Page 53 of Sunny Skies Ahead
“Don’t apologize,” Kameron said, the sound muffled as he turned over to face me.
Kameron was devastating on a good day, but I decided this Kameron was my favorite. Black hair tousled from sleep, his beard illuminated by the early morning light filtering in from the skylight, blue eyes that sparkled in the dawn.
“It’s nice to wake up next to you,” he said, reaching for me. I propped my head up on my hand and extended my other tomeet his, our fingers tangling together. My heart hammered in my chest, so full of life and light that I was worried I might explode.
Was this what it was supposed to feel like?
I quickly diverted my thoughts. Leave it to me to complicate a nice moment.
Even if it did feel like waking up to Kameron was inexplicably complicated.
“Did you think I’d be gone when you woke up?”
Kameron paused where his thumb was stroking over the back of my hand. I laid my head down on the pillow to be closer to him, throwing one of my legs over his, smiling when he untangled our fingers and pulled me closer.
“I really hoped you wouldn’t be,” Kam said.
“The thought didn’t even cross my mind,” I said honestly.
“It wouldn’t have been the first time,” Kam said with a weak smile.
“Well, they were idiots,” I said, pressing the tip of my finger to his nose. He wrinkled his face.
“Was last night—”
“Perfect? Incredible? Earth shattering? All of the above.”
Kameron let out a loud laugh, and I smiled even wider.
“Way to make a man feel proud,” he said, eyes shining with something I couldn’t place as he looked down at me. “But that’s not what I was going to ask.”
I held my breath for whatever question might come out of his mouth. I didn’t expect this to be a one-night thing. Though, in retrospect, it probably would have been helpful to have thatconversation before I had the best sex of my life. The best sex I would probably ever have.
My mind was in the gutter, and I didn’t know how I would ever get it out, with the memories of last night now plaguing my every thought.
“What do you want?” Kam murmured, raising his right hand to my face. His thumb traced my lower lip, and my breath hitched.
“That’s a complicated question,” I said, scrambling for something to give this man that didn’t involve a piece of my heart.
“Do you want to do this again?”
“Yes,” I said, without hesitating. Kameron smirked.
“I knew it. You just want me for my body.”
It wasn’t a jab, but something about it made my skin crawl.
“No,” I blurted. “I don’t. That was the first time I’d—since him.”
Kameron’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I said, pressing a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. “Sorry. I probably should have clarified that before.”
Kameron still looked vaguely terrified, and I snuggled closer to him, so our faces were just inches apart. I kept my eyes downcast, allowing my fingers to idly trace patterns on his chest.
“What I want,” I said, trying to keep this conversation from derailing entirely, “is to explore whatever this is. But I don’t want the others to know yet. I have a hard time trusting my judgement in situations like this. I don’t want other people in our space until we’re in a good place.”
The understatement of the century. I didn’t trust my romantic judgement at all after the events of the last few years. I was notoriously terrible at reading people’s signals. I much preferred data and numbers that could be quantified and organized. Romance and love and being vulnerable with another person was just about the messiest thing one could do. It was never simple, never easily quantified.
