Page 65 of Things We Tell Ourselves

“He left with her, but Mom made sure he knew why you left, why I followed you, and why everyone was so mad at her. He wasn’t happy to hear how she treated you. I doubt they’re together for much longer.”

“And what about my meeting tomorrow? How would you feel about me if we decided to go with the Flexinburg Group?”Camille asks, biting her lower lip.

Wade swallows, lifting his chin to gaze into the living room. “I can deal with that,”he admits, looking back down at her. The side of his mouth curls into his one-sided grin. “But you can tell my mother.”

“I’ll just tell Delilah,”Camille jokes, grinning out the side of her mouth, mirroring him, “let her be the bearer of bad news.”

Wade chuckles. “There you go.”

He leans his head down slowly enough that she could easily pull back, but she doesn’t. She rises up on her toes. His lips meet hers. It’s a gentle, sweet kiss. Camille smiles as he wraps his arms around her. Having his arms around her was such a new sensation that she hadn’t realized that she missed it until now.

So many thoughts bounced around in her head as she held onto the man she thought she lost or never had to begin with. Sadie’s manipulations, Victoria’s lies, Wade and his mother’s kindness, a weekend she would never forget. There was so much to take in, but the thoughts of what she had done to herself over the course of the weekend made her hold on tighter to Wade. Camille had been her own worst enemy in all of it. She took her deepest fears of not being business-savvy, skinny, or pretty enough and made herself believe it. Camille had arrived home thinking of herself as a failure, a joke. Of all the lies from this past weekend, her lies to herself were the most damaging, leaving one was one glaringly obvious truth.

The things we tell ourselves matter.

Starting today, the negative self-hate was no longer allowed. Camille would advocate for herself internally as much, if not more than she advocated for herself externally.

“Thank you,” Wade whispered in her ear, pulling back from her grasp to look her in the eye. “Thank you for giving me a chance to explain.”

“It’s hard to say no to a guy who filled my apartment with my favorite flowers.”

He perks up, stepping back to look over the array of flowers. “Which ones are your favorite?”

She doesn’t take her eyes off him, wanting to see his reaction. “All of them.”

His grin reaches both corners of his mouth, turning into a broad smile. Light wrinkles touch the corners of his eyes. “You aren’t going to take it easy on me, are you?”

“Now, where would the fun be in that?”

The end

The things we tell ourselves matter.

Be kind to yourself.

Love yourself.

You are worth it.

Epilogue

Camille perches on the edge of the hospital room’s recliner on the side of Evelyn’s bed, passing the contract from her oversized purse at her feet.

“I’m not joking,” Camille says, watching Evelyn try to keep her arm still as she laughs and sets the contract on her lap. “I logged in to the video conference, and all I could see was down his assistant’s neckline. She was working on something behind the computer screen, leaning over it and her cleavage was right in the camera’s lens.”

Evelyn holds her stomach with her good hand, trying not to laugh too hard. “So you’re telling me, you got a screen full of cleavage.”

Camille nods. “Exactly. I was like, ‘um, hello,’ and then the chick jumps back, nearly falling over the chair behind her. She was really nice once she recovered, but her shirt was way too low cut for someone working in a professional setting.”

“I’m sure that’s expected of the assistants over there,” Evelyn rolls her eyes. “So was he sitting there watching her?”

“Who, Lichtenstein? No. He wasn’t even in the room yet. She was making sure everything was set up before she went to get him. I guess I joined the conference call a little early.”

“Of course, you did,” Evelyn mutters with a grin that comes easier than it did this morning.

Camille smiles at her, happy to see her looking better even though she has a long road to recovery. Her fears over the meeting melted away after Wade and his kind heart took the pressure off her shoulders, telling her that he wouldn’t hold it against her to meet with the competition.

“That’s not even the best part. I’m pretty sure it was his office computer where they hosted the conference because once the assistant’s chest wasn’t in the way, all I could see was this huge portrait hanging on the wall behind the chair. It was this tall, dark-haired man maybe in his thirties, wearing this phenomenal, grayish-silver suit that I swear was embossed with silver flecks by the way it’s shined under the overhead lights.”

---