Kate

On our final morning in London, I woke once again to find that Cam was no longer lying in bed next to me as I had hoped he would be. We really needed to work on our wake-up strategies down the road. I sat up and scanned the room, looking for a clue as to where he might have gone. There was no sweet note this morning to explain his absence, so I grabbed one of the bathrobes that had been slung over a nearby chair, threw it on, and headed into Cam’s side of the suite. The living room was quiet, but I noticed that the patio door was ajar beyond the closed curtains and peeked my head out, finding Cam sitting in one of the big patio chairs looking unmistakably pensive for eight o’clock in the morning.

“You okay?” I asked him carefully, unable to read his expression.

He didn’t answer, but instead held his hand out to me. I went to him, allowing him to settle me into his lap. I stroked his cheek, drawing a little smile from him as he leaned in to kiss me gently.

“I can give you some space if you need it,” I said, still not quite able to read his mood.

“That’s the last thing I need,” he said with a bit of a sigh.

Now his demeanor was starting to worry me, and I wanted to pull him out of his funk. “I had fun last night…well, the latter part of the night anyway.”

Cam smiled halfheartedly. “We always do well together behind closed doors, don’t we?”

I leaned away to regard him for a moment as my brow furrowed. “Well, that was a loaded response,” I sighed, making myself a bit less comfortable on Cam’s lap. “What’s going on, Cam?”

“Nothing, love. I’m fine,” he said unconvincingly.

I cocked my head at him. “Come on, don’t hide from me.”

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, openly carrying a hefty weight on his shoulders. “I don’t know. I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking this morning, I guess.”

“About us?”

He looked me directly in the eyes now. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to elaborate at all?” I said with a hopeful smile.

He sighed deeply as he fiddled with the hem of my bathrobe. “Why didn’t you show up for me yesterday?”

“Cam…” I said as my shoulders deflated in sadness at the realization that this was still troubling him.

“I told you what it meant to me, and I’ve told you numerous times what you mean to me. Why couldn’t you bring yourself to be there with me or at least talk to me about it?”

I knew he had every right to ask the question. I just didn’t know how to answer it. “I just wasn’t ready, Cam,” I said lamely.

He huffed, shaking his head. “Look, I know we haven’t been together for very long, and maybe I don’t have a right to ask this yet, but I guess I need to know if it’s just the job and the whole Evelyn situation that’s slowing us down or if it’s something else?”

“Something else like what?”

“I don’t know, love. I think I need you to tell me that because frankly, right now I’m worried that you’re a little gun-shy about the spotlight that will suddenly be on us if we come out as a couple.”

I stopped to ponder his question, again not sure of how to answer him. He adjusted himself a bit in his seat so that he could see me a bit more directly now.

“If it’s just that you need a beat to figure out your path with Evelyn, then I can deal with that, but I don’t know—I guess I’m worried that you might, in reality, be fearful of becoming one-half of what would likely be a fairly public couple—in which case I think we might have a problem.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been sitting here thinking about you…because that’s apparently all I do now,” he said, laughing at himself a bit as I ran my hand over the lapel of his bathrobe, urging him on. “Anyway, I started thinking about what you had told me about you and your mum when you were a kid. You ran pretty hard to get away from the public eye in the past, and now I’m putting you right smack dab in the middle of it.”

“You’re wondering if I’m going to run from you, too, eventually.”

Cam nodded his head sadly. “The way I see it, regarding Evelyn, you’re going to either have to get her to accept our relationship and figure out a way to work together or leave for another work situation. All of which I have told you I will support and be with you for, and we will figure it out, but if it’s what I’m fearing, I don’t think I can fix that for you. This is what my life is. I’m in the press. I’ve got fans. The paps follow me. That’s what my job entails, unfortunately. Can you deal with that?”

It was a fair question, and one I realized now that I had been avoiding facing. Why hadn’t I just shown up for him yesterday? I was nothing if not gifted at convincing others to come around to my way of thinking or gaming the system when I had to. Was I really that afraid of the fallout to my career or was it the fear of getting back into this crazy world of celebrity and having to trust that this time I would be in it with someone whom I could rely on?

“I don’t really know what to say,” I told him, suddenly feeling more confused than ever.

Cam sighed, closing his eyes for a minute as he combed his fingers through his hair in frustration. “You know what the crazy thing is, Kate? If you’re running away from the world seeing you, you’re going to be doing that your whole life, because whether you like it or not, you’re just one of those people who shines a bit brighter than everyone else. There’s always going to be eyes on you, no matter what. I mean, look at me…I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything else since the day we met.”

“Cam…”

“Look, I need you to think about this long and hard, Kate—whether you can really do this with me. If you walk away from me now, it will gut me, it really will, but a month from now? Six months from now? You will literally demolish me, and I can’t go through that again. Not with someone who consumes me body and soul the way that you do.”

I felt as though my head was spinning. I hadn’t expected all of this, this morning.

“I know I keep saying this, but I honestly don’t know what to say,” I stammered. “This is all happening so fast, and you seem to need all of the answers right now, and I just don’t have them.”

Cam groaned, mussing his hair again in exhaustion. “You don’t have to say anything right now. I just need you to figure it out. I know it’s not entirely fair to put my insecurities on you, but it seems we both have them, so I think we need to figure out what our path forward is before one or both of us gets very badly hurt.”

He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my wrist, allowing me to palm his now slightly sad, stubbly face.

“I still love you like crazy, Katie.”

I smiled sadly but leaned in to kiss him, allowing him to pull me closer to him. We stared into each other’s eyes as I stroked his soft, fully tousled hair.

“We’ll figure this out,” I told him in a whisper.

“I hope we can.”