"You don't know that."
"I don't, but you should. You're up there with him. Can you honestly say that after everything that has happened to him in the past month, he's in any shape to be in a relationship with you? Or anyone for that matter?"
No. He wasn't. He was alone, off balance, unstable. He was mourning his parents and being faced with possibly taking the reins of a billion-dollar national company. What was I thinking? He'd make a lousy partner, but not because he was a bad person. He wasn't that. He was great. He was kind and thoughtful, a little of introverted but funny and smart. And when he touched me, I could be on fire and not know the difference. That night... I wouldn't forget it anytime soon. I knew that, and that just made what Kasey said truer than ever. I couldn't saddle him with my feelings on top of his own. Not when he was like this.
"I don't think it's fair to write him off without giving him a chance."
"I think if you give him a chance, you're going to find out first hand just how emotionally unavailable he is and get hurt."
"He wouldn't do that to me."
"He wouldn't want to, maybe, but think about it, Nat. He just lost his parents. He became a hermit in the mountains to cope for god's sake. I don't know a lot about this stuff, but that doesn't sound like boyfriend material to me." I sighed, letting the argument die. She wasn't the one I needed to be talking to if I wanted answers. He was.
But what if she was right? He had just lost his parents and had effectively cut himself off from civilization. That wasn't the guy who'd be able to have a supportive and reciprocal relationship with me. He couldn't, not until he had healed from what had happened to him. But he wouldn't hurt me; I didn't want to believe that he could, not knowingly.
His voice inside the cabin reminded me that I had had food on the stove. I ended my call with Kasey and went back inside. I am leaving tomorrow; I can forget for that long.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cameron
I could hear her inside. Otherwise, it was silent. Completely still. I couldn't even hear the wind, nothing. Just my own thoughts, too loud with nothing else cutting through them.
Get used to it, I thought darkly. She’s going today, and that's all she's leaving you. I was sitting at the table, looking out over the back of the house. If nothing else, this place was good for thinking if you needed quiet time or whatever. I hadn’t been able to think about anything but Natalie since I had gotten up, and I had a feeling that wasn’t going to change once she got on the road back to Provo.
The door opened, and she came out, holding a steaming mug in each hand.
"Ready?" I asked her.
"Yeah," she said quietly, coming and taking the seat on the other side of the table from me. "All I need to do is get everything in the car when they show up." She handed me my cup of coffee. It was late in the morning. Besides the time that she had spent getting her stuff together so she could leave, we had spent the morning together, talking. Any minute now, the plow would show up, and she wouldn't have a reason to stay anymore.
Unless of course, she wanted to. But even then, why would she? She hadn't asked for this. Sure, there was electricity and hot running water, but I couldn't see her hiding, cut off from the world. She shone; she was magnetic. She would hate the isolation. She wasn't built for it. Hadn’t this been her life as a child? The one she had run away from when she had gotten old enough? She didn’t want this. She had friends back in the city, a life. It was just me who had nothing. It wouldn't have been fair to ask her to stay.
As if I even had a right to say something like that to her. It wasn't like that between us. It wasn't what she wanted, so it wasn't enough reason to stay, even if I did ask. Why hadn’t I asked her though? What was the harm in that? I wouldn’t know what she wanted or didn’t want unless I did.
Stop it, I thought. Fucking stop. You’re not doing that to her. She told you she wasn’t comfortable.
"It's been a whole week, huh?"
"Yeah. About that long," she said. Not enough. It hadn't been long enough. That was hours of work she had missed, days away from her home, from her friends. but fuck, I was selfish. I wanted her here with me.
"You're probably the only person in the history of Porter Holdings that has missed a week of work without being on sick or maternity leave and won't get shit for it."
"When I told Brett about the weather, he probably wasn't expecting me to be gone this long though."
"You aren't going to get in trouble, are you?" I asked, thinking about it. If she went back, and it turned out that Brett had a problem, he could talk to me about it, not her. It was because of me that she had come anyway. I wanted nothing to do with the office anymore, but she wasn't getting in trouble because of me. No way. If I had to, I'd go back to Salt Lake and tell Brett myself.
What the hell is wrong with you, I thought. She's going back to her house; you knew that when she showed up. The trip wasn't supposed to turn into a vacation for her. She hadn't wanted to spend all that time with you; she had had to. I couldn't think about her like this. We had made an agreement about what kind of relationship we had. Still, it had been nice having another person around. A person I actually liked, who was interesting and funny and wasn't trying to tell me what to do with my life. She was a pretty good cook too; I'd miss that. That was it right there. I was going to miss her. She wasn't even gone, and I already missed her.
"I don't think so. Brett knows where I am and he knows why I came. Because it's you, he's probably going to let it slide. He'll be happy to hear you haven't died yet." I laughed a little. I hadn't talked to Brett in a while. This past week while we had been together, I could have probably asked to use her phone, and I didn't think she would have said no. I had nothing to say to the man though, nothing he wanted to hear, so it was better not talking to him at all.
"I'm happy to hear he hasn't either." She was quiet, drinking her coffee. Nothing, huh? She had had a week and nothing. Not a word about the company. After the first few days, I had allowed myself to drop my guard a little just in case she decided to tell me why she had really come. I had almost been positive that she couldn’t have come for any reason other than to talk work. Now, she was going back to Provo after close to a week, and she had said nothing, not a word about me taking over Porter Holding, selling out or anything. I had been wrong and honestly, was glad to admit it.
"Are you looking forward to getting your cabin back?"
"I'm looking forward to getting my bed back," I said. She laughed. We had made a pretty good recovery the past few days after what had happened. I hadn't forgotten, but for her sake, I had acted like I had and then jerked off in the shower when it got too hard to pretend. We had spent more time out of bed than in it, and honestly, a few more nights on the couch wouldn't have killed me if they had meant delaying her trip back.
"You offered it, Cameron. I said that I could have taken the couch."