Sick Day (20 page)

L
ate Friday morning, leaving the hotel with Hope’s hand locked in mine, I noticed Gordon and the other guys returning. The shadows underneath their eyes told some of the story of their fun in Nassau overnight, but the fatigue and whatever other pains they were dealing with did nothing to deter Gordon from spotting us and heading straight for us. I released her hand and stepped away, something that clearly annoyed her.

“Hey, Gordo—” I started, but he cut me off, extending a hand to Hope and introducing himself.

“And you must be Hope,” he said as they shook hands. “I’ve heard so much about you.” He shifted his attention to me, but only briefly enough for me to recognize his rage.

“I’ve heard about you, as well,” Hope said. “I see unemployment has been good to you.”

“Did Cam invite you to his wedding in a few weeks?” Gordon asked her, feigning confusion as he directed his next question at me. “Or do you think Riley would take exception to high school whores showing up out of the blue?”

“Gordo—” I started between my clenched teeth, but Hope was not one to back down.

She shifted her body sideways, scowling at me before facing Gordon dead-on. “It will be interesting to see if Cam himself shows up to that wedding, let alone whether the so-called ‘whore’ shows up.”

I watched Gordo open his mouth to spew what would likely be the most childish rebuttal ever, but then he seemed to think better of it and asked me, “Are you having second thoughts about next month?”

“Not just me,” I confessed, “but Riley, too.”

He gave a rude sideways nod to Hope. “All because of this one?”

I shook my head at him, mostly pissed off. “It’s complicated, Gordo…”

Hope stepped forward and took his hand. “Actually, it’s not complicated. Cam and I made a promise.”

“Hope,” I started, but Gordo cut me off.

“So I’ve heard, some fucking promise.”

Hope withdrew her hand, splitting her attention between Gordo and me. “We will always have that broken promise. Whether he gets married to some distraction for five minutes or fifty years, what we have is boundless, it’s never constrained. Even time itself couldn’t keep us apart.”

“Wow, that’s super deep,” I said, breathless and meaning it.

Gordon smirked. He nodded. He rolled his hand down the length of his face. And then something else caught his attention, his focus drifting past me at a man seated in one of the lobby chairs. He wore a hat, but there was no question—this was the same douche who had been eating lunch on the terrace with Hope last week.

The geriatric fuck stood and started marching toward us once he realized that we had all seen him and were aware of his presence in the lobby. None of us flinched, not even Hope. She remained at my side.

“Fuck, it’s Matt,” she whispered, her voice tight with anticipation. “This won’t be a happy moment.”

In the time it took him to take those dozen or so footsteps to reach me, I reminded myself of the few facts I knew about this grandpa. First, he was an accountant, and without his calculator the only weapon he had was, well, nothing. Second, he was older than Hope, obviously in his forties, so stamina and strength were
not
on his side. Third, Hope had just had a second consecutive weekend fucking me, so I obviously owned her, and he was the idiot whose lease was about to expire.

Advantage: me.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, his voice stern and his face red with the kind of rage that sits a mere hair’s width between you and a prison term. “Hope? Is this the guy?”

I extended my hand, grinning. “Yes, I’m the one who is more her age.”

He didn’t like that. He smacked my hand away, which got Gordo excited, as well as Josh and Landon and the other guy whose name I failed to remember at that moment. The four of them stepped forward. The hotel staff was also noticing the tension here, and I trusted that someone had picked up the phone to call for reinforcements.

“I don’t fucking care if you’re the tooth fairy,” he growled at me. “You’re seven years too late, dickhead.”

“Interesting,” I blurted, fully aware that my arrogance had turned off my internal filter or ability to think, “that’s not what your kitchen counter would say.”

Matt took a swing at me, but Gordon lunged forward and gave him a shove, throwing him off balance and causing his balled fist to hit Gordo in the shoulder instead. No harm. Yet.

“Cam, shut the fuck up,” Gordo warned me. Then to the old guy, “Get your whore of a wife out of here before someone gets beaten.” He tried to shove Hope away, but she slapped his hand back.

Matt removed his hat and wiped the sleeve of his shirt along his forehead. He was clearly pissed. “If I see you near Hope again…” he threatened.

“Be thankful,” I said, squaring my shoulders and wondering why the fuck Hope wasn’t next to me, “it’s not like we fucked in your bed. And being a bean counter, you’ll be happy that she won’t be looking for you to invest in many more of those blue pills—”

That time,
Gordo
swung at me. And he connected. I tasted blood before I realized he hit me, and it knocked me over. A few patrons in the hotel lobby gasped.
Fucker.
When I regained my bearings, I was a little dizzy, but I could still see the smirk on Matt’s face as he took Hope’s arm and steered her away. He maintained his satisfied grin for a couple of paces before he bore down on the hotel entrance.

“See you around,” I said, the bitterness so thick I spit it onto the carpet in the form of blood. Then, to Gordo, I added, “You’re a dickhead.”

Gordo shook his head, his eyes wide with shock. Probably at my temporary moment of insanity. “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”

“Fuck you,” I snapped, shoving through my entourage and heading toward the elevators.

But Gordo was convinced he had just performed an incredible act of valor. He ran to catch up to me, grabbing my elbow. “He had a gun, asshole.” He brought his lips closer to my ear. “Didn’t you see it, or were you too fucking blind from that bullshit promise?”

I didn’t care if Matt had come with a bomb. All I wanted was Hope, and now she was gone.

The elevator doors opened, and all five of us stepped on board. Nobody else said anything, not even to try and lighten the mood. It was during our ascent that I realized something that I should’ve picked up a few seconds prior. And it burned. A lot.

Hope hadn’t even looked back at me, hadn’t stood up for herself. She had left willingly with that asshole, and that was one message I couldn’t ignore—she had chosen him.

Not me.

} i {

I
opened my eyes at two AM for no reason, waking up completely. I stared up at the ceiling with nothing but the pale moonlight providing a soft, romantic illumination that made the white sheets glow. Glancing over at Riley, I watched her sleep, her mouth slightly open, her eyes as peaceful as I’d ever seen them since Hope had come back and turned our plans upside down. I reached out and stroked her hand, which was lodged underneath her pillow. A smile surfaced, and her hand edged out enough that I could hold it in mine.

Returning my attention to the ceiling, I wondered why I was suddenly alert so early. The only thing I could think was that Hope had somehow infiltrated my dreams and pushed the memory of her and our love back into consciousness. Like she could actually do that.

Riley retracted her hand and rolled over so all I could see was her narrow back, and I decided to relieve myself. I wondered how many times Hope’s geriatric fiancé awoke during the night to take a piss. Was this my future?

After I washed my hands, I wondered about going back to bed. Rather than tossing and turning and disrupting Riley’s sleep, I tiptoed to the second bedroom where I had left my laptop earlier. I was suddenly curious about that novel Hope had sent me. But when I accessed my email account, I saw that she had sent me another message.

Ten minutes ago.

Frowning, I wondered if she truly
had
woken me somehow so that I could make a trip to my computer and find this little “gift” from her. Spooky.

I ignored her message, though, and went straight to the one with the attachment. Convinced that I needed to ignore Hope if I wanted to lead a happier, saner life with Riley, it wasn’t hard to pretend this early morning message didn’t exist in the first place. After all, I wanted to read the novel, not another mind-fuck of an email.

Our Story
.

The novel.

Right.

I had read a good chunk of
Our Story
, probably two chapters or so when she first sent it, but now I wanted to read the whole thing, find out more about this love story between Oliver and Olivia, and what it could mean for Hope when she insisted it was written by Emma Payne.

So I opened the attachment and read it.

Again.

And again.

By the time I finished with the novel, which was more like a novella because it was so short (one hundred and eighteen pages sure sounded longer than the story suggested), I had tears in my eyes and a throat that felt so tight I could barely breathe.

“Are you okay?”

I spun around in my chair and found Riley standing in the doorway, her housecoat hanging open to reveal her white, lacey panties, her flat, soft tummy. I loved circling my tongue around her navel and kissing a path a little farther south.

“Cam?” she asked, her flirty tone teasing me from the doorway. “Are you okay?”

She stepped toward me. A week ago, I would’ve hidden the screen, but not tonight. Once she reached me, she slipped one hand through my hair and used the other to tilt the laptop screen so that she could read the words on the screen.

“What are you reading?”

I shrugged, shaking my head just enough that her fingers slipped out of my hair and traced a path down along my face, slowly. She lowered herself into my lap, adjusted the screen again.

“It’s called
Our Story
?” she asked. She looked at me again, the curiosity twisting her lips. “I like it,” she admitted. She could not have read more than a paragraph. “Can I read it?”

“You sure? Hope sent it.”

She tilted her head to the side, as if measuring me, my words. “Do you love me, Cam?”

“Of course I do.” I wrapped my arms around her waist and gave her a subtle squeeze. “I’m here.”

She kissed my lips with the tenderness of our past, pre-Hope life, then pulled back, angling her chin down and staring at me with pouty eyes. “Then let me read it.”

“You won’t like it. It’s about two married people who fall in love and end up together.”

She scrolled through a few pages, stopping for a bit to read. “Did Hope write this for you?”

My eyes rolled across the words on the screen.

He raised his glass as if in a toast. At first, I thought he might be dismissing what I had just said. “Sometimes, love brings us into the darkest corners of our lives,” he told me. “But we survive because love guides us through the fears and uncertainties. And other times, love brings us into the brightest sunshine, the most absolute happiness we will ever know.”

I remembered that excerpt from an earlier chapter. It seemed appropriate that Riley would scroll to this specific part of the novel. Olivia and Oliver were aboard a yacht of some sort in Miami. It seemed bizarre because I had just come from Hope’s house in Miami.

“She says she didn’t,” I admitted, shrugging. “But…I don’t know if I believe her.”

Riley nodded, scrolling down a little more but didn’t spend any time reading the next area where she stopped. “Well, if I want any part of your future, I think I should read about your past.”

“That’s sweet,” I answered, sliding my hand up her spine and bringing her lips to mine. I kissed her, gently at first. “But this isn’t my past.”

She kissed me back, a little more fiercely than I had kissed her. “But Hope is part of your past, and this is her story.”

“Maybe,” I answered, and our kissing became a little more passionate. My hand moved from her back to her soft, perky breasts. She moaned, and my lips abandoned her mouth and settled over her nipples. I could smell her skin, taste her fragrance, and the way she moved her ass over my erection reminded me of just how much I had almost lost in Miami.

And for the first time, I was grateful that Hope hadn’t let me make the biggest mistake of my life. That when she chose Matt, she had been looking out for my best interests as well.

“Make love to me, Cam,” Riley breathed, holding my face against her chest. “Fuck me hard.”

And just like that, our life seemed to have returned to that exact same place where we had lost it.

}
i {

Present Day