Chapter 161
Chapter 160: Cameron’s Jealous
Cameron’s POV
I’d been watching him text someone for two weeks.
Not surveillance-I wasn’t monitoring him deliberately, wasn’t tracking the frequency or timing with the intentional attention of someone who’d decided to gather data. It happened the way things happened when you were paying attention to someone already, which was that the details presented themselves without being sought.
Lunch, Tuesday of the first week back: phone in hand, the specific typing rhythm of someone composing rather than responding, the brief pause to read, the composing again. He’d put it away when the food arrived without finishing the message, which meant either the message could wait or he’d decided finishing it was something he didn’t want to do in the current company.
The elevator, Thursday of the second week: I’d appeared when the doors opened and he’d pocketed the phone with a speed that was marginally faster than normal, the specific speed of someone who’d registered an audience and made a decision. He’d said good morning and moved to the side of the elevator to make room and that had been that.
Once, sitting at his desk when I’d come out of a meeting early, a small smile at the phone screen. Small and private, the kind that arrived before you’d decided whether to have it.
I’d been telling myself it was none of my business.
I’d been wrong about this for two weeks, which I understood on some level but had been managing with the specific stubbornness of someone who’d decided that their wrongness was actually the principled position.
The approach had been considerate. I was still certain of that in theory. In practice, I’d been watching Lucian text someone with a small private smile and telling myself the considerate thing was to not ask about it, and the gap between those two things had been getting larger for two weeks.
Thursday of the third week, I ran out of patience for the gap.
The office bathrooms were on the far end of the executive floor, past the filing room and the small conference room and the alcove with the coffee station. They were single-occupancy, one for each side of the corridor, which meant they had locks and a reasonable expectation of privacy.
I waited until I saw Lucian head that direction at eleven forty-three.
Followed at an interval that I was aware was slightly ridiculous and did anyway.
He came out of the bathroom at eleven forty-seven and I was there.
He looked at me.
Not with surprise-the surprise, if there had been any, had been managed somewhere between seeing me
13
< Cameron’s lettous
and arriving at the expression he now wore, which was the neutral-that-wasn’t-neutral, the one I’d been cataloguing for three weeks.
“Cameron,” he said.
“Who have you been texting?” I said.
Clam
It came out more directly than I’d planned, which was what happened when you’d been not-saying something for two weeks and then said it-the not-saying time compressed the thing and it arrived with the force of the compression behind it.
He looked at me for a moment.
And then-something I hadn’t seen before. Not the not-quite-smile, which was the contained version, the one that stayed within the professional register. This was different. This was fuller, arrived faster, had an edge of something that was recognizably amusement but was also something else, something that knew it had identified a point of interest and was deciding exactly how to apply pressure to it.
A smirk.
Lucian Park, twenty-six years old, PA, personal-favorite person in any room he occupied, was smirking at me in the corridor outside the executive floor bathroom.
“Why do you want to know?” he said.
“It’s relevant,” I said.
“How is it relevant p>
I opened my mouth. Closed it. The how was the part hadn’t prepared for, which was an oversight that I was currently experiencing the full consequences of.
“It’s relevant,” I said again, with less conviction.
“Cameron.” He said my name with the specific quality he’d been deploying for weeks, the quality that was professional on the surface and underneath it something that required more management than professional. “Why do you keep leaving rooms p>
The question landed.
Not gently-it wasn’t meant to land gently, I could tell from the directness of it, from the way he held my gaze after saying it without giving me anywhere to look that wasn’t his face. This was the question he’d been holding, that I’d been producing the conditions for with three weeks of open doors and necessary coffee runs and exits timed to the specific moment when the space between us became unstructured.
“I told you,” I said. “On the phone. I said p>
“You said you’d had feelings for eighteen months,” he said. “And then you came back to work and spent three weeks making sure we were never in the same room for longer than necessary.” He tilted his head slightly. “I’m asking why p>
“Because you needed space,” I said. “To decide. Without feeling-without the weight of my position affecting p>
“Your position,” he said.
“I’m your employer p>
Clas
“You fired me,” he said. “And then you hired me back. The status has been sufficiently disrupted that I think we’re past the point where employer-employee hierarchy is the governing” He stopped. “What did you think I was deciding p>
“Whether you wanted-whether anything I’d said was something you p>
“I told you on the phone that I had something to say,” he said. “That I’d like the opportunity to say it. I said that p>
“I know you said that p>
“And then you spent three weeks leaving rooms,” he said. “Which is not generally the behavior of someone who wants to hear what another person has to say p>
“I was giving you time p>
“You were giving yourself distance,” he said. “Which is different from giving me time p>
The corridor was quiet. No one else on this end of the floor at this hour-the junior team was in the conference room for the standing Wednesday meeting, the finance department was on the floor below. The coffee station alcove was empty. It was just us, in the corridor outside the bathroom, having the conversation that three weeks of open doors and coffee runs had been delaying.
“Who have you been texting?” I said again.
He looked at me with the smirk still present. “You’re going to answer my question first,” he said. “Because I have answered yours, consistently, and you’ve been giving me distance instead of rooms p>
I looked at him.
“I thought-” I stopped. “Lake p>
“What about Lake p>
“Lake exists,” I said. “Lake is evidence of-I assumed. When you told me Lily was your sister, I recalibrated, but before that I’d assumed you were-that Lake meant you preferred women, which would make what I’d told you a piece of information that I’d given and you were being professional about, which was why I was giving you p>
“You thought I’d tolerate your company out of professionalism,” he said.
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Florence
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.