Chapter Eight
After the incident on the yacht, if she never got to see Adrien again, Camila would have counted herself lucky. She’d hoped the trip would turn out well, but she had been mistaken. She might have wanted to give him another chance to show her a softer side, but the only thing that trip had shown her was how wrong they were for each other. His behavior had been appalling and she knew now that he’d never change. The attempts at placating her, making excuses, saying he was working on his behavior and his temper, they’d all been lies.
She could have put up with being sexually frustrated. If he had just been bad in bed, she could have handled it. They could have talked and experimented later, because it was all part of building up a relationship. She could not, however, put up with a partner who showed absolute disregard for her on several occasions and most especially not in bed. She had ended up going to the hospital after he dropped her off, and while she’d turned out to be fine in the end, her annoyance and disappointment in him did not die away.
Camila could only avoid him from then on. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have her own life to live, anyway, she just needed to keep busy. Besides, compared to previous breakups, this one was actually quite smooth. The relationship hadn't lasted long to begin with so it wasn’t a big deal to cut ties.
It’s better this way. I don’t belong in that kind of world anyway. It’s the one thing being with him has taught me. From now on, no more guys out of my league.
A couple days later, Camila actually had to go into the office to pick up her new assignment, and hand in the work she’d done for the last one. So, she got up early and left without telling her mom goodbye, since she wasn’t awake yet.
Let’s get this part over with so I can hurry up and get home.
Because there was no longer anyone to impress, Camila was back to how she usually dressed. Inside the house, she dressed for comfort, so it was mostly track pants or shorts, depending on the temperature. To go outside, she’d dressed in a pair of cargo pants, a t-shirt, and a hoodie. Lucky for her, she was one of the people at the office that worked outside, so it didn’t faze anybody when she eventually walked into the office like that. Besides, it was early enough that half the staff hadn't even come in yet, and they weren’t that many to begin with.
“Camila!” her boss, called out. “Good, you’re here. I need what you’ve got, right now.”
She sighed. “I could have just emailed it to you.”
“For something this important, let’s not. We don’t want it leaking out to the outside, after all.”
Camila just rolled her eyes. “How is this so important it garners this much trouble? We won’t be the only ones covering this, you know.”
This time, her job had been a generic piece. She’d had the document long before so she just stayed at home to finish working, and she’d actually managed to get it done on time. Her boss liked being the earliest to get out posts with tantalizing news to increase their blog’s readership by as much as possible. It wasn’t that she didn’t agree with his method, but if they were first, then they could just as easily be drowned out by the other articles that came after theirs.
It was hard to tell when would be the best time, though, unless they knew the posting schedules of all their competitors, so they didn’t think too much about this.
The boss looked very confident this time, though, smiling up at Camila. “Don’t worry. This time, we’ve got some info I can guarantee no one else has. We’ll definitely be ahead of the game on this assignment.”
Camila didn’t really care, so she just handed over what the boss wanted, received her next piece, and left.
“Hey,” he called after her. “You’ve only got a week on that, all right? Try not to be late!”
She waved a hand over her head without turning around. Camila never turned her work in late. She was actually good at her job, after all, even for the parts that she didn’t like.
Camila wasn’t looking out for it. When she stepped out to the curb, she still had the papers in hand, shuffling them around and trying to look at them as she walked. She wanted to gauge the job she had this time, and see how difficult it was going to be. There were times when she could be a bit clumsy, though, and she accidentally dropped some of the documents.
“Crap,” she hissed to herself as she bent to pick them up before the wind blew away with them.
Lucky for her, it was still pretty early for New York to have so many people walking on this street. The guys at her office were pretty free with their hours, but some of them went in as early as six in the morning, and that was around when she’d left home, so it was only eight a.m., and the street wouldn’t truly be busy for another hour.
Camila glanced up as she stood, only to freeze when she thought she saw someone familiar.
Actually, no…scratch that. He’s definitely familiar.
He was a bit of a distance away, on the other side of the street standing next to a pole. He stood still, dressed in sneakers, jeans and a jacket that was zipped up, with his hands shoved into the jacket pockets. His hair was dark and trimmed, and he was tall, his build big.
No way…Camila thought, her eyes widening as she slowly rose up. No way it could be him. He isn’t even trying to hide his presence!
Still, Camila could swear that it was Adrien, standing there. He was even looking right in her direction, and while they were too far apart for her to clearly tell, she was sure he was looking right at her.
Is he going to try and approach me?
It was the last thing she wanted. Camila wanted a clean break from this guy. She didn’t know what kind of coincidence this was, but she wanted no part of it, so she turned to walk off in a hurry. She glanced over her shoulder once, and her heart calmed when she realized he wasn’t following her.
Coincidence…just a coincidence. What else could it be?she thought and let herself be at ease.
She had no idea that within the next few days her argument was going to be blown to bits. Because once could be called a coincidence, but several times? No way.