Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
I’d pulled my phone out after Camden disappeared and started texting Lark with an SOS. She had responded with a picture of the sunset on the water and the message:
Merry Christmas Eve! See you tomorrow. Love you!
The rest of the conversation was her sending me picture after picture of all of my friends having the time of their lives while I was stuck… here. She could have at least had the decency to call and help me get out of here. Not that I could leave without Camden. Well, I could… but I wouldn’t.
Footsteps down the hallway indicated someone was returning. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Finally,” I muttered.
I swiftly rose to my feet. Harmony looked up at me with a pained expression.
“Weren’t you saying that you had to meet Kurt?” I suggested to Harmony, giving her a way out.
She stood up so fast that she nearly knocked the chair back. “Right, Kurt. I almost forgot.”
“Oh, do you have to leave already?” Candice asked.
“Unfortunately so,” Harmony said.
“Well, maybe we could meet up this week while Lars and I are still in town.”
“Maybe,” Harmony offered reluctantly.
Then Camden stormed into the room with all the force of a hurricane. He had a cigar in his hand, which he promptly put out in a tray by the wet bar. He tipped back the rest of his discarded drink, and then his eyes found me. “Time to go.”
I nodded and hurried after him as he darted toward the elevator. I barely had time to retrieve my coat and purse before following after him. The doors almost closed before me.
The air was heavy between us. Charged with energy and anger. He smelled like cigar smoke and scotch and aftershave. I should have been irritated with him, but I wasn’t. I knew what it was like to have to deal with difficult family members. I hadn’t seen my father in prison in years. My mother treated me like everything was perfectly fine, even when it wasn’t… especially when it wasn’t. I had a brother who had literally changed his name and disappeared to Texas to get away from us. I’d learned that my friends were my family long ago, but it didn’t mean that my family didn’t still bring out the fire in my veins. When it happened to Camden, it somehow made him so much more… human.
He’d hate for me to say it, but the height of his fury with his father was also the height of his humanity. A part of me just wanted to help. Not that he’d ever let me help. It was a festering wound that revolted when touched.
So, I held back. I waited and debated on saying anything. It wasn’t like I was the queen of dealing with my issues.
And yet…
And yet…
It wasn’t until we were back in his penthouse that I worked up the nerve to say something.
Camden was angling for the wet bar, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows as he went. I saw a bender ahead of him.
“What happened back there?” I asked.
He wrenched the top off the crystal decanter. “My father.”
“Well… obviously,” I said softly as I breezed toward him.
He poured himself a knuckle’s worth of liquor. Drained it and then poured another.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Do I look like I want to talk about it?” he snarled.
I ran a hand down his arm. My nails grazed his forearm. “Tell me about it.”
“He’s a prick. What more do you need to know?”
“I know what it’s like,” I said gently. “My father isn’t exactly a dream come true.”
“Yeah, well, you’re lucky he’s locked up then.”
I flinched at those words. My father was a monster but a different kind than Camden’s father. Mine loved me… in his own way. He’d spoiled me. But he’d ruined everyone he did business with to get there. Camden’s father just hated everyone who stood in his path and didn’t buck under the force of his personality.
“Don’t take this out on me,” I told him. “I just want to talk about it. You were mad when you came back out the first time. That’s why you snapped at me and Harmony.”
“Katherine, tonight is really not the night.”
“Why won’t you talk to me?” I demanded, unable to keep the edge out of my voice. “Must you cut me out of everything?”
His eyes found mine. But instead of the fire that usually burned there, it was just emptiness. There was nothing looking back.
I swallowed at that look and brought my hand down to rest on his. “I know what your father is like. I understand that he’s an asshole.”
“You have no idea,” he muttered.
I sighed. “I never wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I know how bad your father is because… he came on to me.”
Everything about Camden stilled in that moment. “What?” he asked, his voice lethal.