THIRTY-THREE
It’s Christmas Eve, the third most depressing day of the year behind Christmas itself and Valentine’s Day. This year is even worse than usual because not only does Michael Maddox still not love me, I couldn’t care less because I’ve gone and fallen for yet another man I’ll never have a future with.
I guess it’s just my thing.
I’m lying in bed with Mr. Bingley, staring at the ceiling, feeling sorry for myself, when I hear a knock on the door. His knock. He must’ve just woken up, because it’s still dark outside.
“I’m not going to answer it,” I tell the cat, who gives me a disgusted look, which makes me defensive. “What’re you being so judgy for?”
His expression says I know exactly what I’ve done wrong and I should be ashamed of myself. Now I feel worse because even a stupid cat is smarter than me.
Cam’s knock comes louder and louder, until I hear his voice through the door. “I know you’re in there. I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll be out here knockin’ until you open up.”
I sigh, give myself a pep talk that it’ll be better to get it over with, and get out of bed. I shuffle to the front door with a blanket wrapped around me.
“Joellen!”
“I’m right here, prancer,” I say through the door. “Don’t wake up the building.”
“Open up.”
I rest my forehead against the door. “I can’t. I’m too busy kicking myself.”
“Are you fucking serious? Open the goddamn door.”
He sounds mad. I look through the peephole only to find a pair of hazel eyes glaring at me.
“I can see your head, lass. We’ve already been over this.”
I take a few deep calming breaths, then crack open the door. Cam pushes right through it, knocking me out of the way in the process. Halfway to the living room, he spins on his heel and glares at me in person.
“Tell me I’m wrong and you didn’t sneak out without saying good-bye after we had sex four times and some intense, soul-baring afterglow. Tell me you just came over to feed the cat and were on your way back when I knocked.”
I wince and wrap the blanket tighter around me. “Um.”
He looks astonished, offended, and totally angry. “You fucking ghosted me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did!”
“No, ghosting is when you’re dating someone and you break up with them and disappear from their life without any explanation. Me leaving earlier was just . . .” I struggle to find an appropriate word. “Expedient.”
A flush creeps up his neck. His eyes glow with anger. “Expedient?”
“Practical, I mean.”
That only makes him look angrier.
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. I’m feeling queasy and like I might be getting a migraine. “Cam. We already went over this. You’re leaving in a few days. You live in another country. You have a life there, I have a life here.”
“Really?” he says, his voice dripping sarcasm. “How’s that life goin’ for you, Joellen?”
Now he’s not the only one who’s mad. “Ouch, prancer.”
“You’re goddamn right, ouch. Now you know how I felt when I woke up alone. I’m surprised you didn’t leave money on the dresser for services rendered.”
I swallow around the sudden lump in my throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to feel bad. It was just a mistake.”
He reacts like I’ve kicked him in the stomach. He steps back, the blood draining from his face, his mouth open and his eyes wide.
“A mistake?”
I realize instantly that the real mistake was using that word, which was obviously an incredibly bad choice. “No—Cam, listen, I didn’t mean it like that—”
“I know exactly how you meant it, lass,” he says bitterly, blowing past me. He’s out of my apartment, across the hall, and slamming his door before I even have a chance to get another word in edgewise.
I stand there for a long time, fighting the urge to run across the hall and throw myself into his arms, but eventually I give in to the inevitable reality of the situation and go back to bed, dragging the covers up over my head.
Mr. Bingley jumps down, wanting nothing to do with me.
I’m still in bed at five o’clock that afternoon when the phone rings. I pick it up with a dull “Hello?”
“Hi, honey! Merry Christmas!”
“Hey, Mom. Merry Christmas. Eve.”
She laughs. It sounds like California: bright, beautiful, breezy. “I know I’m a day early, but we’re going over to your sister’s tomorrow morning and staying over. You know how crazy it gets over there with the kids. We probably won’t get a chance to call.”
I know she doesn’t try to be mean, but it’s times like this I have to bite my tongue from saying something bitchy like You mean won’t make the time to call.
Jacqueline and her husband, Jack—don’t get me started on that alliteration—have two-year-old twins. Their names also start with the letter J, because my sister’s astrologer told her the energy would be good. You wouldn’t think Satan could inhabit two bodies at one time, but boy, would you be wrong. The amount of projectile vomit and green snot those kids produce belongs in an exorcism movie. As do their screams, which could scour paint from the walls. I have no idea why my mother is so desperate to add more of the little monsters to our family, but she’s of the opinion I won’t truly be happy and fulfilled until I’m a mother.
Or a size two.
“Oh, we got your packages in the mail yesterday, sweetie! Thanks so much for that cute mohair scarf.”
Cute is her code word for hideous. We enjoy sending each other gifts that we know the other one won’t like, because mother-daughter relationships are minefields and murder scenes and a whole bunch of other super things like that.
“And thanks for the new Grumpy Cat calendar you sent me, Mom. Can’t wait to get that sucker up on the wall and spend another year staring at his constipated face.”
“That reminds me, honey—have you heard anything about your promotion?”
My stomach sinks because I know she’ll freak out when she hears I’m going to be fired. But then, out of nowhere, I have a moment of pure epiphany. Another fuck this shit kind of clarity, only way bigger.
It really doesn’t matter what my mother thinks about anything.
Wow, I had no idea how heavy that particular piece of baggage was until I dropped it.
“Yeah, bad news on that front,” I say. “My boss—you remember Michael, the one I told you I was in love with years ago and you said he’d be perfect for Jacqueline?—turned out to be a major douche canoe and tried to feel me up in the ladies’ room at the holiday party. Apparently that promotion was a kind of pay-to-play deal, and I wasn’t playing. The office is closed until after New Year’s because of the holidays, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be fired first thing when I go back.”
My mother squawks, “What?”
“Bummer, right? You might want to make up the spare bedroom for me. Oh, also? Cameron McGregor invited me to go back to Scotland with him. We’re having some kind of confusing sexual relationship I’m really not emotionally qualified to handle, but I knew you’d be interested to know he’s incredible in bed.”
I hear a thud and wonder if I just killed my mother.
Christmas might not be so bad after all.
Only it is, because I spend it entirely alone, eating cold barbecue beans from a can I scrounged from the depths of a cupboard and drinking a bottle of cheap Syrah while staring morosely out my living room window with only a deaf, judgmental cat for company.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I named him after my romantic “ideal” of a man. Mr. Bingley was everything Mr. Darcy wasn’t: polite, charming, popular. Even after it turned out in the end that Darcy was more than just a brooding alpha-hole—that he was, in fact, a man of incredible character and depth—I always thought the Mr. Bingleys of the world were preferable, because who really wants to deal with all that smoldering machismo when you can have a light and fluffy marshmallow of a man?
An idiot, that’s who.
December 26 dawns to a blizzard, which is convenient because it matches my mood. I decide to spend the next few days watching all the holiday movies I hate as punishment for a) wasting ten years loving the idea of Michael Maddox and b) ruining a perfectly good friendship with Cam by having wild, uninhibited sex with him, falling in love with him, and then immediately freaking out. I’m deep into my third rewatch of It’s a Wonderful Life when the knock comes.
I freeze, a handful of microwave popcorn in my fist.
The knock comes again. It’s Cam’s knock, but it’s different, because it somehow sounds somber.
I put aside the bowl of popcorn and go to the front door, my heart hammering like mad. When I open up, Cam is standing there in jeans and a T-shirt, looking as devastatingly sexy as ever.
We stare at each other. The first thing out of his mouth is, “I can’t believe you didn’t wish me a merry Christmas, you dick.”
“Well, we sort of weren’t talking, I thought.”
He scowls at me, a lock of hair flopping attractively into his eyes. This goes on for a while, until he sighs and curses under his breath. Then he reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and produces a key. He thrusts it at me. “Here. In case you want to make any more mistakes before I leave.”
Filled with trepidation, I look at the key, which is apparently to Kellen’s apartment door. Oh God. Oh no. Don’t do it. Don’t make this any worse than it already is.
But of course I take it. I’m stupid, but I’m not insane.
We look at each other in uncomfortable silence for a few moments longer, until Cam says, “Okay. So. See you around. Or not.”
He spins around and stalks back to his apartment, slamming the door just so I know that even though he’s inviting me to come over whenever I want for more mind-blowing sex, he’s still mad.
I stare at the key in my hand, wondering how long it’ll take before I use it.
I last an entire day, which I think is pretty good. Actually, it’s a few hours more than a day, because when I find myself unlocking Cam’s apartment door, it’s a quarter after nine o’clock the next night.
All the lights are out except for a small reading lamp burning dimly in the living room. For a moment I wonder if he’s not home, but then he comes out of the bedroom and heads right toward me, looking angry and scary and hot.
He picks me up in his arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world and heads back into the bedroom.
Staring at his profile, I whisper, “Why are you naked?”
“I sleep naked.”
“You were asleep?”
“No. Now shut up.”
“Are you still mad at me?”
“Yes. Now shut up.”
I shut up. He tosses me onto the bed like luggage. I bounce, breathless, and try to sit up, but he isn’t having any of my smart ideas. He pushes me down and kisses me, hard, a knee wedged between my legs and his fingers twisted in my hair.
I melt like butter into the mattress.
“I’m kickin’ you out after,” he says, breathing raggedly and pushing my skirt up my thighs. He drags my panties down my legs. “And don’t you dare ask me any personal questions.”
Oh, he’s so mad at me. He’s furious. God, that’s a turn-on.
He doesn’t bother taking off my shirt and bra or getting me ready with foreplay—not that I need it, since I drenched my underwear the minute I saw him—he simply sheathes his erection in a condom and angrily shoves it inside me.
I arch and moan and fall in love with him a little bit more.
He fucks me hard. Like he’s trying to prove a point. I clamp my fingers into his biceps and wrap my legs around his back and hold on for the ride. When I’m moaning and panting and just about there, he slows, growls “not yet,” and kisses my throat.
“Please, Cam,” I whimper, grinding my pelvis against his, desperate for release.
Then I’m on top of him, flipped around and straddling his face, manhandled into the position he wants me, his hard cock jutting inches from my mouth.
He commands, “Suck,” and buries his face between my legs.
I gasp and buck, shocked when his tongue plunges deep inside me. He spreads both hands over my bottom and makes a meal of me, licking and sucking until I can’t catch my breath.
I get a warning smack on my ass when I leave him unattended too long.
I wrap my hand around his shaft but stop before taking him into my mouth. I don’t fancy a mouthful of latex, thank you, so I roll the condom up his length and toss it, then take the engorged crown of his cock between my lips.
He sucks in a breath, then lets it out as a moan that vibrates all the way through me. My eyes literally roll back into my head. I lick his erection from base to tip, tonguing over the veins and thrilling when he throbs in my hands. Then I start a rhythm, sucking and stroking, faster and faster, his tongue working between my legs until I think I’ll pass out.
Cam digs a hand into my hair and pulls, making his cock pop out of my mouth. “Wait,” he pants, gasping for air. “Fuck. Wait.”
We’re frozen like that for several moments, until he regains control of himself. Then he presses the gentlest kiss right onto my clit. When I shudder, he laughs, a dark, satisfied sound that thrills me like nothing I’ve ever known. But I’m not about to be outdone, so I swirl my tongue around the head of his cock and am rewarded by a groan that could win a porn Oscar.
Then it becomes a game of who comes first. Also known as a win-win.
We go back and forth, slowly, taking turns. First he licks and suckles me for a moment, then stops as I lick and suckle him. When I cheat and begin to languidly stroke his balls, he cheats by slipping a finger under my bra and tweaking my throbbing nipple. I take him down my throat, all the way to his base, and he slides two fingers inside me and circles them.
When my entire body is shaking and I’m sweating and cross-eyed, I break first.
“I need to come, Cam.”
“So come.” He goes back to licking.
“Come with me.”
“Like this, or . . . ?”
I’m glad he asked, because suddenly I’m needing eye contact. This game is incredibly hot, but I’m craving more—I’m craving him. I want to go over the edge looking into his eyes.
Damn. I knew I was gonna regret this.
I climb off him, get another condom from the bedside table, and get him all wrapped up. Feeling satisfied with my technique, I smile at his erection.
Cam grabs my arms and flips me over so I’m on my back, looking up at him. Easing between my legs, he says gruffly, “Is this want you wanted?”
I nod, biting my lip against a moan. He slides inside me, and God, it’s good.
But he doesn’t go fast and hard again. He goes achingly slow, cupping my bottom in one hand, cradling my head in the other, propped up on an elbow and staring down into my eyes.
Swamped with emotion, I inhale a hitching breath. He smiles, but it’s achingly sad.
“Go ahead, luv,” he murmurs. “Tell me it doesn’t matter. Tell me it’s all a mistake.”
I have to turn my face away because I don’t want him to see the tears gathering in my eyes. When I finally do go over the edge, he’s right there with me, groaning my name and twitching inside me, carving his name into my heart the way Michael never did.
So this is love. Man, it’s even worse than Christmas.