Page 51 of Stuck with the Grump

LEIGH

Hedidn’teventryto stop me,I thought as I drove away from the lake house. Clarke didn’t ask me to stay, not even for another night. He had said that he wished I would, but nowhere in our conversations had he ever asked me to stay.

Although, I hadn’t offered to stay either.

I wiped away the stray tear that had dared to slip down my cheek. My eyes were trained on the winding highway in front of me and I was determined not to cry. The last few days had been the best of my life and I wasn’t about to ruin that by crying the whole way back to the city. Clarke wouldn’t want me to be sad. I didn’t want to be sad. I wanted to remember the time that we had spent together fondly.

When I glanced in the mirror, I could see him standing at the end of the driveway, watching me as I drove away. For a brief moment, I considered stopping the car, getting out, and running back to him. I considered insisting that there was a way that this could work, even when I knew that neither of us had the time for it.

I wanted to stop the car and go back to him. I wanted to spend weeks in that house with him where the outside world wouldn’t be able to touch our relationship. In those four walls, we had been as free and unrestrained as we were ever going to be.

Staying with him for a few more weeks would mean leaving my mom to fight her cancer alone. It would mean delaying the gallery opening. That would set me back thousands of dollars. If I allowed myself a few weeks without thinking about the gallery, I knew it would fall to the wayside like everything else in my life had.

I had compromised my dreams once for a relationship, but I wasn’t going to do it again.

Even if I had wanted to, I think that Clarke would have told me to go. He wouldn’t want me to give up on my dreams, just as he had never given up on his.

I sighed, my heart aching as I pressed the accelerator to the ground and sped toward the city.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” Camille said, opening the door to her apartment and ushering me inside. “Believe it or not, I don’t have many friends in my line of work and when you and I started talking, I knew we were going to be fast friends.”

After the picture scandal, Camille and I had spent part of each day messaging back and forth. Business talks had turned into longer talks about how our days went. She had become my friend in the short time I had been at the lake house and when I had mentioned needing a place to stay in the city, she had readily offered up her second bedroom.

“This means a lot to me,” I said as she led the way through the massive apartment. I couldn’t begin to imagine what her yearly salary was, but to afford a space this big in the city, with a view of the skyline, it had to be a lot.

When she opened the door to the bedroom, I took a moment to take in the king-sized bed and white oak furniture. A wide glass door took up most of one wall and led to a balcony overlooking the city below.

“Get settled while I order food and then we can watch shitty movies and drink our problems away.”

I laughed and dropped my bags onto the white duvet on the bed. “Sounds like my kind of night.”

Once the door closed behind Camille, I pulled out my phone and sent Clarke a quick message, telling him I had arrived in the city and was with Camille. When there was no immediate response, my heart sank to my feet.

I tossed the phone on the bed, making a promise to myself that I wouldn’t check it for the rest of the night.

By the time I had put the little clothing I owned into the dresser and stuffed my bags into the closet, the scent of pizza was wafting down the hall. I changed into a tank top and silk shorts quickly before heading down the hall and dropping onto the couch beside Camille.

“So, tell me, what’s really going on with you and Clarke?” she asked, starting the movie and leaning forward to grab a slice of pizza from the box.

“Nothing,” I said, grabbing a slice of my own and settling back. “At least, I don’t think that there’s anything that will go on. We had some fun but he’s a lot older than I am and both of us are trying to deal with our careers. There’s just not a lot of time left for anything else. And honestly, I’m still traumatized by all those hateful comments. I don’t think I have the stomach for that kind of life in the spotlight.”

“Love is all a hoax anyway,” Camille said with a grin. “I thought that I was going to be with my first husband forever but then he cheated on me and left me for some woman he met in another city. I had been with him since we were children. Divorced by twenty-three.”

“That must have been difficult.”

“It was, but thankfully we didn’t have any children and we were still poor, so there was nothing to really split. It was as amicable a divorce as it could be, given the circumstances.”

“Are you seeing anybody right now?”

Camille shrugged. “No point in dating when I’m married to my job. I spend most of my day working with people who need their public images recovered. Believe me, that keeps me more than busy enough to avoid dating and all the bullshit involved in it.”

“Don’t you believe in finding that one person you’re meant to spend your life with?” I asked before taking another bite of my pizza. “I used to think that I would find one person that I should spend the rest of my life with and then it never happened.”

“What if it’s Clarke?”

I sighed. “Even if it is him, there are so many things pushing us apart. I have my mom to worry about and my career. Clarke is about to go through a very public embezzlement case and I can’t be caught in the crosshairs of the media ever again. Besides, by the time I get my life straight, he will have moved on to somebody who understands his life. Somebody who isn’t going to want to hide from the cameras.”

Camille looked at me for a moment before grabbing another slice. “I think that it’ll come down to what you think is worth dealing with.”

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