Page 18 of Feels Like Coming Home

I moved my face to the side so he could continue to kiss my neck as he talked, his voice low and husky. I ate up every word as if they were candy.

“Why didn’t you just tell me this on the phone? You didn’t have to come all the way here on your weekend off to tell me. I would’ve been just as happy if you had called and told me, or even just texted it to me.”

“Texted it to you? You would have been happy if Ijust texted it to you,Jones?” He nipped at my ear and I giggled underneath him.

“Well…maybe not.” I smiled shyly, and he started to kiss me again. I could feel his hands starting to wander toward the hem of my shirt and slowly start to pull it up above my belly button.

I shivered at his touch as his hands went from my flat stomach up toward the edge of my bra. My breath became nervously shallow as his hands continued up past my bra and to my shoulders. Slowly, he moved the straps off my shoulders and then pulled my bra down just enough to where I was fully exposed under my shirt. Cam had stopped kissing me and was instead fully focused on feeling my breasts with his hands for the first time. I was trying to slow my breath and my body was quiet as it started to feel what it felt like to be touched in this way for the first time.

“Haley…” My name escaped his lips in a whisper.

“Cam…”

“Are you still okay?”

“Yes.” I spoke so quietly I was surprised he could hear me.

“I want to be with you, like this, and like more than this. I promise I won’t hurt you. I’m sorry I did in the past. I know I did, but I was an idiot and I feel terrible for how I treated you. But if you let me, I will show you that you can trust me, that I won’t leave you. I want you, Haley, forever and always.”

Tears pricked my eyelids because he was saying the words I wanted to hear for so long. I’ve wanted to be with Cam this way since our sophomore year in high school. Now that it was happening, I could hardly even believe it. He was finally saying what I needed to hear and while it felt like a dream, I knew it wasn’t because of how my body was reacting to his touch.

“I want to be with you too, like this and like more than this. Forever and always,” I whispered back as we started kissing again.

This was the moment I had waited so long to have; the words I had longed to hear for the last three years.

It was the kind of closeness with Cam I had been starving for.

And I was going to eat up every single minute of it.

We didn’t sleep together.Instead, we kissed and made out while he played with my breasts under my shirt. He asked if I wanted to go further but I told him I wasn’t ready, and he was nice enough to not make me feel bad for wanting to go slow. There was a lot of history between us, and I didn’t want to ruin the progress we made by giving him my V-card.

After a while, with our red faces and chapped lips, we rolled over to face one another and just talked. Talked about how long we had been friends and about how long I had had a crush on him. He even admitted to having feelings for me our freshman year in high school and reminded me of the conversation we had over text during lunch about the denim skirt I had worn that got half the football team talking. He told me how pissed he was about what Sean had said about me because he was jealous.

We talked about being together as a couple and what that would look like with him going to another school and being on the football team. I knew Cam was dedicated to the game and I was okay with that. I wasn’t going to let football be the reason Cam and I didn’t end up together. While he hadn’t asked me to be his girlfriend, we made plans to spend winter break and New Year's Eve together at home. We worked to figure out how I could go see him during the season and how, once football season was over, he could come to spend the weekends with me here.

I put the blanket over him and tucked myself into his side, resting my head in the crook of his arm and holding him across his waist. I couldn’t believe that I was falling asleep next to Cam. I played back the last two hours with him in my head and started to get excited about the plans we had made. My head was spinning from all of the events of the evening. My face was still a little raw but my heart was so happy I thought it would burst. I fell asleep under the covers with Cam lying next to me on his back.

I couldn’t wait to wake up the next day, kiss Cam good morning, and spend as much time together as possible before he had to head back to school. My heart ached knowing he had to leave so soon. I reminded myself that he wasn’t leaving me, he was just going back to school and we would talk every day and see one another as much as we could.

He promised me we would.

The next morning, I woke up and reached across my bed searching for him only to find a large empty space next to me. I opened my eyes quickly and scanned the room looking for his stuff, only to find his shoes and bag were missing. I started to panic as I realized my fears from last night were coming true.

He had left me, again.

Cam was gone.

9

CAM | NOW

Before I knew it, she was walking away from me, waving with the napkin I had given her to wipe her eyes as she cried still in her hand. I couldn’t believe I’d run into her today just as much as I couldn’t believe what she had told me.

I’m here for a funeral. It’s for my husband. There was an accident.

And then the tears, so many tears that I wasn’t expecting to see. Haley had never been super emotional growing up. If she were hurt—whether it be physically or emotionally—she always held it in until she knew she was completely alone. Seeing her so upset in a public place told me just how deeply she was hurting. It hurt me to see her that way.

As I watched the door of the coffee shop close, I had the sudden urge to run after her. To tell her how much I missed her and how I had never stopped thinking about her. But instead, I cleaned up where we had been sitting and decided I needed to go home. Now wasn’t the time to drop that kind of thing on her and I had something I needed to figure out first. I practically ran to my car and threw it into reverse, almost backing into the car that was waiting for my spot. Thankfully, downtown traffic was next to nothing and I didn’t need to pay much attention to get myself home, which was good because my head was spinning with everything that had just happened. Once I pulled into my garage and hit the button to lower the garage door, I ran inside and threw my shit down. I passed through the kitchen, snatched my laptop from its resting place next to the couch, and opened it quickly.

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