I’ve Got You

Chapter 9

Cameron Lovell sat in the Wayward Boot. Not the best place to find a girl to date, but he spotted one pretty young thing with her dark-skinned friend, both laughing and giggling to themselves as one of the servers flirted with them. He felt a pang of anger, disappointment and misery – for a moment, he thought the friend was Aleshia.

He’d been avoiding the Wayward Boot, ever since Aleshia had decided to freeze him inexplicably out of her life. It didn’t matter she might be living twenty minutes away from this place. That distance might as well be on the other side of the world. She had finally turned up at his workplace one week ago, though it took her the better part of four months – but the ship had long since sailed. She should have spoken to him long before. She left it too late.

The visit, however, shook him up, made him go back to the devastation he felt when she iced him out.

No matter how much he tried to comprehend Aleshia’s actions, he just couldn’t wrap his head around it. If she didn’t want to date him anymore, then why not just say it? Why ignore so many texts? Why disregard everything he had ever said to her? He meant the words. Together, he thought he stood a chance of filling the hole in his life. It looked like madness to outsiders. He didn’t fault that. But to him, it made sense. It felt like sense. Fu*k all the expectations, rules and social norms – fu*k the idea that he would end up with a child that wasn’t his in a short amount of time if he dated Aleshia – he wanted it. Nothing else worked. Not the dating rituals, the stable, well-paid job, and the quiet, gentle expectation of his family to settle down from the bachelor life soon, and produce children to lavish gifts on.

They didn’t fill the emptiness inside. But Aleshia had – not just with her presence, but with the truth, and the upcoming boy in her stomach. Hadn’t his dad always said – it wasn’t the blood that made a true father – it was the responsibility?

Cameron never accepted personal responsibility. No pets, no children, and no long-term girlfriends. The only one he committed to was work, and even then, that only came became of the massive push from his father to thrive in the industry. It was his job, but if Dad never pushed…

Taking a gulp of gin, watered down with tonic, Cameron sighed, slumping in his chair as though stagnated.

It only took him thirty-three years to figure out what he needed out of life. And the thing he wanted decided to piss all over the offer.

Fu*k her, Cameron thought savagely. She didn’t have to fu*king do that. I thought she was different. A freak out, I get. But this? No. It’s not on. I don’t deserve this. I’m not wrong on refusing her. She fu*king froze me out.

A small twinge of guilt flooded him. Again, his mind replayed through Aleshia’s unexpected appearance at his workplace.

Four months without a single word, except for what Dijon had uttered to him. Then, the heavily pregnant, devastatingly beautiful woman had turned up at work. When he saw her waddle into his office, he froze.

“I…” she had said, looking chagrined, “Cameron. I’m sorry.”

He allowed one word to slip out, laced with malice, after a second of silence elongated into a minute. “Sorry?”

She nodded. “Yes. I know what I’ve done isn’t fair to you… but hear me out. I didn’t want to… mess things up. See them go the same way as Peter. I didn’t want to bring you back into that spiral. But I haven’t been feeling happy about this. I miss you.”

He watched her in silence, fighting to contain the boiling anger, despair and hurt that seethed. Hope and happiness, the smallest voices of all, drowned under the influx of negative emotions.

“I kept telling myself I needed to do this. I couldn’t speak to you, because if I did… I wouldn’t be able to resist you. I would just fall head over heels with you, and put myself in the same position I did before. Falling for someone before I truly knew who they were. Trapping them with my mistake, this pregnancy. But the real mistake was… I was comparing you to someone who was nothing like you.”

The pen in Cameron’s hand cracked from the tightness of his grip.

“I unfairly pushed you away, when you had shown nothing to prove otherwise. I allowed my doubts to get the better of me. I’m sorry. I hoped… maybe… we could start talking things over again. And I know you have every right to –”

“Get out.” Cameron’s voice stabbed. “Get the hell out of my office. I don’t want to see you again. I’m done.”

Aleshia, stricken, looked at him, eyes on the verge of tears. But, wordlessly, she left, seeing the ice in his eyes, the barbs on his tongue.

After she left, he wanted to scream for her to come back. Dash over to her penguin-waddling form, tell her he fu*king hated her for what she did to him, but he still fu*king wanted her back and he had been waiting for her to say those words for months. He wanted to shake up her stupid, biased brain and tell her to never do something like that again.

Instead, he sat there, cracking his pen further, unmoving.

Finishing his gin, he went over to the two women, the only other inhabitants of the Wayward Boot. Despite the flirting Cameron had done in the past month or so, he never felt satisfied. He had even taken some women to bed – it wasn’t like he ever lacked the selection to choose from – none of them gave him the same sense of awe like Aleshia did. They were simply screws. Nothing more. He went to the bars, declared how he didn’t want children, didn’t want the troubles associated with them, bagged his women whenever he wanted – and came out of each encounter feeling lonelier and more rotten than before.

The women stared at him in interest as he flashed a bright, endearing smile. “Hello, ladies. Can I buy you a round of drinks, or is there no more room on the table?”

The server smiled as well, although it came with exasperated resentment.

“Sure!” The blonde, dark eye woman beckoned him to sit by her. “I’m expecting a friend shortly. She’s married, so you can’t flirt with her, sorry.”