Home > 10 Years Later(9)

10 Years Later(9)
Author: J. Sterling

• • •

As I had walked into Advanced Photography my senior year of high school, my heart had thudded against my chest at the sight of Cammie Carmichael sitting in the back of the class alone. Her head was down like it had been so many times since that day last year, and she’d been writing something in a red spiral notebook. The shorts she wore were so short, they made her legs look like they went on for miles. Not that I minded the view.

I took the empty chair next to her and reached out to touch her arm. The contact sent a buzz through my fingertips and straight to my dick. She jerked her head up, her long brown hair spilling across her shoulders, and I thought her eyes lit up as she noticed it was me.

If it was possible to remove someone’s pain, I wished in that moment that I could do it. Cammie’s world had fractured into a million broken pieces, and I desperately wanted to pick them all up and carry them until she was whole again. I wanted that light that used to shine out of her every day to come back. It killed me to watch her pull away from life.

“You’re in this class?” Her expression softened, and I longed to reach out and run my fingers down her cheek.

“Yep,” was all I managed to say in response.

“I’m glad.” She smiled again before focusing her attention on the teacher at the front of the room.

• • •

“Yo. Earth to dickwad. Jesus, seriously?” Tucker snapped his fingers in front of my eyes, his voice breaking through my concentration as I followed the suspect with the lens of the camera, clicking the button at his every step.

“What?” I played innocent.

“You took another trip to Cammie Land.”

“You don’t know what I was thinking about.” I narrowed my eyes as I looked through the lens, making sure it was in focus.

“The hell I don’t. You get this stupid look on your face whenever you think about her. I was trying to tell you to make sure you got that guy in the gray suit too.” He pointed at some new guy standing next to Mickey.

“I’m getting everyone that comes out to talk to our perp. You think I’m stupid?” I snapped at him as our suspect sauntered back into the building.

Tucker tossed his egg sandwich wrapper on the floor of the car. “This case is never gonna end. I swear to God, we’re still gonna be working it at your next reunion.”

“It’s going to end,” I said as I replaced the lens cap on the camera and set it down in the backseat.

We had followed this syndicate for years, gathering information and building a case. These things took time, a lot of time. We only had one shot to bring this major crime network to its knees, so we had to do it right. I had often wondered this myself, though, how much longer we’d be doing this.

“It has to end at some point,” I huffed out as I started the engine.

“When it does, we’ll be fucking heroes,” Tucker said with a laugh, and my blood instantly cooled.

The word hero was usually reserved for people who died doing brave things, and if that was what it took to become one, I wasn’t sure I was ready. I bit my tongue, and Tucker mistook my silence as another Cammie moment.

“Hey.” He nudged my arm. “At least you know she’s still single, right? That’s a good thing. Considering you want to go all caveman on her and shit.”

I laughed. Tucker was a dumbass, but he still cracked me up. “I don’t know what I would have done if she wasn’t single. Seriously.”

“You wouldn’t be going to this reunion, that’s for sure.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” I admitted, shaking my head. “No way I could have handled seeing her there with someone else. I’ve waited too long for this.”

I didn’t need Tucker to remind me about what a blessing it was that a girl like Cammie was still available. I thanked the freaking stars every morning I woke up and heard her talking on the air about not having a boyfriend. If anyone changed that status, it was going to be me. And I was going to start this weekend at the reunion, even if she tried to avoid me or push me away like she did before.

I remember the day she stopped talking to me, the hurt look in her eyes letting me know that I had done something completely unforgivable. I didn’t even know what the hell I did to make her so upset, but I planned to find out. I might have been a stupid young kid back then who allowed her to walk away, but I was a man now. And a man rights his wrongs, admits where he screwed up, and goes after what he wants.

And what I wanted was her.

Best Friends

Cammie

My cell phone rang around six p.m., startling me out of the sleeplike trance I’d fallen into. Getting up at four in the morning tended to take its toll on me, and I hated the fact that I could no longer be a night owl like I used to be.

Kristy’s name flashed across the screen, accompanied by a ridiculous selfie of her making duck lips, which always made me smile.

“Hooker,” I answered.

“Whore,” she responded, and I chuckled. “Nice show this morning. I almost keeled over the desk at my office.”

Kristy worked as an assistant at a law firm. I had no idea how she managed to listen to the show every morning without getting fired, but Kristy could be pretty persuasive when she needed to be. Which was a good quality in a future lawyer, if you asked me.

I sat straight up on my couch, pulling my feet underneath me. “Holy shit, Kris, I almost died. I thought they knew about Dalton, and I was freaking the hell out.”

   
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