Page 68 of Bring You Back

I acknowledge this, and I want to reach for her, but I still can’t get past the hurt she caused, the double rejection. I would’ve handed my heart to her without question. I would’ve kept her in my life no matter where she was.

My mouth moves instead of my hands. “We weren’t growing apart, Camille. You and I … we were coming together.Nowwe’re apart.”

She looks at me the way she did when I rebuffed her last night; disappointed.I don’t believe you.

“Am I interrupting something?” comes a soft, tentative voice.

Camille and I both look up at Reyna. I didn’t hear her come in or see her walk up. She stares down at us—me—with a mix of questions and accusations in her eyes.

“You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t,” Camille says, but Reyna doesn’t engage, her stare still locked on mine.

Fuck, is this how it’s going to be every time she sees me with Camille? I haven’t even done anything with Camille. Because ofReyna.

With the way she’s looking at me, I might as well give her my wrists so she can put the cuffs on them.

Although, I’d much rather put them on her.

I don’t even stop my thoughts from going there. I’m too stressed out. My eyes drift down her body. The way her damp waves flow down her shoulders, the hem of her light blue dress brushing near the place I want to be, sparks the need that still has yet to be soothed.

Her body begs for my hands.

From the shift in her eyes, she’s now thinking the same thing. She has needs, too. She wants me to touch her.

Camille stands, blocking our view of each other, and I’m now staring into Camille’s ass. I note how tight it still looks in her jeans for just a second before I jerk my stare away.

Reyna gasps. “When did you get a cat?”

“Today,” Camille says, and another silent laugh hits my stomach. “Grumbles.” She turns and steps over my legs on her way to the guest room, gesturing at me while keeping her eyes on her cat. “When you’re done playing with him, you can play with her.”

I flinch at her word choice.

“Oh!” Reyna calls out and Camille stops in the doorway. Grumbles pushes against her and she lets her down. “I talked to Mitch after you left. He wants you to come in tomorrow for an interview. But don’t stress,” she adds with a smile. “He likes me. You’ll get it.”

Camille chuckles, then nods. “Cool. Thanks.”

Yeah,I think as her door clicks closed.Cool.

I shouldn’t gripe. Camille needs money. We’re all one big, happy, dysfunctional family. It makes sense they’d work together.

I push to standing with a childlike excitement Reyna feeds off of, any possible issues we could’ve just had forgotten.

“Try to come in here,” I say right before diving inside my bedroom, shutting the door, and pushing in the lock.Fuck, that’s satisfying.

The knob jiggles from the outside and Reyna literally collides with the door in her attempt to open it. “Ow! Julian!”

I laugh to myself, then swing the door open with a grin. “Nice, huh?”

“Not for my face,” she says with a laugh of her own, fingers massaging her nose.

“I said try to come in, not barrel into the door,” I add with another laugh.

“Well, it doesn’t usually have alockon it,” she says, dropping her hand to give me a pointed look.

I reach for that hand to pull her in here, but Banks slides up next to her, his TP scarf still dangling around his neck, and scolds me. “Dude, youlockedher out?” He turns a smile on Reyna. “I’dneverlock you out of my room. You should come. Just across the way there.” He points, leans into her. “I have my own bathroom.”

Reyna laughs. “I know.”

“That’s how you get a girl, man,” I tell him while taking Reyna’s hand and pulling her in. “With a bathroom.”

---