Seductive Secrecy (Shadows series) (5 page)

I took a deep breath, reached into my back pocket and pulled out my cell phone. Swiping my finger across the screen, I checked the time. “Shit,” I said. He was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder. I had to make this sound convincing. “I’m running late.”

“A few more minutes won’t
”

I pulled away from his grip. “No, I really have to go, Cameron.”

Just as I reached for my bag, he came up behind me and
wrapped his hands around my stomach. His lips touched my ear. “There’s something you’re not saying here and I’m not letting you leave until you do.”

“This is the second night this week you’ve been to her place.” I opened my mouth to say more, but I closed it. I didn’t need to tell him the real reason I wanted to leave. I had accepted that Lora had a strong presence in his life; he’d never tried to hide her from me. But I had a hard time accepting that the strokes he’d used were made to form
her
body. I didn’t expect him to constantly be creating mine; I just didn’t want it to be hers that he created instead. “And I just miss you...that’s all.”

“She hired me to do a piece. That’s the only reason I’m going there.”

Lora had hired Cameron to create multiple pieces in the past. He’d met her at an art exhibit shortly after he had graduated from Northeastern. He’d left the event with several upcoming meetings
set, one of which had been with her. I didn’t know how their
meeting had begun; I only knew it had ended on the stairs going up to the second floor of her townhouse. I also didn’t know when Lora finally told him she was married. But the news hadn’t bothered him, and it didn’t stop him from fucking her, or any of her married friends who he’d also created pieces for. But I wasn’t the one to judge who he slept with. Their affair had always been casual. He said he’d never loved her; it was purely a physical attraction. Whatever they’d had, it lasted up until we had started dating.

“You’d go there anyway, Cameron, regardless if you were
working on something for her.”

Even though they were no longer physical, he still respected her and trusted her, and he believed some of his success was due to her. Whenever she came over to the apartment, her gray, all-knowing eyes told me she was either jealous of what we had, or she was jealous of me specifically. It was probably both. I couldn’t help but make the comparison between the two of us when she was in front of me. If Lora was what Cameron was used to, what he truly craved, then I didn’t understand what he was doing with me. She was in her late-forties; like the painting, she was long and curvy; her breasts were full and most definitely fake. Her movements were thought out and sensual. And she didn’t just flirt with her eyes and mouth; she charmed with her whole body, including the smooth British accent that dripped off her tongue.

The air he exhaled roughly through his nose warmed the skin on my neck. “You know you have nothing to worry about.”

I believed him.

He cares about you, Charlie. I know you feel it.

I also believed Emma; her voice was just another layer added to everything I was already feeling. But no matter how much I felt that
Cameron truly cared, I didn’t enjoy watching him go to her place, or
knowing the piece he’d painted was of her, or how the sharp twinge in my heart didn’t dull at all when her name blew so casually through his lips.

I squeezed my hands around his and leaned back into his chest briefly before I pulled away. It would have been hypocritical of me to start a fight about Lora, considering that Dallas, my ex-boyfriend, still had a huge presence in my life. It couldn’t have been any easier for Cameron to listen to Dallas’s name fall from my lips or for him to watch me go to his place
which was exactly where I was headed now. But Cameron never gave me any shit about Dallas. He never told me not to go to his apartment, he never accused me of hooking up with him, and he never seemed bothered that we spoke almost every day.

But I also didn’t create pictures of Dallas’s unclad body…though I very easily could have painted every bulging ripple of his muscles, every hair that dusted his limbs.

I knew his body as well as Cameron knew Lora’s.

“I’ll see you when you get home.” I kept my back to him,
grabbing
my bag before I reached the elevator. Once I was far enough away so that the emotions on my face wouldn’t be as obvious, I turned
around.

“I won’t be too late,” he shouted so I would hear him.

I wasn’t sure how much it mattered by then.

***

After exiting the train at North Station, I walked the remaining blocks to Dallas’s West End apartment. He buzzed me in when I
called him from downstairs. He had signed a lease about three
months ago, the same time I had moved my things into Cameron’s place. Once he opened the door, his bare arms wrapped around me. As they did almost every time we hugged, my eyes briefly scanned his
fully-inked sleeves, the symbols and the words that I had
memorized during all the hours I’d spent in their embrace.

It had been several weeks since I’d seen him. He’d recently
accepted a job with the Celtics as their new athletic trainer; he’d moved to this neighborhood because it was close to the TD Garden where they played and practiced. It had taken him years to qualify for this job, shadowing the trainer for the Patriots and Bruins until a position in
one of the leagues had become available. Now, he flew in their
private
plane and attended every game, but his constant working and
traveling hadn’t changed anything between us.

Seeing him again, I realized how much I’d missed him.

Our friendship didn’t have pretenses or expectations, even
though we had a past—and a very messy one at that. Dallas had been there for me when Lilly died. He’d taken care of her while I worked nights at the mansion, and he was the only person I had ever allowed inside our old apartment. He witnessed our poverty, the puke stains on our carpet, the smell of Lilly decaying. He was also one of only two people I had told about my job. He didn’t like it, he didn’t support it, and he didn’t understand it at all. Still, I’d given him the chance to voice his opinions, and he did. And then we discussed it again after the mansion’s take-down, and the relief he felt when he learned I’d escaped the darkness that could have swallowed me and taken me from him forever.

“Beer?” he asked as we broke our embrace.

I nodded, hooked my bag over one of the chair backs at his
kitchen table and took a seat on the couch. As he returned to the living room, he handed me a bottle and sat in the loveseat across from me, his knees spread wide, his hands crossed between them. I noticed how much his look had changed in the past few months. Dallas’s style was much more relaxed and athletic than the cold, trendy apparel that Cameron wore. Tonight, he was dressed in a light gray T-shirt and darker-tone jeans with white piping down the hem. The sides of
his hair were gelled toward the middle to create a short mohawk,
and
the whiskers of scruff on his cheeks were all trimmed to the same
length. I used to watch him shave it with clippers into the very same style.

It was a good memory.

“I hate that I hardly ever see you anymore with all the traveling you’ve been doing,” I said.

“I know. Things should settle down some in the next few
months.”
His eyes slowly roamed my face, searching my features.
“Something’s off with you. What happened…what’s wrong?”

I shook my head. This wasn’t the reason I’d come here. I missed him, and I wasn’t going to spend the little time we had together complaining about Lora, someone I had absolutely no control over.

“Has he hurt you?”

Something told him it was Cameron who had upset me.

“No…not really.”

Dallas had met Cameron the few times he had visited our
apartment. It wasn’t entirely awkward; they were very cordial to each other, but I didn’t get the sense that they would ever become friends. As much as Dallas wanted to like him, I had chosen Cameron over him and
there had to be at least a little resentment there. But there were
deeper layers than that. Dallas had been in love with me. I was employed at
the mansion, having sex with him and clients in the same evening.
And
what he wanted from me—a relationship, commitment, an
affirmation of how strong my feelings were for him
I had given to Cameron
instead. I knew how much I’d hurt him, and yet here he was as
always, wanting to help me anyway.

“Talk to me, Cee
” He cut himself off, realizing what he had just said. And as he did, my eyes widened and my back stiffened. “Charlie…I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to it. I just called you that for so long.”

Cee had been the name I used inside the mansion, the character I turned into when I left my clothes in the limo and transformed into a fantasy. It had also been the name that most of the men outside the house had called me, the ones I had given only my body to, because I hadn’t let them in enough to really know Charlie. Dallas was an exception, but the name had stuck. When I had purged the truth to him, we decided to put Cee to rest. It was more difficult for him that we thought it would be.

I nodded and let it pass. “It’s really not a big deal. I just got a little…jealous tonight.”

He smirked.

“I know. It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous at all. In fact, it’s refreshing to know you’re finally feeling something inside that little body of yours. It means you’re human after all.”

Dallas really did know a completely different side of me; even though we’d dated for a year, we had an open relationship that was mostly based on sex. I had given the others before him even less of me. Jealousy was a feeling I had never really had before.

He tilted his head, his keen stare once again surveying my
expression. “You love him, don’t you?”

Love
.

That was a word I’d only ever used when considering Emma. Before the car accident had taken her, she was my family, my best friend, my escape from the abuse I experienced at home. But once she was gone, that word had left me, too. What I had with Lilly was so damaged
I may have said the word to her, but there was really
no meaning behind it. And I knew I didn’t feel that for my
father…not yet, at least. And what was happening between Cameron and me was still so new. I’d only been living with him for a short period;
before I moved in, while the police and investigators planned the
take-down at the mansion, I’d hid out at my dad’s downtown
apartment for two months. During that time, Cameron and I had talked constantly, though I had only been able to see him on a few occasions. But ultimately, he was the reason I’d wanted to leave the mansion, why I’d wanted more, why I’d wanted better.