Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story by Rebecca Norinne Caudill Page A

wanted nothing more than to hug him to me and never let go. Now who is being emo? I thought.
    Regardless of what he’d said when we first woke up, I sensed his thoughts – talk of nothing changing, how it was still the two of us as we had always been – weren’t entirely true. In the span of thirty minutes we’d gone from perfection to … not perfect. Now there existed a tension that had never been there before and I couldn’t figure out why that had changed. How had we altered so much so quickly? There was no reason for us to have started the morning yelling at each other, no reason whatsoever for Cameron to have retreated into himself yet again. Feeling worried and dejected, I hoped we hadn’t fucked things up before we could even truly begin.
    Cameron hadn’t looked my way since I’d entered the room but I knew he sensed my presence in the doorway. Finally, his rub down of Duke complete, he glanced up at me and I felt the earth swing on its axis once again.
    “I liked waking up here,” he said, interrupting my inner monologue.
    “You wouldn’t have known it,” I responded, my voice flat.
    “I think I panicked.”
    “No shit you panicked. But why?”
    “I dunno,” he said, standing up and leaning his long, lithe body against the counter.
    As far as I was concerned he hadn’t answered my question so I didn’t speak. “I dunno” was not a sufficient answer.
    Then he added, “Things were so perfect. I woke up and you were smiling at me and all I felt was this deep, profound sense of rightness.” He smiled and my traitorous cheeks warmed at the happy expression on his face. And then it fell. “I’ve wanted to be with you for so long but it seems like nothing has gone the way I thought it would.”
    He eased himself away from the counter and came to stand in front of me, putting his large hands on my bare arms. At the contact of his skin against mine, my stomach dropped to somewhere around my knees and my heartbeat accelerated. This man could control my body without even trying; just one slight caress and I was ready to melt into him.
    “I didn’t think there’d be any surprises since we know each other so well, but I also hadn’t counted on messing things up so monumentally. Now I feel like every interaction we have is laced with your anger.”
    He put a finger over my lips to keep my interruption at bay.
    “Just hear me out. You’re still really angry for what happened and I don’t blame you. I’m still angry with myself. But when we were fighting back there”— he gestured toward my bedroom— “this look came over your face, something I’d never seen before, and it shocked me. I realized I’ve never seen you truly angry. Sure, I’ve witnessed your road rage first hand and seen how upset you can get over something your mother has said or done, so I thought I knew what to expect when you get worked up. But what I saw when you were yelling at me just now was something entirely different.” He shook his head sadly. “You looked like you hated me, like you wanted me gone from your life and I don’t think I can live with that kind of hate Sarah”
    I was about to deny it, tell him he was wrong, but deep down inside I knew he wasn’t. Despite how wonderful the night before had been – how him admitting he loved me was one of the best things I’d ever heard – I was still hurt over his abandonment. Even though now I knew why it had happened, knowing his reasons didn’t change the fact that I’d spent the last month of my life feeling wretched and humiliated.
    “I’m not trying to be a bitch,” I said, my voice low. “I don’t want to be mad at you anymore, but I don’t know how to make that hurt magically disappear either. You’ve explained why you did what you did, but it doesn’t change the fact that it made me question my own self worth and I loathe that. Can you imagine how you would’ve felt if in the middle of making love, I jumped out of bed and left you, naked and