Page 64 of Things We Tell Ourselves

“And the pregnancy?”

His chin wrinkles as he presses his lips together, looking her face over. “I can’t speak to whether she’s pregnant or not, but,”his eyes meet hers, “there is no way that I’m the father. I told her sister as much after I heard what she told you.”

Camille can’t help herself. “How did she take it?”she asks, imagining a very stuck-up Sadie having to swallow her pride at learning that it was all a lie.

“It was no surprise that Victoria and Sadie are related; I can tell you that much. I tried to show her the texts between her sister and me, but she refused. Any ignorance on her part at this point is voluntary. It all started coming together after that. Those were the calls I kept having to deal with all weekend.”

“It was Victoria calling you?”

“Not her, but I told her about a couple of our manufacturers near New York during our date. It was the reason I was in the city at the time. I started having issues with one of those facilities about a week after that. While you and I were flying to Sacramento, I got an email from my team about my assistant calling and canceling our latest order. The thing was, he hadn’t canceled anything, and once we got in touch with the manufacturer, the person who called them was a woman.”

“You think it was Victoria,”Camille finishes. It certainly wouldn’t be the craziest thing she had done.

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Let me ask you this,”Camille evens her gaze. “Were you talking about me in your room when we got back to your mom’s this morning?”

“No,”he says without hesitation, “I was dealing with the backlash of the production halt. We had already agreed to have the product delivered to our distributing facilities no later than Tuesday, but with nothing being done, we were in danger of losing not just the money we had invested but also not delivering as promised, which could have cost us those accounts, and opened us up to possible lawsuits.”

Camille nods. “And you’re not already manufacturing the Oxygen Recycler?”

Wade’s brow pinches together. “Why would we do that? The two of you haven’t even signed.”His mouth suddenly gapes open as he connects the dots. “That’s why you were so mad. You thought I was talking about your invention.”

“Yeah,”she admits, her voice crescendoing, “Sadie told me you slept with her sister after taking her out on a date. And that when you found out she was pregnant, you didn’t care. Then, I walk into you, bragging about what I assumed was my invention being “a done deal.”

“Wow,”Wade hesitates. “No wonder you didn’t want me at the hospital.”

“Yeah,”she nods, her heart pounding just thinking about it. “I was mad enough that Integrity Heights has a follow-up meeting with the Flexinburg Group, and I can’t stand those people.”

She forces herself to take a deep breath. The smell of flowers and the beautiful man who filled her apartment with them caused the last remnants of her anger to fall away.

“Thank you for getting that specialist for Evelyn.”Camille thinks it over a second and then adds, “And thanks for not being the type of guy Sadie made you out to be.”

Wade doesn’t wait for permission. He closes the space between them, reaching out for her hands. She lets him take her hands in his, raising them to his chest.

“Meeting you has been…”he clenches his mouth shut, the muscles in his jaw flexing. He searches Camille's eyes. When he speaks again, his voice is low. “It’s not that I need you or want you. When I look at you… no one else exists. It’s been like that since the day we met. You fill my thoughts and dreams, and every time I’m around you, you do something new that makes me fall even further for you.”Looking down at their hands, he slowly starts to shake his head. “I don’t want to lose what we could potentially have over something like this, but I can understand how this must make you feel, and if what I’m saying or what happened with Sadie is too much for you at the very least, I hope we can still be friends.”

Camille watches his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. He’s still gazing into her eyes. She can’t help it. She breaks out into a low giggle. Before she knows it, both of them are laughing hard enough to drop hands.

“I hope we can still be friends,”she repeats through her laughter, causing Wade to laugh even harder.

“I…I didn’t know what else to say,”he fights to catch his breath.

“Saying ‘let’s be friends’is the kiss of death,”Camille giggles, “That is exactly what I told the last guy I dated, knowing that we would never hear from me again. It should only be used as a verbal pat on the back to someone you hope to never see again.”

Wade raises his palms at her. “Agreed. It felt stupid when I heard it come out of my mouth.”

Camille shakes her head, grinning ear to ear. She isn’t going to let up on him that easy, not after the day she’s had. “Do you fill-up the apartments of every woman you just want to befriendswith?”

He looks around at the ridiculous amount of flowers surrounding them. “To be fair, two dozen roses are much cheaper here than in L.A.”

Camille’s chest falls at the reminder of New York and the woman who managed to ruin their weekend without being there, a weekend that would have been one of the most amazing weekends of Camille’s life.

“How do I know that she won’t keep interfering?”

“Ican’tmake any promises, but I can tell you that it is about to get a lot harder for her, especially now that my mom knows there’s a good chance she’s behind the manufacturing hold-up. I’m taking out a restraining order, and the company is drawing up a cease and desist order. If we can prove that she was the one who pretended to be my assistant, she may be facing more serious charges. At this point, she better hope that she is pregnant because that’s the only way my mother’s going to take it easy on her.”

Camille bites the inside of her cheek, fighting not to feel sorry for herself despite it all. “What about your brother and Sadie?”

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