him almost as much as having her tear him a new one had.
“Cameron?”
Shit, he needed to keep his head in the game. “Sorry. I missed that.”
“I can tell.” If anything, Aaron sounded more concerned. “Do you want me to come in and go over the details with you before you go?”
He clenched his jaw to keep his first response inside. Recent years hadn’t been kind to his track record when it came to dealing with clients, so Aaron’s offer wasn’t completely out of line. Aaron knew him better than anyone. Cameron’s patience wore thin with increasing regularity, and he found himself snapping at them before he had a chance to dial it back. So he stopped bothering to dial it back at all.
He and Aaron had met in college, and he knew his friend always assumed there was a deeper backstory to his being a dick. Some tragic past he never talked about. Some defining event that made him wash his hands of all the social niceties.
There wasn’t.
Cameron’s parents were good people. Nothing outstandingly bad had happened to him growing up, and if being a black man in this country came with its own set of bullshit and headaches, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. There were always others who had it worse.
No, the truth was that he preferred machines to dealing with actual humans because machines made sense. There was always a concrete answer, one that wasn’t open to interpretation. Every aspect of a computer was clearly defined and had its own set of rules to work around—but those rules were clearly stated from the beginning.
People were nuanced and managed to be multiple things, often at the same time. They said things they didn’t mean, and then got pissed when he took those things as truth and acted accordingly. They had masks within masks and motivations they rarely put out in the open. Cameron didn’t get people, and maneuvering through their needs and emotions, even for surface-level interactions, left him exhausted and feeling like an asshole.
Because he fucked it up. Every single time.
Just like you did with Trish.
I couldn’t take what she was offering. It would backfire and she’d have been hurt in the process. There is no good exit route once we step past the point of no return.
Could have handled it better, though.
Yeah, no shit.
“Cameron, you’re not even listening to me.”
He scrubbed a hand over his head and mentally made a note to shave his head again soon—before they went to London, for sure. Cameron might not handle people well, but he knew Aaron as well as he knew himself. The man didn’t want to come back to work yet. He just needed Cameron to say the right thing to assuage his guilt and let him take the break he’d more than earned.
He cleared his throat. “I have this covered. Go back to doting on your fiancée and baby and stop worrying about us.”
Another hesitation, but shorter this time. Aaron loved Tandem Security as much as Cameron did, but he loved his new family more. Which was how it should be. Aaron’s relationship with Becka had started unconventionally enough, but they’d found a good balance and their love for their new daughter filled up a room in a way that made even Cameron smile. It didn’t hurt that Summer was cute as hell and seemed to like him just fine. Babies were simple—simple needs, simple desires. If she cried, it was because she wasn’t having some need met, and that he understood.
Too bad adults weren’t that easy to figure out.
He didn’t begrudge his best friend his happiness. He just wished Aaron would stop worrying about the company. He was only gone for a couple months. Cameron could manage to apply a filter to himself for a couple months until his friend was back in the office. He wasn’t that much of a lost cause.
His partner got a dreamy tone. “Summer smiled at me today. The book says it’s probably just gas, but I don’t give a fuck. It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
That, he believed. She was adorable. Cameron managed a smile. “I’m glad you’re happy.” If anyone deserved that happiness, Aaron did. He was a good guy, and he’d spent too many years putting up with Cameron’s shit not to have earned a good turn or two.
“Thanks. That means a lot.”
Cameron checked his watch. “I’ll check in once I have things lined up.”
