Then there was the obnoxiously large portrait centered above the fireplace. The one that pushed their charade to the extreme. The one with her father sitting in the center with his airbrushed wife and daughter on each side of him. The one that said “Look at us! We’re the perfect family! Feel free to be envious!” She rolled her eyes and pulled open the French doors that led out to the backyard. The cool blue water of the pool sparkled in the sunlight, and for just one second, she imagined what it would be like to dive in and never come up.
As the thought flickered in her mind, the rationalization that her parents would probably spin her death into some sort of PR campaign to boost their social status outweighed her inclination to drown herself. She could see the headlines now: TRAGIC DEATH OF A BEAUTY QUEEN. Her father would hire the best obituary writer in the state of Oklahoma and probably announce his candidacy for State Senator in the closing paragraph while her mother would inevitably start some foundation in her name that gave pageant dresses to underprivileged children.
She smirked sadly as she shook her head. Not going to give them that satisfaction.
And then there was the fact that the one person who actually cared about her—Sophie—would be left to clean up the mess. She wouldn’t do that to her. It’d be days before Sophie returned, and Cami wouldn’t scar the one person who would actually miss her. She wouldn’t leave that sweet woman with the images of her floating in that water.
Even though she knew she wouldn’t do it, not really, the water called to her. Promised to ease the clawing ache inside, the one that whispered, No one would really even care.
“What I wouldn’t give to know what you’re thinking right now…” a familiar voice called out across the lawn.
Cami pulled herself from her disturbing thoughts. Looking up, she saw sweet blue eyes staring back at her. She couldn’t drown herself. Not today anyways. Not when there was someone worth living for walking toward her.
“You don’t want to know,” she replied.
“That’s not true.” He smiled as they came face to face. “I’m pretty sure I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
She’d thought all day about the things she wanted to say to him, but as he stood there and she stared up into his eyes, she forgot them all.
“It was nothing,” she mumbled. “Just a stupid thought.”
He eyed her cautiously, as if he could see right through her. Her heart raced as she imagined him seeing what lay beneath the shiny surface. To all her heartache and self-pity. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her. She didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her. Plenty of people certainly had it worse. Poor little rich girl, her own self-conscious sneered at her.
She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into his chest. As tightly as he was holding her, her head resting on his chest, she felt like she could breathe. Deeper than she had in a long time.
Kyle reached into his back pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Sliding his finger across the screen, he pulled up the camera app and held the phone at arm’s length.
“What are you doing?” Cami asked as he rested his head against hers. She saw his lips curling into a smile.
“Capturing a moment. That’s what photos are all about, right?” He chuckled, looking at her as if this were common knowledge.
She’d never really thought about it like that. Every photo she’d ever been in was staged. A way of showing she was the perfect daughter. Perfect beauty queen. Perfect girlfriend. Like evidence. Or proof her parents needed to impress their friends and constituents. In all her seventeen years, she’d never thought about capturing a moment—or any moment she wanted to capture for that matter.
Kyle lined up the camera and snapped the picture just as Cami turned and placed her lips on his cheek. Being hugged by Kyle in the backyard of her house where she’d just contemplated ending her miserable life had become a moment she wanted to capture.
“Got it.” Kyle grinned, turning his head. His nose brushed against hers, their gazes locked on one another’s.
“Good.” She nudged her nose back against his. She wanted to thank him for reminding her that life wasn’t all bad. She wanted to tell him everything she was thinking. That she wanted to know everything about him, too. But more than that, she wanted to kiss him. Badly. Or maybe she wanted to be kissed by him. The very moment she thought it she realized she’d never wanted anything more.
If you see approaching storms or any of the danger signs, be prepared to take shelter immediately.
THE summer hadn’t started out exactly the way Cami had planned it, but by the first Sunday in July, things were looking up. Way up. After her first run-in with Kyle Mason, she’d actually made an effort to be poolside when he arrived to do the lawn maintenance every week.
She enjoyed watching him work. She’d position her lounge chair in the best angle for watching him bob his head along with the music he was listening to as he mowed, trimmed, raked, and sprayed his way around the yard.
She looked forward to seeing him work up a sweat—seeing it bead on his sun-kissed skin and roll down each and every muscle—but her favorite part of the day was when he’d come over and sit down on the end of her chair. She always had a water bottle waiting for him and he always had some compliment ready to go that made her feel like the giddy teenage girl she tried to hide.
The bone-deep chill of loneliness she’d felt when her parents had deserted her was quickly being replaced with the warm tingles of anticipation she felt every weekend while waiting for him to arrive.
“How are you today, Belle?” Kyle asked, taking a drink from the ice cold bottle she had handed him before he pulled his shirt over his head and wiped the perspiration from his face. Her eyes settled in on his chest and she felt the butterflies in her stomach take flight.
“Belle?” She raised an eyebrow once she managed to stop herself from drooling. She batted her lashes at him and reminded herself that he was eighteen and just graduated high school. He wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man and judging by the way he was drinking her in, he was a man that was interested in her. Kyle looked at her like she was the best thing he’d ever laid eyes on. The fact that she was still in high school didn’t seem to matter to him so she pushed it far from her mind.
“Just a pretty nickname for a pretty girl.” He smirked. “One of the few things I remember from that year of French I was forced to take when I was a sophomore.”
She grinned at the thoughtfulness he’d put into the nickname he had just given her. He pulled his cellphone from his pocket and tossed it on the chair. “Anymore questions, Belle?”
“Well, what am I supposed to call you?” She sat up in her chair closing the distance between them. As she made her way inch by inch closer to him, he bent forward to mess with the laces on his boots. “Beau?”
“Beau as in your boyfriend? Cameron Nickelson, are you asking me to go steady?” he teased.
Cami felt her cheeks blush red. Had she meant it that way? She wasn't sure what the status of their arrangement was, but she felt strangely calm about it all.
“Maybe I did,” she teased, before adding, “Je suppose que vous ne le saurez jamais.”
He lifted the shoulder her mouth was closest to, apparently ignoring the fact that she was practically hovering over him. Freeing his feet from his boots and socks, he said, “What did you just say?” He turned swiftly, with a questioning smile, but before she had time to answer he looped his arm under her knees and pulled her up into his arms bride over the threshold style.
“Maybe you should have paid better attention in French class, Beau.” She let out a startled laugh. He neared the edge of the pool and she realized exactly why he had ditched his shirt, shoes, and cellphone. “Don’t even think about it!” She slapped his chest playfully. “Put me down!”
“Oh, I’ll put you down.” He chuckled right before he jumped into the water with her in tow.
She wiggled free of his arms and popped up out of the water taking in a breath. The cool water was a welcomed relief from the July heat, but now her hair was wet and the chlorine did nothing but dry it out. She’d have to send Sophie out for a conditioning treatment ASAP.
Pushing the hair from her face as the ripples in the water smoothed out, she looked around for Kyle. She knew he was lurking under the surface, waiting to pull her under or splash her. She still jumped and let out a little shriek when she felt his arms wrap around her from behind.
“You got my hair wet,” she pouted, turning in his arms to face him. Effortlessly, her arms moved around his neck and she let him pull her body to his.
“You’ll be fine, Belle.” He laughed, brushing his nose against hers. “It will dry.” This was the third week in a row that Kyle had been to her house, but it was the first time she actually thought he was going to kiss her. They’d spent the past two Sundays casually talking about nothing in particular and everything all at the same time. She knew that he spent the majority of the week at football training, and as she felt his hard chest press against her, she was thankful for all his dedication to the sport.
She had given him a tutorial on how to be a pageant girl and spilled her secret about despising it—well, all except the talent portion. That was the only thing Cameron liked about the tedious glitz and glam of it all. It was when she, against her mother’s wishes, performed a contemporary dance routine she had choreographed herself.
She really felt like she knew him and in a way that was completely different than the way she’d ever known anyone else. Kyle was sweet and thoughtful, and as far as she could tell, he was honest.
Not that her currently-on-a-break boyfriend wasn’t honest with her. She and Hayden didn’t have any trust issues because they’d been completely truthful about their dating arrangement. Which was just that—an arrangement.
She didn’t get the same butterflies she got with Kyle when Hayden’s hand accidentally brushed against hers, and she sure wouldn’t have let Hayden get away with throwing her in the pool. He would have got slapped right upside the head for that. Whatever was happening with Kyle Mason was not an arrangement. It was something else altogether.
“I know,” she agreed, inching her lips closer to his. “I look like a drowned rat though.”
“Hardly.” He shook his head. “You look beautiful.”
Soaking wet and wrapped up in the arms of a guy she just met, she realized what it felt like to finally be the center of someone’s attention for the right reasons.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she cautioned him, letting the heat from her lips graze his. She could have leaned in and kissed him herself, but she wanted to be kissed by him, not the other way around.
“And why is that?” His arms tightened around her.
“You just might make a girl fall in love with you,” she admitted. She’d always been the kind of girl who told people what she thought they wanted to hear, but today she was being completely honest with him and herself. “Beau,” she added, needing to cut the tension she could feel building between them.
“That might not be a bad thing.” The slight smile that crossed his lips faded to something more serious as he crashed his lips to hers. Despite her inability to breathe, she parted her lips and let him taste every inch of her. Her heart felt like it was going to beat clean out of her chest, but she took comfort in the fact that she could feel his beating equally as hard.
She felt his strong, calloused hands slide down the backs of her thighs and moved her legs to wrap around his waist as he carried her to the side of the pool, their mouths never parting. Cameron wasn’t about to end the kiss. In fact, she was fairly certain that if he’d let her they could stay in that exact same position forever.
As she tangled her fingers in the hair at the base of his neck, her hopes of continuing their poolside make-out session were cut short.
“We should slow down,” Kyle breathed with reluctance in his eyes as he pulled his lips from hers. The face she pulled in response must have told him exactly what she was thinking, because he added, “It’s not that I don’t want to keep kissing you, Belle.” He slid a piece of wet hair from her cheek and pressed his lips back to hers. “There’s just so much more I want to know about you.”
“Okay,” she agreed hesitantly. There were still plenty of things she wanted to know about Kyle, but there were also plenty of things she didn’t want him to know about her.
He laced his fingers between hers and pulled her over to the steps of the pool. As he sat down, he eased her onto his lap and rested his head on her shoulder.
“So tell me…” He looked up at her with inquisitive eyes. “I’m assuming you don’t live in this massive house all by yourself. Tell me about your parents.”
“I’d rather not,” she confessed, letting her gaze drift toward the house. “They aren’t worth mentioning. Long story short—they both had places they’d rather be this summer than with me. Tell me about yours.”
“Well,” he started. “My mom is just about the nicest person on the planet and my dad is not worth mentioning either.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “I think that’s enough about our parents then.” Cameron let out a soft laugh and ran her fingers through his damp hair. “I’m an only child. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I’ve got a baby sister. Ella Jane.”
“What a cute name.” She grinned, imagining a sweet little girl with Kyle’s blue eyes and blond pigtails following her big brother around.
“She’s cute, all right,” he huffed out. “A cute little pain in the ass. That girl’s going to be the death of me.”
“I think it’s sweet that you’re the overprotective big brother.”
“You should try telling her that,” he mumbled into the crook of Cami’s neck, heating her sensitive skin with his breath.
“She’ll see you were just looking out for her one day,” Cami offered as her body began to tingle. “I wish sometimes that I had a big brother to look out for me.” It would have been a good time to come clean with any and all transgressions Cami may have been hiding from Kyle, but his hands started to move across the bare skin of her stomach, effectively derailing her train of thought. “I thought you wanted to talk?” A sigh escaped her lips as he peppered kisses up and down her neck.
Before she could move herself to face him, Kyle took matters into his own hands, lifting her up and pulling one knee onto each side of his lap. With their lips only inches apart, a wicked grin danced across his face.
“I think we’ve shared enough to earn a break.”
“Me too,” she agreed as their mouths found one another’s once again.
CAMI couldn’t wipe the love-struck grin off her face as she watched him walk out the gate that night. She could honestly say that this was the first time since her freshman year she’d stopped at second base with a guy. While she would have happily let Kyle hit a homerun, they’d agreed to take it slow.
“We’ve got nothing but time, baby,” he’d whispered. A shiver of excitement, of promises of what was yet to come, was enough to quiet the nagging voice in her head that had always pushed her to be a pleaser. She’d always thought that guys only wanted one thing from her, so she always just obliged. But Kyle was different.
He wanted her—all of her. The real her. And that was the one thing she’d never given anyone.
“SO what’s the deal for the Fourth? Same old?” Coop asked while they stacked up bags of pea gravel in the Masons’ barn.
“Yeah,” Kyle said as he tossed one of the bags from his shoulder to the ground. “About that… I kind of have other plans.”
“Of course you do,” Coop smirked as he moved the final bag off the pallet. “Should have known you’d blow me and EJ off for you new lady friend.”
“Hmm…let’s see,” Kyle said, holding up his hands. “Hanging out with your ugly mug, doing the same thing we’ve done for the past thirteen years, or making a fe
w fireworks of my own with a pretty girl?” He moved his hands up and down, weighing his options.
“Point taken.” Coop chuckled.
“Oh, and I’m sure you’re really pissed that you’ll get to hang out with my little sister all by yourself.”
“What are you talking about?” Coop’s eyes went as wide as a doe’s in headlights.
Kyle fought back a smile. He wasn’t stupid. Anyone with eyes could see that Brantley Cooper had a thing for his sister. That didn’t mean he was going to come right out with his official big brother blessing of their relationship. Coop was going to have to work for that.
Not to mention, Coop had yet to man up and tell him the truth. He denied each and every time Kyle brought it up. As long as Coop was too chicken to tell him, he could squirm. Their friendship aside, Ella Jane was his little sister, and as far as he was concerned no one was really and truly good enough for her—even his best friend.
“I’ve been gone most of the summer. The two of you don’t seem to miss me.”
“That’s not true.” Coop shook his head. “All your sister talks about is how much she misses you.”
“Yeah, I miss you because I have to pick up the slack around here.” Ella Jane’s voice rang out from above them. Coop and Kyle looked up to see her legs dangling from the hayloft as she rested her arms on the center railing and leaned out to glare down at them.
The two boys watched as she skillfully slipped through the railings and dropped down to the barn floor, the same way she’d done since she was six and had watched her brother do it.
“Who’s this girl you’re making fireworks with?” she asked her brother as soon as her feet hit the ground. “Better not be that skank Mackenzie. I can’t stand that girl, and if you think I’m going to sit across the dinner table from—”
“Easy, girl,” Kyle cut her off. “It’s not Mackenzie. Not that it’s any of your business who I date.”
Storm Warning (Broken Heartland) Page 7