Page 21 of Flawless
“Good. Uneventful, just the way I like it.” I loved driving, especially long road trips, but this time, every mile between me and her felt like torture.
“I miss you already.” Her voice was soft and sweet, tugging at my heart.
“I miss you too, sweetheart.” I glanced up at the framed photos of family and friends on my mantle. Photos I’d added since my sister teased me about living in a soulless house with no personality. “Send me a picture of you.”
Her laugh was husky with sleep when she said, “We must have taken at least a dozen pictures together over the past few days. Why do you want another one?”
“I want to see you right before you fall asleep, all sexy and drowsy, to remind me how good it feels to have you fall asleep in my arms.”
Her sigh sounded a lot like satisfaction when she asked, “How did I get lucky enough to find you?”
“Funny, I was asking myself that same question all the way home.”
My phone pinged and I smiled at her photo. She was wearing a t-shirt she’d stolen from me. Her hair was sleep-tousled, her make-up was long gone, and she was so beautiful she took my breath away.
“This is going up on my mantle, my desk, my screensaver—”
She gasped. “Cam, don’t you dare! There are at least a dozen red carpet photos of me online, where I’m all dolled up. Use one of those.”
“No way.” I smiled, thinking how hot she’d look in a formal gown and heels, walking the red carpet. And next time she did, I wanted to be the man on her arm. Wolf-whistling when she took the stage or won an award, just because it might make her blush. “I want the version of you no one else gets to see. The one that belongs to me.”
And that’s the way it felt, like she was mine. She already belonged to me.
“Mmmm, I love that there’s a version of me that belongs to you and only you. It’s true, you know. There’s this side of me that I’ve only shared with you, and I don’t know how the hell that happened so fast. But I love that it did.”
“I want all of you.” My voice was low and husky, my words unguarded, when I told her, “The broken. The fierce. The strong. The soft. I want to love that little girl that never got the love she needed.”
She sniffled. “Stop, you’re gonna make me cry. And I am not a crier.” She sniffled again. “Except with you I am, somehow.”
“I’m peeling back the layers of you, sweetheart. And I love everything I’m seeing.”
I was tossing that L-word around with more frequency, getting her used to hearing it, because I knew before long I’d be telling her, without a doubt, I was in love with her. And needed to find a way to have her in my life, full-time.
“That works both ways. If I had a vision board of my dream man, you’d represent every damn image on that board. All the power words. All the affirmations. All the feels.”
I laughed, trying to picture Rylee with a vision board, trying to attract her soul mate. That would never happen, because she’d believed, before she met me, she could do this life thing alone.
But I was determined to prove her wrong.
“What’s so funny?”
“You don’t seem like the vision board type, that’s all.”
“I’ll have you know I do have a career vision board. I even journal.”
“No shit. Huh, see that, I learned something new about you today.” I was still uncovering new things about her every day and I never wanted to stop learning about this beautiful enigma.
“Want to hear what I wrote about you in my journal?”
This should be good.
“Hell yeah, I want to hear it. You really think I’m gonna say no?” The fact that she was willing to trust me with her private thoughts just added another layer of trust that was quickly eclipsing anything I’d experienced before.
“Okay, hold on.” I heard some rustling before she said, “It’s right here. I was writing in it before I fell asleep.”
“Alright, baby. Let’s hear it.” I didn’t know why my heart was pounding so hard. Maybe because I wanted her words to reveal the same crazy-intense emotions I was feeling.
She cleared her throat and started reading in a poetic voice that sounded more like her songwriter’s voice than her speaking voice.
