Path of Destruction (Broken Heartland, #2)(69)

“I get it. Though I have to admit, you look pretty hot in this gear. I wouldn’t have minded seeing it on you live and in person.”

“Oh yeah?” Cooper lowered himself on the couch next to her and sat the picture she held aside on an old end table. “Well maybe I’ll put some of my old stuff on for old time’s sake one of these days.”

Cami sighed and leaned against him. “I’m kind of jealous. I’ve never actually had a best friend—not one I could actually trust or count on. Maybe Hayden, but I don’t know.”

The energy between them switched from playful to intense. Cooper angled himself toward her and palmed the side of her face, tracing her lower lip with his thumb before letting his eyes meet hers. “You can trust me, Cameron. I may not be perfect, that’s a fight I gave up long ago, but I will do my best to be there for you, to be someone you can count on.”

Emotion clogged her throat. His words were so powerful and most of all, he meant them. Truly. That was Brantley Cooper. He wasn’t a man of many words, but the ones he said, he meant.

“I think I’d like that.”

His brows lowered for a moment. “Can I trust you, Prom Queen? Or are you going to wreck me?”

Cameron kissed the thumb that still lingered on her lips and closed her eyes. “I’d like to try to be someone like that, someone good and honest and trustworthy. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with being that kind of person, Cooper.”

“I have faith in you,” he’d said.

And that was all it had taken. Cameron had launched herself full force into his arms, handing her body and her whole heart over to him for safekeeping.

The memory of Kyle still existed, as she knew it always would. That summer was still a part of her and always would be. It had changed her. Kyle Mason had made her see her entire life in a different light. But she felt closer to him when she was with Cooper, as if somehow being with his best friend was okay because she loved Brantley Cooper for entirely different reasons and Kyle had obviously loved him too.

They finally had something in common.

She spent the night showing Cooper how much he meant to her.

“You sure?” he’d said, moments before they’d crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.

“More sure than I have ever been about anything in my entire life,” she’d whispered against his lips. “I love you, Brantley Cooper.”

He hadn’t repeated the sentiment with words, but his actions were confirmation enough for the night.

She woke up alone the next morning hearing him and Ella Jane Mason screaming at each other down below. Wrapping his bed sheet over her bare body, she crept to the window of the loft and peeked out.

There they stood, face to face, noses practically touching. Cooper took the girl’s hand and Cameron forced herself to look away. She couldn’t make out what they were yelling exactly, but the truth was undeniable. Maybe he didn’t feel the same way about EJ that he did her—he’d told her repeatedly that the nature of their relationship was completely different—but Cameron felt lightheaded nonetheless.

What if what he felt for her was just physical attraction? He’d never lost his mind on her or over her the way he was right now with Ella Jane. Whatever the nature of their relationship, there was passion in the argument that was taking place several feet below her.

Quietly, Cameron had dressed and then climbed down the ladder of the loft. Walking toward where Cooper stood watching Ella Jane tear out of his driveway in a cloud of dust, she wrapped her arms around herself.

“I should go. I’ll see you around,” she told Cooper softly.

When he turned to face her, he looked…torn. Cameron knew better than to ask him to choose, she knew she’d be on the losing end of that choice.

“Cameron,” he pleaded, his eyes radiating frustration. “Wait. Please. Let me explain.”

She didn’t wait to see what he planned to say. What could he say?

She left him standing there looking pitiful and went home. He texted several times that he was sorry and that it wasn’t what she thought. He even left a voicemail that she played several times. But she just couldn’t hash it out over the phone. So she didn’t respond.

When a knock came at her door around dinnertime, she was expecting to see him standing there with an apologetic grin and maybe some flowers or chocolate or something. But a blonde with a box greeted her with a glare instead.

“Found these in his closet. Pretty sure they were for you.”

Cameron looked at the brown box with Belle scrawled on the top of the lid. “I have no idea what—”

“Open it,” Ella Jane commanded.

Cameron’s hands shook as she slid the lid off. A small square of paper sat on top of a pair of brown leather cowgirl boots.

Every Oklahoma girl should have a pair of boots, Belle. Love, Kyle.

Her composure faltered and a cry escaped her throat.

She didn’t know if something in the box was vibrating or if she was just trembling that hard.

“They had a pact,” Ella Jane said evenly while witnessing her breakdown. “About girls. Neither of them so much as looked at one the other had any type of feelings for. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you since my brother is dead. But you should let Cooper decide for himself it if matters to him.”