God, I’m a lovesick fool. I always have been.
It’s been a week now since Camille walked out of my hotel room. Sure, I’ve spoken to Karina a few times, but I can’t bring myself to return to the house we share. Perhaps part of me secretly hopes that a certain raven-haired beauty will appear at my door again. Wishful thinking, I know.
One week without speaking to Camille feels like a lifetime, and I wonder how the fuck I was ever able to go eleven years without talking to her. I’m wondering why I even decided that it would be best to leave Camille in the past after graduating high school and moving to England for university.
I’m torn between thinking we wasted many years by being apart and wondering what our lives could’ve been had we been together all that time. I never think about the what-ifs, but now as I’m sitting in my office staring out the floor-to-ceiling window at the buildings surrounding me, I can’t help myself from thinking about them.
What if I had gone to school locally instead of going to London? Or, what if we had stayed in contact the entire time I was away at school?
What if she had joined me in London after she graduated high school?
Every possible scenario I think about leaves an uneasy feeling over me. We weren’t meant to be together during that time. I know it. We experienced things that made us who we are today, and had we not had that time apart, we would be completely different people.
I shake the thoughts of what-ifs from my head when I hear my assistant's voice over the intercom. “Mr. Jameson, I have the information you requested. Would you like for me to bring it to you?”
“Email it to me. Thanks, Marjorie.” Marjorie is my sixty-five-year-old assistant who moves slower than a snail but is as sharp as a nail. When I took over the previous company, the owner’s only request was that I keep Marjorie as an employee. It was a no-brainer decision. She’s been working for the architect firm for over thirty years. It saved me the time of having to hire and train someone.
My computer pings with an email notification from Marjorie. I open it and scroll through, locating the website and phone number she attached. Within seconds, I’ve got my phone in my hand and I’m calling the number on the screen. When the young lady on the other end of the phone answers, I schedule a rush same-day appointment and pay the hefty fee over the phone.
It's worth every single penny for what I’m about to do.
Twenty minutes later, I’m pulling into an empty parking spot in the front of Camille’s office building, smirking when I see her standing outside with a scowl, looking very confused. Before I left my office to come here, I had sent her a rather vague, panicked text message telling her that there was an immediate issue with her build that we needed to address and to meet me out front. We haven’t spoken in a week, but as usual, she read my text message without replying. I was taking a risk, but I knew if I said there was a problem with her building, she’d do as I said.
And look, she did.
I roll the passenger window down and unlock the doors. “Hurry and get in. We don’t have time to waste.” She opens her mouth to argue but instead closes it and does as I say. With a huff, she climbs into the passenger seat of my car and buckles up. The second her seat belt is clicked into place, I speed off in the opposite direction of her building.
“Where the hell are we going? If there’s an issue at the site, you’re going the wrong way,” she says with clear annoyance in her voice.
“You wouldn’t respond to me, and I needed to see you.”
“So you lied about there being an issue with my building because you wanted to see me?” I glance at her in time to see her roll her pretty green eyes.
“Yes.” There’s no point in beating around the bush. That’s exactly what happened. “Do you remember our adventures as kids?” We were always wandering off and getting ourselves into mishaps. As children, Camille dragged me off with her somewhere to explore something, and vice versa. Anything I thought was cool and wanted her to see, I’d drag her off to see. Every single time, she followed without hesitation and without questions asked.
Years later, I’m once again getting to take her somewhere I know will mean something to her.
“Of course, I remember our adventures. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, we’re going on an adventure. So sit back and be quiet.” She huffs but doesn’t say another word the entire drive.
It takes nearly forty minutes to reach our destination, but once we do, I see Camille shift in her seat after I park, her eyes going wide when she sees the big sign above the small white building.
Titanium Skydiving.
“Dean.” She looks over at me with wide eyes. I can’t help the grin that curls on my lips. “What are we doing here?” I don’t answer her. Instead, I unbuckle my seatbelt and climb out of my car, walking right up toward the entrance of the building, knowing that she’s following behind me.
My hand is on the handle of the glass door when she abruptly stops me from pulling the door open. “Why did you bring me here?”
“You told me that sometimes you feel like jumping.” I bring up our conversation in her office not too long ago when she broke down in tears and told me that sometimes she looks out her window and feels like jumping out.
Her green eyes glisten with unshed tears. “You can jump, but I’ll be beside you.” She blinks. I blink. Then the next second, she throws herself at me, her arms around my neck, and our lips are smashed together. She nearly knocks me over from the sudden impact, but I keep steady to support us.
Camille is the first to break our kiss. She backs away with a shy smile, gripping the door handle and walking inside with a level of confidence that makes me admire her even more than I already do. If she’s nervous, she doesn’t show it.
I follow behind her like the lost puppy I am.
“Hi, I have an appointment for two. One is a first-time jumper,” I say to the girl behind the front desk after she greets us. Camille looks at me with skeptical eyes once I say that only one of us is a first-time jumper. Little does she know, I’m rather familiar with skydiving. Another piece of information that she’ll be surprised to learn is that it’s just the two of us jumping. Usually, when you’re a first-time jumper, you must have an instructor with you, but money talks. She’ll be attached to me, her precious life literally in my hands.