Forget You (15 page)

The snow had finally stopped, but that didn’t
mean much. The amount that had accumulated overnight was enough to
force schools and area businesses to close. There was no way I was
working tonight that was for damn sure, not unless someone came to
pick me up in a salt truck and took me.

Gripping my coffee mug, I headed toward the
TV to watch the local news station. I wondered if they would do a
spotlight on the National Guard members who were on the highways
this morning, helping to keep people fed and warm. My cell rang,
startling me. Racing to the kitchen, where I’d left it on the
counter last night, I checked the screen before answering with the
hopes of seeing Sawyer’s name and number.

It was Cameron.

“Hey, what are you doing calling me at—” I
glanced at the clock on my microwave. “Six thirty in the morning?
You planning to take me to breakfast or something?”

This was how our conversations always
were—filled with teasing, fun banter.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to swing that
one,” he said. “Just wanted to call and see how you were holding up
during the wicked blizzard of twenty fourteen?”

I took a small sip of my coffee, hoping the
swallowing motion would hide the anxiety festering inside my chest
surrounding his question. “All right, I guess.”

“You have power?” The concern etched into his
words was heartwarming.

Cameron understood my fear of not having
power, especially at night. He was the only person who knew of that
fear, but he was also the only person who understood the reasons
behind it.

Cameron knew practically everything about
me.

I’d told him before that when I was nine, I
stayed in a foster home with a woman who only enjoyed the check
from the state every month she received for being a foster parent.
She didn’t like kids. In fact, the majority of the time I spent
inside her house, I was locked in a closet underneath the stairs in
darkness. If I tried, I could still imagine the inside of that
closet—the scratched door and stiff light switch, the exposed bulb
where light was supposed to come from but didn’t. To say I was
scared of the dark because of this traumatic time as a child wasn’t
necessarily true. I was scared of not being able to control when I
was surrounded in light—not being able to flip a switch and erase
the darkness. Every time the power went out, it tossed me back to
being nine and crammed in the tight confinements of that damn
closet with a switch that didn’t work.

I loved Cameron for remembering this about
me.

“Yeah, it flickered a few times, but never
went out,” I said, making my way back to the couch. I tucked my
feet beneath me, and took another sip of my coffee.

“We lost ours around ten last night.”

“Ours, huh? Was Paige shacking up with you
last night?” I asked.

“You bet. There was no way in hell I was
going to let her get trapped in that apartment alone through the
brunt of this storm.” I could hear his smile in his words. He loved
her so much that it was sickeningly sweet at times.

Heat warmed my cheeks. I was beginning to
think I wasn’t too far behind with my feelings for Sawyer. Biting
my bottom lip, I nearly drew blood to keep the smile from my face.
There was no way I would allow myself to think of him and the damn
L word in the same sentence yet. It was too soon. Way, way too
soon.

“I would have come and gotten you too, you
know,” Cameron said, pulling me from my thoughts. “There just
wasn’t enough fucking time. This thing hit fast and hard.”

“I know, but I wasn’t alone either. I had
company, so you shouldn’t have worried.” I smiled, knowing this
news would send his mind into a tailspin, simply because I had yet
to mention Sawyer to him at all.

Yes, he was my best friend, but he was also a
guy who had big brother tendencies when it came to me. I didn’t
want him to put any fear into Sawyer using those tendencies or to
rub him the wrong way until I’d decided if Sawyer was going to be
more than a sexual release to me.

Sexual release? Somehow, thinking of Sawyer
as nothing more than that seemed wrong on so many levels.

“You had company? Who?” Cam asked, exactly
like I knew he would.

“She had company! Oh my God! Give me the
phone!” Paige demanded from in the background. There was a muffled
sound before she came on the phone. “Hey! So was it Sawyer? Was he
your
company
last night?”

“Sawyer? Who’s Sawyer?” I heard Cameron ask
in the background.

“Her new guy,” Paige informed him. “Go ahead,
spill. How was your date last night? Did you two have fun? Is he
still there now?”

Her last words were a whisper, as though
Sawyer would be able to hear her question if he would have been
inside my apartment still.

“No, he’s not here anymore,” I said,
unbelieving how deflated my words sounded.

“Oh.” It was obvious from Paige’s tone she’d
caught on to my disappointment. “Hold on, let me go into the other
room.”

“Other room?” Cameron shouted after her. “Why
do you have to go to the other room? She was my friend first, you
know.”

“I know that. This is girl-talk though,”
Paige called back. “And I don’t need you hovering over my every
word. I’ll let you talk to her again in a minute.”

I laughed at the two of them. “You guys crack
me up.”

“Okay, so what happened?” she asked after I
heard the click of a door closing. “You don’t sound too thrilled
about him being gone. Was it like a one-night stand or something to
him?”

“No, nothing like that,” I said. I took
another sip of my coffee, and then set the mug down. Pulling the
blanket I’d used last night over my legs, I prepared myself to tell
her the whole story. Paige listened, remaining practically mute and
only giving me a little “uh-huh” or “wow” every now and then until
I finished. “Then he got the call from his commanding officer, or
whatever he called him, and found out he was being sent to help
with the situation first thing this morning.”

“That’s crazy,” she breathed. “He’s an actual
soldier. Are you worried about him at all?”

Even though I’d only gone on three dates with
him, each one had been incredible. The length of time I’d known
Sawyer had been short, but the level of worry I had for him while
he was out in this nasty weather didn’t reflect it in the
slightest.

“Yeah, I am. Is that strange?” I asked. “I
mean, should I be worried about him as much as I am? We haven’t
known each other long.”

Paige had been my closest female friend since
she and Cameron had gotten together. In the beginning, I’d wondered
if her kindness and unrelenting invites to hang out had simply been
because of a desire to know me better so she could choose which
category to place me in—friend or enemy. I’d also wondered if it
was her way of attempting to figure out what was there between
Cameron and me, if it was something more than friends between us
like we’d claimed.

It took me a little while to realize her
reasons were none of the above. Paige just really wanted to be
friends with me because I was a part of Cameron’s life, and she
respected that. She wanted to accept everything about him, and that
included me as well. I was grateful to her in more ways than one,
even though I’d never told her so. Somewhere along the line, she’d
become the person I went to when I needed help figuring a guy
situation out, or when I needed to know if I was thinking too much
on a certain undesirable trait I’d found.

I was hoping Paige would tell me I was
falling too fast, because that’s exactly what I felt like I was
doing.

“I think you’re as worried as you should be,”
she said. “I’ve looked out the windows. I know what’s blasting
around out there. I know how horrible the roads must be, and I’ve
seen the news. If anything, I’d be more worried about you if you
weren’t
concerned about his wellbeing.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. A small sense of relief
trickled through me at her words. Maybe it was okay to feel for
someone so soon. “I guess put me back on with Cameron so I can
endure his wrath for being left in the dark.” I smiled, eager to
hear what he would say to me first.

“All right.” Paige chuckled. “I’m pretty sure
he’s been standing outside the bedroom door. Hold on.”

There was some mumbling I couldn’t make out,
and then Cameron was breathing in my ear. “What the hell is going
on here? Have I been replaced?”

In my head I could picture the expression
twisted onto his face right now—wide eyes, his hand brushing along
the back of his neck, and he was no doubt about to head outside to
smoke a cigarette. At the sound of a door opening and the crazy
wind whistling against his phone, I knew I was right. Grinning, I
waited for the flick of a lighter, and his sharp inhale before I
answered him.

“You know that would never happen. I just
needed Paige’s opinion on something,” I insisted, drawing the
blanket up around my neck, and snuggling deeper into my couch.

“Okay, I’ll let that one slide, but only if
you tell me about this
company
you had last night. You
dating someone I haven’t met?” His words came out sounding light
and teasing, but I knew Cam, so I heard the true meaning behind
them—he was serious. Dead serious.

I was beginning to think Cam had a huge
desire for me to have what he’d found with Paige for myself. It was
something I wanted too. Ever since the two of them had first gotten
together, I knew that what they had was possible for me as well. If
Cam could find something so great being as broken as he was on the
inside, then I could too. It was possible. Paige and his
relationship gave me that hope.

“It happened too fast. There really wasn’t
much time to let you meet him,” I said.

“What do you mean? There’s always time,” Cam
said. I could hear him taking another drag off his cigarette, and I
suddenly wished Paige would get him to quit.

I rolled my eyes. “I mean, things between us
moved fast. We saw each other at a park, then coincidently at a
party I got dragged to that was for him, and then we went out in
what feels like rapid succession dates.”

“How many?”

“Three,” I answered.

“And then you let him spend the night with
you?” I could hear the smirk on his face through his words. “Are
you a three-date-minimum now?”

“Whatever,” I muttered. “I’m not a
three-date-minimum; that’s just how it happened.”

“Okay, so where is the guy now? He obviously
left already, deciding to brave this shitty ass weather, or else
you wouldn’t have been talking about him to Paige. We wouldn’t be
discussing this right now either; you would have found some lame
reason to cut the conversation off.”

God, Cam knew me so damn well sometimes.

“He had to go,” I said.

“He had to go?” he repeated my words slowly.
“Why? Did he one-night you, and you’re upset because you thought it
would be more than that? Are you that smitten with this douche
already, after three dates?”

Direct and straight to the point, I didn’t
know why I ever expected any less from Cam.

“No…maybe, I don’t know.” I rubbed my
forehead with my fingertips. “It’s not like that.”

“Then tell me what it’s like, because from
where I’m sitting, it’s looking a hell of a lot like that.”

“He had to leave first thing this morning,
because he’s part of the National Guard. They sent him and his
unit, or whatever it’s called, to help with the people trapped on
the highways between here and Carver,” I informed him. “And he’s
not a douche.”

“Hmm, okay.” The sound of a door opening and
closing filled my ear for a second, before the phone went eerily
silent.

“Cam? You there?” I pulled my phone away from
my ear, and checked to see if I’d dropped his call or vice
versa.

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “I’m here. Just was
darting back inside. It’s colder than shit out there. I hope this
soldier boy you’re so damn smitten with stays warm. I don’t know
what you’d do with a soldier popsicle.”

“Oh, funny.” I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t
keep the smile off my face.

“Don’t act all pissy and sarcastic. I can
hear the smile on your face,” he chided.

“You got me.” My smile grew as I said the
words. Jesus, I loved Cam to pieces.

SAWYER

Bitterly cold, that’s what it was outside. No
matter how many layers I put on, the wind still managed to find its
way through. How some of these people had been sitting inside their
vehicles without heat and yet still seemed to be in decent moods
was beyond me.

I moved to the next vehicle, and knocked on
the driver side window to offer the occupants blankets and see if
there was anything else they might need. A little boy who looked to
be around seven pressed his face against the backseat window to get
a better look at me. He was missing his bottom two front teeth when
he smiled. I grinned at him as his mother rolled down her window to
speak with me.

“Hey, ma’am, I was checking to see if you
needed a blanket? I can see your vehicle is no longer running,” I
said, using a calm voice. She looked frazzled around the edges, and
I wanted nothing more than to soothe her unease. This was my duty
in our current situation—to help soothe the citizens, and make this
situation as comfortable as I possibly could for them.

“Thank you,” she said as she accepted a
blanket from me. “My car ran out of gas. I knew I should have
headed home earlier than I did. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Tears were swelling in her eyes. The frustration and overwhelming
emotions of the situation twisted her features and widened her
brown eyes.

“It’s all right. This storm came on quickly.
You need to focus on the fact that you and your son are safe.
That’s something to be grateful for.” I attempted to reassure her.
“Is there anything else I can get you? Food? Water?”