CAMILLA RIPPED open the top of the brown envelope, and took a deep breath. She had no reason to be nervous. There was no reason to think she had failed, or would be staring at bad grades for the final semester. Still, she took her sweet ass time pulling the records out.
She didn’t bother peering over the individual class scores, and things that had been included by the professor. No, she went straight to the average—the GPA score.
Three-point-eight.
Camilla grinned.
Yes.
“Well?” August demanded.
Camilla gave her friend a look. “What do you think?”
“You failed.”
“August!”
Her friend laughed, and snatched the papers right out of Camilla’s hand. She looked them over, and nodded like she hadn’t expected to see anything different than what she was looking at.
“I knew it,” August said. “Five more years, Cam.”
“Maybe four. Who knows?”
“You know. You’ve always known what you wanted.”
Camilla nodded. “True. So hey, you want to hit the diner or something to celebrate? It’s the end of May, school is all over, and I have nowhere to be.”
August wrapped an arm around Camilla’s shoulder with a laugh. “Sounds like heaven, right?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I would go to the diner, but we should probably hold off just a couple of more minutes.”
Camilla’s brow furrowed. “What, why?”
“Because someone is coming over.”
“Who?”
“Someone.”
What was August playing at?
Camilla didn’t invite people to her place a lot of the time. It was her space—she liked to keep everybody else’s energies out of it.
August knew that.
“So hey, now that it’s summer, and I finally finished that one-year internship for Bared Brands, what are we doing?” August asked.
Camilla dropped down on the couch, and her friend came with her. The two stared at each other for a long while. “It has been a big year, huh?”
“Busy,” August said.
“That, too.”
“I just feel like …”
“What, Aug?”
“We should do something together this summer. You and me. Maybe go to Europe like we wanted, and then make a trip to the Keys.”
“That sounds fucking perfect.”
Understatement.
It sounded like a whole bunch of relaxation time that Camilla could really use. Her whole year had been one damn thing after another. August had the best ideas.
“I just want to spend some time with you—one on one,” August murmured.
Camilla glanced over at her friend, and her brow furrowed. “I know we’ve been busy a lot.”
“It’s not that, Cam.”
“Then what is it? I don’t understand.”
“Chicago,” August said quietly. “Tommaso. You’re not going to be here forever, and whether you want to admit it or not, you’ll leave soon. Except … you won’t be coming back. At least not in a couple of weeks, you know?”
A tightening in Camilla’s chest ached like nothing else.
She didn’t know what to say.
August shrugged, and looked down. “Don’t get me wrong, Cam. It’s great. He’s great, and I know he is. I can still be happy and sad at the same time about it.”
“Yeah,” Camilla said. “I know.”
Then, August reached over and squeezed Camilla’s hand to make the two look at each other. August was smiling. Camilla was sad.
“I can come visit, right?”
Camilla barked out a laugh. “I’m not even moving down there right now. It’s not even a thought in my head for at least a year. I have school and—”
“It’ll happen. I can come visit whenever, right?”
“Yeah, Aug. Anytime.”
August’s smile bloomed wide. “That’s all I care about. Free food and board, and I get to consider it a mostly paid vacation.”
Camilla rested back on the couch, and laughed loudly. “You almost made me cry, you asshole.”
“Psht,” August replied. “Says the girl with the heart of ice.”
“Not anymore.”
At that second, a knock echoed on Camilla’s apartment door. Her gaze narrowed as she looked between her grinning friend, and the door.
“Who is it?” she asked.
August shrugged dramatically. “Who knows?”
“Bitch.”
“Hey!”
Camilla laughed, and dodged the half-ass slap from her friend as she jumped up from the couch, and passed August by. She gave August a peek of her tongue over her shoulder when she stuck it out. At the same time, she yanked open the door without staring at it, or even checking the peephole.
It might have helped to prepare her heart had she done those things. It might have helped hearing the sound of his voice just a couple of inches away.
It might have helped …
It probably wouldn’t have helped at all.
“Someone told me you’re on summer break, Camilla.”
Tommaso.
She spun around so fast, everything was a blur in her vision. And then her gaze landed on him standing outside her apartment door, and absolutely everything in her life was right again. The world’s axis tilted back, and the globe began to spin in the right direction.
It had been too long.
Three weeks since she had seen him last.
Not really long.
Still, too long for her.
“Tom,” Camilla whispered.
His grin deepened, and turned sexy in a blink. “Hey, babe.”
“Surprise?”
Tom nodded. “Surprise. I’m here for the week.”
She looked over her shoulder at a slyly smiling August. “Let me guess, this was who you meant?”
“Yep.”
“What did you do?”
August looked over her fingernails. “Got his number from your brother, and thought I should finally introduce him properly to the best person to have ever graced your life. I mean, what else?”
Tommaso chuckled behind Camilla, and then he came closer. Close enough to press a soft kiss to the spot behind her ear, and make her fucking melt.
“Surprise,” he murmured once more.
“Last night when we Skyped, did I tell you how much I loved you?”
“A little.”
Camilla turned, and found Tommaso still watching her and grinning in that way of his. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him in for a hard, fast kiss. Too soon, she was pulling away because of their audience of one. They didn’t need to be giving August a show.
“Love you,” Camilla said.
Tommaso stroked the pad of his thumb across her whispering lips. “Say it again, Cam.”
She did.
Only for him.
Two months later …
“Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you.”
Camilla stayed hidden in the shadows of the hallway as her mother and father danced together in the living room. A sweet slow dance that had her mother wrapped in her father’s arms as the two swayed to the song. A song her father had been singing to her mother.
The sight was cute enough for her not to intrude. It certainly wasn’t the first time she had seen something like this between her parents. Calisto was not the kind of man who hid his affections, but especially not inside his home.
The love her parents shared was the one and only reason Camilla actually believed such a thing existed before she had experienced it herself.
That a man could love a woman so wholly, so entirely, and with everything he was that nothing could ever compare. That he could love her so much, she would become his entire world, and no one else would ever be able to ruin it.
She believed in love because of them.
Now, she knew love was real because of Tommaso.
“Want me to sing it again?” Calisto asked.
Emma’s laughter rang out light and sweet. “To what, remind me that I’m getting older by the day, Cal?”
“Never. My beautiful Emma.”
Her mother smiled softly. “Mmhmm.”
Calisto pressed a kiss to Emma’s nose. “Yes, mmhmm. Even when I didn’t know, you were still mine, amore.”
“You are something else.”
“You love it, though.”
In that moment, so much of Camilla’s own characteristics stared back at her. The playful banter. Affection, sweetness, and love.
All of it, really.
Camilla figured—as much as she didn’t want to interrupt their moment—she better make her presence known before the two went any further. While this moment was cute and sweet between her parents, she wasn’t interested in anything their tones suggested.
She loved her parents, though.
Camilla cleared her throat, and neither of her parents seemed very surprised to see her standing in the entryway. Emma shot her a smile, while Calisto continued hugging his wife.
“Happy birthday, Ma.”
Emma preened. “Thank you, baby.”
“Tommaso said sorry he couldn’t make the party tomorrow.”
Calisto finally stepped away from Emma, although not before giving her one more quick kiss. “Did you take him to the airport this morning?”
“Yeah, he got called back to Chicago early.”
Camilla tried to keep the sadness out of her tone, and failed miserably. It was what it was.
Emma gave Calisto a knowing look, and then turned back to her daughter. “You weren’t supposed to be coming over today. Is something on your mind that you want to chat about?”
“Actually, yeah.”
Calisto took his usual place behind her mother when Emma sat down in the chair.
“Go on,” her father said.
“I’m considering moving.”
Emma raised a single brow. “To Chicago.”
It wasn’t even a question.
A simple, understanding statement.
But not a question.
“Yeah, to Chicago,” Camilla confirmed.
“And when would you consider making this move?” Calisto asked.
Again, there was no surprise to her father’s tone. Just like her mother’s. As though they had been expecting this from Camilla for a while. Like maybe they had prepared themselves for this conversation.
“Maybe … a year?” Camilla shrugged, adding, “I could finish out this next year here, and get everything in order. Things like a new school and whatnot.”
“Okay,” her mother said.
Camilla looked to her dad even though her mother had been the one to talk. “Okay?”
Calisto smiled. “Yeah, okay, Cam.”
That was that.
Two months later …
“What are you looking at over there?” Tommaso asked from the kitchen entryway.
Camilla quickly shut down the laptop, and pushed the brochures aside. “Nothing.”
“Mmhmm.”
She heard his footsteps echo behind her, and then his fingers weaved into her hair. She tipped her head back to catch his kiss. A familiar rhythm that soothed and burned her from the inside out. At the same time. She never did figure out how he managed to do that to her.
As long as he kept doing it, she didn’t care.
“Ma’s asking when we’re heading to the mansion,” Tommaso said.
Camilla peered up at him. “My flight landed two hours ago.”
He laughed. “That makes no difference to my mother.”
“I thought we were just having dinner over there.”
“The girls figured out you were already in town.”
Camilla smiled. “They did, huh?”
“Someone let them in on the secret.”
“It was you.”
Tommaso winked. “It was me, yeah.”
She loved Tommaso’s little sisters. Sara and Rebeka were two little spitfires. The younger siblings Camilla had never been given in her own life. Every single time she got to spend a few days with the Rossi sisters was like making up for lost time, or something.
Being that she still lived in New York, and him in Chicago, they really only got to be together every so often. Sometimes, he went to her for a weekend, or a week, if he could spare it. Sometimes, she went to him for a few days.
It all had to fall into place to work. Between her schooling, family, and life, and his family, business, and everything else … it was not a simple thing to simply get together.
It was work, sometimes.
Nothing was easy.
Camilla missed Tommaso all the time. The distance often ate away at her with every missed phone call, or good morning text message she didn’t have time to reply to. Despite how hard it could be, she also knew it was still very much worth the effort.
The love was effortless.
Loving him was so easy.
Anything else was just details.
“We can head over,” she told him.
“You don’t mind?”
Camilla shook her head. “Nope.”
He dropped another kiss to her lips, and then murmured, “You do know that now your five days here are going to be technically half with me, and half with them.”
“Pleasure of doing business with you, Tommaso.”
His laughter rumbled through the living room.
“Business, huh?”
Camilla shrugged. “Yep.”
“Are you coming down with Cross next month when he makes the trip for work?”
“Maybe. Depends on what’s happening with school.”
Tommaso cleared his throat, and straightened. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Probably be last minute, if I do.”
“Don’t tease me with surprises, now.”
Camilla flashed a sexy grin. “I could show up with a trench coat, and nothing else on underneath. Pretty sure the TSA agents wouldn’t think it appropriate, but maybe a little flash will—”
His hand still in her hair tugged gently. It was enough to elicit a laugh out of her, and then a squeak when he bent down to kiss her even harder and deeper than before. A kiss that burned her far hotter, and made her wish for something else.
“You better stop that,” she whispered against his lips, “or we won’t be going anywhere.”
“Starting to think that might not be a bad thing.”
Camilla patted his cheek, and then pushed him away. She stood from the couch, and gathered the brochures she had been looking over. One fell out of the pile, and Tommaso quickly picked it up. He glanced at it, and then did a double-take.
“Wait, is this—”
Camilla snatched it out of his hand. “It’s nothing.”
Tommaso stared at her for a long while, silent. “That’s a brochure for a nursing school in Chicago, Cam.”
“So?”
“You didn’t tell me you were looking at schools here.”
She fiddled with the edge of the brochures, unsure of how to explain the thoughts running through her head at the moment.
“I just … wanted to look,” she said.
“Look, is that all?”
Camilla peered at him through her lashes. “It’s inevitable, isn’t it? Me moving here, I mean. You’re not going to come to New York to live. It’s getting harder and harder for us to find time to spend a couple of days together. I don’t mind—it’s what we have to do, right?”
“Yeah, I know, Cam.”
He rounded the couch, and reached for her. In a blink, she found herself wrapped in his comforting embrace. He rested his chin on the top of her head, and she sunk into his hold. Here, nothing was ever wrong. With him, everything was perfect and still.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Tommaso told her. “Not move here, or start a new school. None of it, Cam. You don’t have to do anything for me that you’re not ready to do. Okay?”
She nodded.
And loved him even more because of it.
“Maybe I’m not completely ready to let go of New York, but I am ready to start looking.”
“Set stuff up, you mean.”
“Yep,” she said, sighing. “I talked to my parents about it a couple of months back, too. They didn’t even seem surprised. Everybody always sees shit coming before I ever do.”
Tommaso’s chuckles rocked them both. “That’s … a little bit true.”
“I guess I should finally admit, though, that Chicago is slightly better than—”
“Yes.”
Tommaso’s shout echoed in the house. Camilla’s laughter followed right after.
She leaned back in his embrace to look up at him. Cocking one brow, she tried her damnedest not to laugh or smile.
“You’re terrible,” she said.
“Maybe so, but I won.”
“I think you won when you got me.”
Tommaso made a noise in the back of his throat. “That, too, but the Chicago versus New York thing was big to me.”
She smacked his chest lightly. “Ass.”
“Right now, yeah. So, what finally did it for you, Camilla? What made you switch sides?”
Camilla grinned. “What do you think—who do you think?”
“Ah.”
“Yep, you.” She tapped a finger to his lips. “But it’s our secret, and if you ever tell anyone, you will die a slow and painful death.”
Tommaso returned her grin. “Deal, babe.”
“I will hold you to it.”
“You better. We could make some time to go around and look at the campuses while you’re up here,” Tommaso suggested.
Camilla smiled against his chest. “Yeah?”
“Anything, babe.”
“Even if that means we’ll spend all of our time together visiting family or driving around?”
“Worth the effort,” Tommaso told her. “We’re worth the effort, Cam.”
With him, it definitely was.
It always would be.