Path of Destruction (Broken Heartland, #2)(29)

She had taken care of herself for most of the school year now, and she’d be off to OSU just as soon as they opened the dorm room doors for summer semester. She was her own maid. Sort of. She took care of her own laundry and shopping. Her mother had insisted they still have a cleaning service come in once a week. But there were only a few more months until she could fly the coop, so to speak. College was waiting for her. Kyle might not be there, but at least she had getting away from her mother’s constant disparagement to look forward to.

Cami’s mom had never been much of a homemaker or a nurturer. The transition from pageant queen to trophy wife had been pretty seamless for her. There was a brief stop at unwed mother, but Derek had rectified that situation as soon as Theresa had told him she was expecting their daughter. He had a political career to look forward to after all.

Cameron Louise Nickelson was the “honeymoon” baby of pageant queen and future whatever-political-position-he-decided-to-run-for. That was the story they sold the press and they ate it up. There was a reason that the Nickelsons were so popular in the Bluffs. They’d worked hard for the spotlight. Derek with his politics, Theresa with her involvement in the pageant world and charitable giving, and Cami... Well, she used to follow in her mother’s footsteps, but lately, she’d felt like the last place she wanted to be was in the spotlight. She quite preferred dark closets.

Dark closets with a boy she barely knew, to be more precise. With lips and hands that could clear even the most cluttered of minds, which is exactly what Cami’s mind was. A completely, cluttered, grief-ridden mess of heartbreak and regret.

The second that Brantley Cooper had kissed her in that dark closet it was almost as if she was having an out of body experience. Her body could damn sure feel it, but her mind was just blank. No thoughts of thunderstorms, or Kyle, or his nosy little sister. She didn’t think about the way her parents hadn’t even noticed that she spent every night crying herself to sleep or the countless containers of eye cream she’d burned through trying to fight the dark circles that had started to appear.

A sense of wrong hit her after, when she was sneaking out of the closet and back to her life in the west wing of SBHS. It was wrong for her to be kissing a boy she didn’t know when one that she did had just died. Her heart hadn’t healed, so she swore that whatever had happened with Brantley was a one time thing. At least that’s what she told herself...at first. Being with him wasn’t about falling in love; it was about feeling something that wasn’t related to pain.

She was still contemplating this Monday morning at school. It was just before lunch hour when the object of her desire came sauntering toward her. Brantley Cooper gave her the slightest of nods directing her attention to the stairwell that led down to their den of ill repute. They’d somehow settled into a routine of meeting up in the utility closet despite the fact that they rarely spoke outside of it.

She wondered briefly if she’d become some beck and call girl that he was now subject to her own lust and lack of sensibility, but it quickly passed when he winked one of his warm, brown eyes at her. She glanced around quickly to see if anyone was paying attention to their exchange before letting her libido lead her to follow him.

“Afternoon, gorgeous,” he whispered in her ear as he pulled her in to the closet.

Their lips were on one another’s before the door even had a chance to click shut. His tongue slipped between her lips, jolting her from the past that she was constantly reliving to the present where nothing else mattered by greedily taking what he was offering.

His hands smoothed down her back and started to slip underneath the hem of her shirt. His rough fingertips blazed a trail across the smooth skin of her back. She bit down on his bottom lip, causing him to tug her body closer to his. A growl-like moan rumbled from the back of his throat, and she could feel the effects of her kiss pressing into her stomach.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Prom Queen,” he warned with a grin. “You’re making me want to do all kinds of things we don’t really have the time for.” His reminder that their rendezvous were limited by the minutes between bells and during drills pulled her from the lust-filled haze she found herself in with him. Most of their encounters would be considered casual make out sessions, but their hands had started to get minds of their own as of late. “Maybe we should continue this outside of the closet?”

“Like a date?” she scoffed.

The second she saw the wounded look on his face, she wished she could take it back, but he had to know that this closet was the only place they were ever going to be together. It wasn’t that Cami hadn’t thought about having sex with him. It was hard not to when his body was pressed up tight against hers. It was the fact the last time she’d been with anyone it was Kyle. She wasn’t near ready to go down that road with anyone else.

“Guess not,” he said, dropping his hands from her body.

“It’s not...” She crossed her arms over chest and took a step back. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t ready to date other people. She wasn’t ready to forget the last relationship she was in because that would have meant saying goodbye to Kyle. Her heart wasn’t ready to be vulnerable again. She couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do that. “It’s not part of our arrangement,” she pointed out. “And neither is meeting up on days other than drill days.” She inhaled deeply through her nose, straightening her back to feign a look of certainty. “You can’t just nod and expect me to follow you to the basement whenever you get the notion to put your hands on someone.”