Never Say Never

Chapter 20

Whenever Lauren closes her eyes, all she can see is Camila's face.

She's inescapable, even here, in Lauren's beach house, a place where Camila has never even been . She'd only been able to spend a couple of hours in her apartment when she and Leo had gotten back from the airport, because reminders of Camila were all around her and she just needed an escape .

She'd thought it would be better, here, but it's not.

She blinks and she sees Camila's face, the wrenching pain in her eyes or the blank expression she'd worn the whole flight home, or worse , the way she'd looked like she was crumbling as she walked towards her sister.

She'd seen Camila fall into her arms, seen the panicked look on Sofi's face, and then Sofi had raised her head, sought out Lauren from across the crowded room, and the second their eyes had met understanding flickered across Sofi's face and then her expression had changed.

Camila's sister had looked at her with such contempt, such fury , that it had made Lauren's blood run cold.

She's glad that she has a few more days before Camila comes back, knows she wouldn't have been ready, wouldn't have her walls back in place (would've cracked and broken down the second that Camila had looked at her), if she'd have had less than a week's reprieve.

Leo will be fine for a few days in her office or with Nick – although she thinks he'd probably prefer being with his father, because he's not happy with her, not his usual self and she knows it's because he senses that something is deeply wrong between Lauren and Camila and she hates it (hates herself), because she was supposed to protect him from this, she wasn't supposed to fall for Camila, and she sure as hell wasn't supposed to act on it.

But the damage is done, and while she doesn't know if they'll be able to move past it, she won't know for sure until Camila returns to work, so there's no point dwelling on it now.

(She does, though, the uncertainty driving her slowly insane, as she runs through different scenarios of what might happen, hates that she doesn't know which one is the most likely).

She doesn't know how she's going to react, is the thing. Because she'd told herself before that she would keep Camila at arm's length, but she'd cracked the second they'd been alone together in London, somehow convinced herself that it was different, there, that it wouldn't count , that whatever happened wouldn't have any repercussions once they got home.

And it had been so hard, that morning after, when she'd gotten a look at Camila (a brief look, as she'd been striding for the front door, with only a minute until they were supposed to be in the lobby, minimising the amount of time they were around one another because she didn't trust herself), to pretend that she was completely unaffected by the bloodshot eyes, by the tear tracks on her cheeks, knowing that it was all her fault.

She couldn't look at her, didn't want to see what she'd done to her (she was a coward, something she'd sworn to never become), had shoved headphones in her ears and played music loudly so she could drown out the sound of Camila's voice, even as it echoed around in her head.

(She hears Camila ask 'why not?' in that soft and scared voice, she hears her accusing 'but you kissed me back ' and thinks that she handled it all wrong, that she should've fallen back into Camila's lap and kissed her senseless, consequences be damned).

Lauren thought a break from her life would do her some good, but all it does is leave her with time to think. Leo is grumpy, most of the time, sometimes doesn't want to talk to her, and at night when he's gone to bed she's left with nothing but her thoughts for company.

It's a dark time, and she thinks it was a bad decision, to come out here.

She decides to stick it out, though, because it's only five days, and she hopes that Leo will cheer up on Christmas morning.