She turned her back, put in the order for the taxi, then threw the phone into her bag.
'Rosalind. Come on. Nobody's dumping anybody. All I'm saying is that we be sensible and look at where we are going here with open eyes.'
She closed her eyes, took a breath and her shoulders relaxed. Somewhat. But that warm, husky voice that he'd become so used to turned as cold as the river at night as she said, 'You want me to be sensible? Well, you obviously haven't been paying close enough attention. If I'd been sensible I would never have agreed to go out with the guy I had a crush on through high school. That is obviously one fantasy best left unfulfilled.'
Cameron's heart slammed hard and fast against his ribs. She'd had a crush on him? And fantasized about him? His voice was deep and dark when he said, 'Come back, sit down and talk to me.'
She waved a frantic hand across her eyes. 'Please. You were right. I'm just overtired. I get it; we've both monopolised one another's time so much these past days. You're busy and I'm busy, and neither of us ever meant for this to be more than it has to this point been. It's fine.'
In the end all she could do was shrug.
If he wanted out for good, this was the moment. He had no doubt she was just waiting for the word-goodbye. It was a simple enough word. Benign, unambiguous, final.
But he couldn't do it. He couldn't be that cool with her. Unlike every other woman he'd ever dated, she'd never been cool with him. She'd given him nothing but the complete truth, and she deserved the same.
'Rosalind, it's not you.'
'Where the hell's the damn cab?' She paced to the bottom of the stairs. He followed.
'Rosalind, I need you to hear me out.' He knew it was manipulative, but in order for her not to leave feeling hurt and angry he needed her to hear what he had to say, so he said it anyway. 'Please.'
At the 'please', she turned back to him. Her jaw was tight, her eyes wild with emotion. But at least she stopped walking away.
Having to ground himself if he was really going to say this, Cameron parked his backside against a corner of the lounge and looked out across the city view.
'I was in the eleventh grade when I saw my father come out of a city hotel with a woman who wasn't my mother. As I stood on the opposite side of the street, on my way to meet him at his office after school, he kissed her. Right there on the footpath, in front of peak-hour traffic-my father, who the whole city knew by sight. No thought for discretion or propriety or the woman the world thought he'd been blissfully married to for the previous thirty years … or anyone but himself.'
He blinked, dragged his eyes from the city view and looked to her. She stood still as a statue, those grey eyes simply giving him the space to keep going. Deeper. To places he'd never let himself go before.
'My mother … She had to put up with a lot, being married to a man like my father. The long hours, the ego, having to raise his four headstrong children in public. She did so with grace, humility, and love. So the fact that he could show such contempt towards her, to all of us … '
His fingernails bit into his palms as he fought down the same old desire to take a swing at his father the next time he laid eyes on the man.
'Why I am telling you this, what I'd like you to take from this,' he said, 'Is that I won't be like him. I'd rather see you walk away now-right at the very moment I can barely think straight for how much I want to continue what we started back there in the kitchen-if that means not hurting you by giving you false hope that I might one day offer you anything more. I can't. Not when I know that even the most solid relationships ultimately fail beneath the weight of secrets and lies.'
He came to an end and needed to breathe deep to press out the sudden tightness in his lungs. His eyes locked onto hers, her strength keeping him amazingly steady.
'Cameron,' she said on a release of breath, 'You expect far too much of people.'
'Only what I expect of myself.'
'I was including you too.'
He shifted on his seat. 'You think loyalty and good faith are too much to expect, even after how your father treated you and your mother?'
A muscle in her cheek twitched but her steady gaze didn't falter. 'For some people they are too much.'
He shook his head hard. 'I'm sorry, but I can't accept that.'
'Then that's a real shame.'
Cameron shot to his feet and ran a hard hand across the back of his neck. This wasn't how this had been meant to go. He'd hoped that by being forthright and upfront with her he'd feel justified in slowing things down, like he'd done right by her. Instead she was somehow making him feel like he hadn't done right by himself.
She tugged her poncho over her head, flicking her hair out at the end and running fingers through it until it fell in messy waves over her shoulders.
His response was chemical. His insides tightened and burned with a need to have her lose layers, not put them back on.
The doorbell rang; her taxi. She slipped her feet back into her shoes then looked back at him.
Her eyes said, ask me to stay.
But her tilted chin and tense neck said, let me go.
He went back to her eyes. Those beautiful, sad, grey eyes, so wide open he felt himself falling in, wanting more than he knew he could give. He pulled himself back from the brink just in time to say, 'I'll call you.'
She nodded, gave a short smile that held none of the mischief and humour he was so used to seeing therein, and jogged up the stairs without looking back.
CHAPTER TEN
ROSIE was exhausted. Which was naturally manifesting itself in a complete inability to sleep.
The minute the clock beside her bed clicked over to a quarter to three, she dragged herself out of bed.
She wouldn't be able to see Venus until about an hour before sunrise, but it had to be better outside than staring at the low ceiling of her caravan, wondering how on earth she'd let herself get to the point where she'd decided she might be able to allow Cameron deeper into her life at the precise moment when he had decided he wasn't sure that he wanted her in his.
She ran her hands over her face, then through her hair, tugging at knots in the messy waves, then trudged into the bathroom to splash water on her face. As she wiped it dry, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Eyes dark. Mouth down turned.
She blinked and for a moment saw herself at fifteen, locked in the bathroom of the tiny flat she'd shared with her mum, and this feeling, the same familiar, cutting pain, crawling beneath the surface of her skin. It wasn't the pain of a girl pining for a man in her life. It was the pain of a girl who'd never been bright enough, good enough, devoted enough to fill the subsequent hole in her mother's heart.
How could an invisible girl like that ever hope to be enough to fill anyone else's heart?
Rosie licked her dry lips, then wiped fingers beneath her moist eyes. Time to go. Focussing on the colossal mystery of the universe would render her woes less important. It had to.
Too cold and too miserable to get completely naked, she pulled her clothes on over the top of her flannelette pyjamas-a fluffy wool knee-length cardigan she'd picked up in a thrift shop years before, a thick grey scarf, a lumpy red beanie with two fat, wobbly pom-poms on top, and the jeans she'd worn the day before. She didn't bother with her contacts, leaving her glasses on instead.
The hike to the plateau with her massive backpack was not in the last bit invigorating. It was cold, uncomfortable, and when she hit the spot the night sky was covered in patchy cloud.
She popped up the one-man dome tent which was just tall enough for her to stand up in, threw in all her stuff to keep the dew away and laid a canvas-backed picnic blanket upon the already moist grass. She set up her telescope. And turned on the battery-operated light attached to her notebook.
She sat on the ground cross-legged, waiting for the cloud cover to open up, revealing a sprinkle of stars.
Time marched on and the sky gave her nothing.
No mystery, no majesty, nothing to take her mind off the world at her feet and all the heartache that came with it. She slumped back onto the rug and closed her eyes.
She and Adele had both been wrong. Cameron wasn't really any different from any of the others. They all left her eventually; location had no effect on the matter.
She heard a twig snap, and her eyes flew open.
It could have been a possum. Or there had long since been rumours of a big cat loose in the area. And crazy axe-murderers were a genuine fear for some people for a good reason.