10 Years Later (7 page)

“Drunk guys are super fun.” Cammie winced as I moved to sit back down.

“About as fun as drunk girls.” I turned my head in the direction of the bar, which was slowly filling up with our classmates, who continually eyed our table.

“I have a room,” Cammie said out of nowhere as she held up a blue key card.

“Here? At the hotel?” I stammered. This damn girl made me nervous. I was confident in everything in my life, but this person sitting in front of me turned me into a blubbering teenager all over again.

“No, at the hotel across the street,” she said with that sassy mouth, and I wanted to take control of it with my own. “Of course I have a room here.”

“Are you trying to seduce me, Cammie Carmichael? Because, um, I haven’t seen you in like a hundred years and—” I broke off my teasing when I noticed two girls stumbling our way with giant grins on their faces and drinks spilling over onto their hands. “Just fucking around. Let’s get out of here.”

Cammie glanced behind her and noticed the girls before jumping down from her chair and accepting my hand again. “No funny business, Mr. Thomas.” She pointed a finger at me.

What the hell determined what was and wasn’t funny business, I pretended to ponder, because I wanted to do it all. I was about to have Cammie all to myself, the one thing I’d been wanting more than anything else for years.

The question was—what the hell was I going to tell her first? My mind flashed back to the one football game when I’d lost my nerve to confess my true feelings. I refused to let that happen again tonight . . .

• • •

Sitting in the stands at the football game with my buddies, I’d watched as Cammie sat with Kristy and a few other girls from the softball team, her long dark hair blowing in the night breeze. Usually I missed all the Friday night games because of work, but I’d been given tonight off for some odd reason. All her friends had laughed at something that was said, except for her. She’d given them a half smile, not even a full one, and it had fucking ripped me open to see her like that.

When Cammie stood up, I watched as she shook her head and put her hand up to stop anyone from going with her. She moved through the crowd and walked down the noisy bleachers until she got to the bottom. I jumped up, fed my buddies some bullshit line, and searched for her.

“Cammie,” I called out as soon as I saw her near the brick building that housed the bathrooms.

She turned. “Hey, Dalton. Not working tonight?”

I shook my head. “I got it off,” I said before realizing it sounded like I asked for the night off to come to the game.

She glanced around at the field, the stadium, and the few other people who milled about nearby. “That’s nice. You usually miss all the games.”

“Yeah. I do.” Why couldn’t I say anything worth a shit right now? She had to think I was a complete idiot.

“Well, I need to go to the bathroom, so maybe I’ll see you later?”

“Okay.”

I stood there, not moving a muscle as she disappeared into the restroom. Ever since the night of the senior dinner, I had wanted to kiss her again. My mind had that kiss on repeat, and it replayed far too often. I needed more kisses to pull from, so I planned on waiting for Cammie to come back out, even if it took all night.

Thankfully, it didn’t. When she caught sight of me still standing where she left me, a small smile played on her lips as she wiped her hands on the hips of her jeans.

“They’re out of paper towels. And you’re still here.”

“I am,” I said before grabbing her still-damp hand and pulling her toward the back of the building.

The stadium lighting didn’t reach that far so we stood there alone, surrounded by nothing but darkness and shadows. I reached for her face and held it gently between my palms before leaning in and tasting her lips. She moaned softly against my mouth, and even though I was inexperienced when it came to the opposite sex, I recognized that Cammie ignited a fire in me that refused to be extinguished. The way she tasted made me want to experience her in ways I’d only fantasized about.

Her fingers twisted in my hair at the nape of my neck, and I groaned as she tugged. “Careful, Cammie. You might awaken the beast.” To be honest, I had no idea what the fuck I was even saying, but it sounded convincing enough. Hell, even I was convinced.

She pulled back slightly. “The beast, huh?” she said with a laugh before biting at my bottom lip and pulling it into her mouth. Her tongue played against it, alternating between licking and sucking, and in that moment I realized that the “beast” wasn’t even a part of me. It was Cammie, and she was awake, all right.

Even without her turning me on like the hormonal teenage boy I was, I knew that I liked her. Really liked her. And I wanted to tell her just how much, but I couldn’t find the words. The idea of her rejecting me stopped me cold from admitting anything to her. I was pretty sure she just liked messing around with me, and that was the extent of it. And if that were true, I didn’t want to know it.

So instead of asking her how she felt or admitting my feelings, I’d kissed her again. And then I’d pretended like that was enough.

Cammie

Dalton Thomas and I stood in an elevator headed toward my room on the tenth floor. And he was holding my hand.

HE

WAS

HOLDING

MY

HAND!

I pinched myself once to make sure this wasn’t some sort of cruel dream that I’d be forced to wake up from.

It wasn’t.

This was really happening.

His hand was a little rough, the hands of a man who didn’t work in an office, and I found myself enjoying the way it felt in mine a little too much. I forced myself to keep my fingers still, resisting the urge to rub my thumb along the length of his the way a couple in love would.

When the elevator dinged, I stepped off first and pulled him in the direction of my room. I assumed that Kristy would still be at the reunion as I slipped the key inside the card reader and it turned green, but I peeked in and checked for her just in case.

“Who are you looking for?” Dalton’s brows pulled together.

“Kristy. We’re sharing a room.”

“Got it. I think she’s still downstairs,” he added with a smirk, and I wanted to get on my tiptoes and plant a kiss on his slightly scruffy cheek. Even in my high heels, Dalton’s six-foot-two-inch frame still towered over mine.

“I was just making sure,” I said as I pulled my hand from his and looked around the small hotel room, wondering where the heck we could sit. Making my way toward one of the beds, I kicked off my high heels before plopping down and scooting all the way back so that I was pressed against the plush headboard. I bent my knees and pulled my feet under me, tugging at my dress to be sure it covered my lady bits as I moved.

“Sorry, there really isn’t anywhere else to sit,” I said, wondering if he would sit on the bed across from me or next to me.

The mattress dipped next to me as Dalton sat down and propped a bunch of pillows behind his back. I moved a little, angling myself more toward him so we could face each other somewhat while we talked. Part of me still couldn’t believe that he was sitting this close to me after all this time. Tiny streaks of nerves surged through me as my brain raced a mile a minute, my emotions all over the place, feeling so many different things.

“So—” he started to say, but didn’t finish his thought.

“So?” I asked, giving him the go-ahead to start.

He looked up at the ceiling, his jaw tense before his green eyes met mine. “God, Cammie, I want to know everything you’ve been doing for the last ten years. I want to talk about what that went wrong when we were kids. I wanted to be much cooler about all of this, but I can’t. I don’t even know where to start.”

My heart started to pound out beats that rivaled a drummer in a rock band. I wanted to talk about everything from senior year too. I longed to clear up all of that, but in this moment, all I needed to know was where he’d been since we graduated. Senior year was important, but not as important as filling in this ten-year gap that existed between us. Ten years was a long time to be apart, and I wanted to know how he had changed since then, or what had changed him.

“I want to know where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing since high school. We could start there?” I tried to smile, but it was tough when I was trying desperately not to crawl into his lap. The connection that had always existed between us was still very much alive, and it was a hard thing to resist when you didn’t actually want to.

Dalton’s shoulders relaxed a little at the safe topic. “I went to school in New York. I moved right after high school and majored in criminal justice. What about you?”

“I can’t believe you moved across the country for school. I stayed here and went to State. Double majored in Radio/TV/Film and Communications.”

“And you work for the
Tom and John Show
now?” He smiled, and I felt my eyes widen.

“How do you know that?”

“I listen.”

“You do?”

“Every once in a while since I moved back. But every morning since I realized you worked there.”

I sucked in a breath. He’d been listening to me on the air, which meant he had heard me talking me about him. “Did you hear?”

“All the reunion talk?”

I nodded and felt my cheeks warm.

He grinned. “Yeah. Who were you talking about? I wanted it to be me. Just lie and tell me it was me,” he said, putting his hand over his heart.

I smiled through my embarrassment. “It was you. I just didn’t want to say your name. I had no idea where you were or if you were married or not.”

“I’m not married.”

So we’re actually going there. Thank God.
“Girlfriend?”

“Not anymore.”

“What happened?” My heart lurched a little as I wondered how long they’d been together, or if she was still a part of his life.

“It was what my friends like to call my ‘Ross moment,’” he said.

“What’s a Ross moment?”

“Like from
Friends
, the TV show. I was having a heated discussion with my girlfriend at the time, and in the middle of my apologizing to her, I said your name.” He winced a little as he confessed this to me. “It wasn’t my finest moment.”

“You said my name? How?” My expression must have looked like a mixture of confusion and shock, because that was how I felt.

“I basically said, ‘I’m so sorry, Cammie.’”

“What was her name?”

“Jill.” He swallowed before grimacing slightly.

I struggled between feeling bad for Jill and silently loving the hell out of what he’d done. Because it had been my name he’d said, not some other girl’s. And that had to mean something.

“Oh. What did she do?”

“She told me that I needed to figure out exactly who it was that I loved because she didn’t think it was her.”

I shifted on the bed, pulling one of the pillows against me. “When was that?” I asked, my eyes looking everywhere but at him.

“Three years ago.”

I shifted my gaze to his. “Three years ago?” I assumed that he was talking about something that had happened months ago, or at the longest a year. Not three.

He shrugged. “Sorry it took me so long to get here.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. In that moment, I didn’t care that it took him so long. All that mattered was that he was here now. It’s funny the little details you get hung up on when you’re missing someone . . . and then those tiny things all but fly out the window when you’re face-to-face.

“So, when did you move back from New York?”

“Almost a year ago. My partner, Tucker, and I both moved here. The case we’re working on had a change of location, and I volunteered to relocate.”

I remembered that my dad had worked the streets, always driving around in his cop car looking for the bad guys, but he never talked about working a case. “So you’re not a normal cop then?”

He half smiled. “Undercover.”

“You’re an undercover cop?” I wasn’t sure what it was about the word
undercover
, but it made him seem ten times hotter than just being a regular cop.

“Thanks to you,” he said, and my breath stilled.

“Thanks to me?” I all but choked out.

He shifted again, as if uncomfortable. “Cammie, you made me want to become a cop.”

“I m-made you?” I stuttered on those shocking words. “How? Why?” I had no idea at all how I could have made Dalton want to become a police officer. My mind struggled as I tried to determine what he meant.

“It was the day of your dad’s funeral,” he said, his voice so sad that my throat closed up, making it hard for me to breathe. Thinking back on that day was difficult, because it was such a blur . . .

• • •

I’d stood in the front row of the funeral home’s chapel, my mom barely able to function as she sat next to me, her eyes glazed over and her cheeks red and chapped from days of crying. She’d blown her nose as tears spilled down her face, just as they had since we found out my dad had been killed. She hadn’t taken the news well, and I’d found her in the back of her closet, buried under a pile of Dad’s clothes on more than one occasion.

As torn apart as I was, it was awful to watch my mom crumple in the wake of it all. It made me feel like I needed to be strong for both of us, but I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t even fake it. My dad had been my hero, and now he was gone. He’d never walk me down the aisle, or see me graduate from college, or anything that I had always assumed he’d be around for.

When you’re a kid, you never think about losing a parent. You need them too much and assume they’ll live forever, that they’ll always be there for you. My mom’s withdrawal from life—from me—devastated me, making me feel as if I was losing them both at once.

The sounds of soft conversation and muted grief filled the room, and when I turned around once to look behind me, I noticed that the room was completely packed with people, but I didn’t really see anyone. There were a lot of men in police uniforms, but that was the only detail I really noticed. Aside from some family members and Kristy, I had no idea who was here, although we were informed later that hundreds of people had stood outside and filled the parking lot because there wasn’t enough room for everyone inside.

It all seemed like a bad dream I desperately wanted to wake up from, but couldn’t. Kristy wrapped her arm around me, her own tears flowing. My dad was her second dad, and I knew it was a painful loss for her as well. Everything around me seemed to move in slow motion, my mind unable to process any of it. I was completely numb and out of it, going through the motions robotically because it was required of me, but not really absorbing any of it. I just wanted my dad back, and no one could ever make that happen for me. It killed me to think that I’d never be the same girl ever again.

I suddenly wondered—can you still be Daddy’s little girl if you don’t have a dad anymore?

• • •

I shook my head to rid myself of the memory and rejoined Dalton in the present. “You were there? You came to my dad’s funeral?” My eyes continued to fill and I tried my best to hold back the tears, but failed as two fell.

Dalton nodded before reaching out and wiping the tears away with his thumbs. “I don’t mean to make you sad. Please don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it. But go on,” I said. “I want to hear this.”

“I was there. The whole school was there. I’m not surprised you don’t remember, you seemed pretty out of it. But then you gave that speech. I don’t know how you pulled it together to speak, but I was so glad you did.”

I barely remembered that either. I mean, I knew I talked at my dad’s funeral, but I couldn’t remember anything I said. It was like being in a fog, a day thick with emotion and so much sadness that the air felt almost too heavy to breathe in.

“What did I say? If you remember, I mean.”

“Oh, I remember.” Dalton sucked in a breath and his eyes closed for only a moment before reopening. “You said that every little girl was supposed to idolize their father, and that you were no exception. But that you didn’t only love him because he was the best dad ever, you loved him because he was a good man. You called him a hero in every sense of the word. You said that your dad was a great police officer because he wanted to protect people, he believed in right versus wrong, and he was a man of good character.”

More tears spilled as I nodded. “He was the best man I ever knew.”

“I know.”

“I can’t believe you were there.” I didn’t remember Dalton being there, and I would have remembered that because even in my zombie-like state . . . well, it was Dalton. “And I can’t believe you remember my speech.”

“It sort of changed my life, so—”

He looked away, and when he said nothing else for a moment, my curiosity forced me to prod him.

“But why?” I asked, wanting to make sense of it all. “Why did what I said about my dad mean so much to you?”

Dalton’s face tightened and he blinked rapidly, staring at his hands in his lap. “Because I grew up in a shitty house, Cammie. When you were up there saying those things, I couldn’t relate at all. I didn’t feel an ounce of what you felt for my own dad, but I wanted to.” His voice cracked on that last part, and he lifted his gaze to mine. “I mean, I hoped that someday I’d have my own family, and I wanted my kids to feel about me the way you felt about your dad. I wanted to be someone’s hero. I wanted someone to love me the way you loved him.”

I couldn’t fight the tears at all by this point and I finally stopped trying. I couldn’t believe that I had affected Dalton’s life choices to that extent. It was more than a little overwhelming.

Dalton reached out and touched my cheek. “Seeing you at the funeral damn near killed me that day. It hurt me to see you in so much pain. You had no idea, but I wanted to protect you from that moment on. I did a really shitty job of it, obviously, because I couldn’t even protect myself back then.”

He wanted to protect me?

“Aside from that,” he said, “your speech inspired me.
You
inspired me. I never had anyone to look up to, but I wanted to be the kind of man that others did. You gave me that hope.”