I exhaled, rubbing the back of my neck. My mind replayed the conversation that morning, Luka’s name hanging between us, and then Cameron’s voice, low and certain, telling his own story.
He made me realise what I wanted wasn’t a phase. It was real. I could want someone, not just the idea of them.
I’d heard a lot of confessions in my life—students fumbling through nerves before performances, friends drunk on heartbreak or triumph—but never one that had felt quite like that. There’d been something in the way Cameron spoke that lodged under my ribs.
I’ve never really…beenwith anyone.
That had stopped me.
Not for judgment, not even surprise, but for what it revealed about the quiet, unshaken confidence Cameron carried. Most people mistook youth for recklessness. Cameron had a stillness beneath his light.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d met someone who still had that.
I leaned back, staring at the window. The rain had begun again, soft streaks across the glass. The city lights blurred into halos.
For years, I’d measured people by predictability, the surety of their motives, the safety of their distance. Luka had taught me to distrust passion.
Cameron was dangerous in a different way. Yes, he was intense, but he was also honest. He wasn’t playing a game. He wasn’t trying to prove anything.
He simplywas,open, warm, unapologetically present.
And that’s the problem.
I didn’t know how to meet such openness without protecting myself against it. I didn’t know how to be looked at as though I was worth understanding.
I set the mug down carefully on the bedside table, the ceramicclinkloud in the quiet.
It’s nothing. It’s just empathy. Curiosity. The side effect of too much conversation and too little sleep.
But when I finally got into bed and closed my eyes, what lingered in my head was the memory of Cameron’s expression, its mix of courage and tenderness.
Maybe I just haven’t met the person worth breaking my streak for.
My pulse raced. What unnerved me in that moment wasn’t lust but possibility.
Maybe Cameron isn’t the only one learning how to open up.
My heart quaked.
You don’t have to survive me.
I stared at the ceiling, and when the words came to me, I whispered them into the night.
“Maybe I’m tired of surviving.”
Chapter Eleven
Theo
The smellof coffee reached me before the hazy morning light of Monday morning did.
I woke to the quiet clatter of mugs in the kitchen and the soft, off-key humming that meant Cameron was awake. For a moment I lay there, listening to the sound of another person moving through my morning. It felt strange but pleasant.
When I stepped into the kitchen, Cameron stood in front of the stove, his back to me. The sight of Cameron’s long legs encased in skinny jeans, revealing the outline of a firm arse, was enough to stop me dead in my tracks.
The only emotion to spear through me was regret that I hadn’t had the chance to see that arse in all its naked glory the other morning.
That’s because you looked away. You know, because you didn’t want Cameron to catch you perving on him?