Don't Read in the Closet volume one (15 page)

In quiet moments of
introspection, Cameron still regretted it.

He slammed the trunk
shut, failing to force his thoughts away. Jay was the reason he hadn’t visited
his folks in three years. Too scared to face his ex and see what he’d done to
him and how Jay must hate him. This time he manned up though. He couldn’t stay
away from his home forever and who said Jay was even still here?

Their affair had been a
secret, both men in the closet but he guessed people talked about them anyway.
Cameron cowardly waited until he was safe in New York and then he wrote his
mother a letter telling her he was gay.

After her initial shock,
she was positive about it, his father not so much but at least they were still
on speaking terms. When his mother visited, his father didn’t come with her.
Their first meeting the previous evening had been strained, but he didn’t
imagine the warmth in his father’s hug. It was still there and he was okay. One
hurdle down, one to go. That of bumping into Jay somewhere in town and not
going completely to pieces.

Bare foot, he took the
steep steps down onto the golden sand and looked across the crashing waves with
satisfaction. Yes, it was still as he had imagined. You couldn’t beat the surf
on the Californian coast. He was glad to be back.

He dropped his towel to
the still-damp sand and stepped forward to the shoreline, before he froze.

A figure appeared from
beneath the waves carrying a surfboard and wearing nothing but a pair of tight
black shorts, his cropped dark hair glittering with sea water.

Cameron knew it was him
even before he recognised the lean, tanned body, the washboard abs,
the
muscular shoulders.

He lost his grip on his
board and it tumbled to the sand.

Jay saw him at the same
time and was the first to recover.

“Well, well, well, look
who it is. The college boy’s deigning to grace us with his presence.” Jay had
to raise his voice to be heard over the pounding waves. His hazel eyes
glittered in the first rays of sunshine. Cameron heard the spite, the loss, in
his tone and let anger mask his own emotions.

“Deigning? That’s a big
word,
sure you know what it means?”

Jay dropped his board,
fury on his face, one fist clenched. “You haven’t changed, you prick. Always
thought you were better than me, better than
this
didn’t you?”

Cameron regarded him a
moment. Was that really what Jay thought of him? Cameron had never thought
that. He had only wanted to aspire to something more than this sleepy town and
its self-satisfied, unmotivated inhabitants.

Fulfilling his dreams
had cost him Jay and it had taken him until this moment to realise it was the
biggest mistake of his life.

He bit his lip.
Pointless to let Jay see how much this encounter hurt him. Better to finish the
war of words and then crawl away somewhere to lick his wounds. He tilted his
chin arrogantly.

“That’s right. Hardly
the sharpest tool in the box, were you Jay?”

Jay rushed at him with
rage twisting his handsome features. He punched Cameron in the face and Cameron
stumbled back over his board and fell heavily, his jaw smarting. Jay was on him
in an instant. He pinned Cameron’s wrists above his head, leaning his weight on
them, snarling into his face.

“I’ve wanted to do that
for so fucking long, you’ve no idea.”

Water dripped into
Cameron’s face. Rogue waves slipped beneath his body, the tide coming in
swiftly. He stared up into the glittering green-brown eyes. He was taller, more
muscular,
stronger
than Jay. He tossed his ex off him.

Jay grabbed his ankle as
Cameron tried to stand and then they were back in the sand, amongst the
incoming waves, tousling furiously, Jay raining blows on Cameron and Cameron
trying his best to defend himself without resort to his fists because Christ,
even now, even after all the water under the bridge, he didn’t want to hurt
Jay.

It was a bit late for
that now wasn’t it? What had he done three years ago? He’d watched the tears
stream down his lover’s face. He’d watched Jay beg him not to leave, promise
him anything, if only he said this wasn’t the end.

God, what had he done?
In three years, he’d never found anyone to replace Jay and now, with that
still-familiar body pressing down on his, coiled with rage, he knew he never
would.

He shoved Jay off him
again and scrambled to his feet. Jay tripped him, punched him in the back and
as Cameron fell face
first,
Jay was on him again,
pressing his face into the water.

“You son of a bitch, you
fucking lousy son of a bitch, I don’t know how you dare come back here after
what you did to me.”

Cameron coughed and
spluttered, breathing in sand and salt, trying to twist away from the heavy
hand on the back of his neck.

But Jay obviously didn’t
have murder in mind because he let him go soon enough.

Cameron rolled over,
eyes streaming, tasting grit between his teeth and crawled up the beach,
grabbing for his towel which remained dry a few feet away, wiping off as best
he could. Jay climbed up. His jaw was clenched tight, face pale beneath his
summer tan.

Four months was all
they’d spent together. Enough for Cameron to know Jay was the one.

Jay bent to grab his
board which was slowly being dragged back into the ocean by the incoming tide.

Cameron splashed through
the water to grip his arm.

Jay whirled around to
shove him back. “Get the hell off me.”

“Jay.”

Jay started to walk
away, out of the waves.

“Jay, wait. Please.”

Jay stopped. He stood
with shoulders slumped and head bowed. Cameron moved up behind him, close
enough to smell the ocean on Jay’s glistening skin and for him to remember a
hundred times of doing the same with Jay in his bed.

“Oh Christ, I didn’t
want it to end, you have to believe me. I didn’t think it was fair to ask you
to wait three years for me and I knew you didn’t want to leave here and so I
didn’t ask you to come to New York with me. I thought it was fairer for me to
finish it. That in the long run, I’d be doing you a favour.”

The taste of sea water
was strong in his mouth. Cameron felt nauseated. His heart beat louder in his
ears than the crashing waves. He had fantasised a dozen meetings with Jay and
all of them had ended up this way – in violence, in recriminations, in
desperate hurt.

Jay turned around. “A
favour? When you ripped my heart out and took it away forever, what sort of
favour were you doing me? Spoiling me for every other man who
came
calling, yeah, some sort of favour that was.”

Cameron swallowed the
bitterness in his throat. Jay’s teeth were pressed hard together but it didn’t
stop his lip trembling or the shine across his golden eyes.

“Jay.” Cameron put a
hand on his forearm and remembered that long ago feel of Jay’s silky skin. “I
broke my own heart when I did it. I know you can never forgive me and I’ll
never forgive myself.” His hand tightened. “I’m sorry.”

Jay’s eyes met his for
the longest moment. Then he rubbed a rough hand over his eyes and shrugged away
from Cameron’s touch. “No.” Instead of walking away up the beach, he left his
board and instead, ran into the ocean.

Cameron stared after him
as Jay plunged beneath the waves. This was futile, he knew it, but he couldn’t
go. He couldn’t go without just…touching Jay once more.

He waded into the
foaming water. Spray splashed his face and stung his eyes. For a moment he felt
the ecstasy of the ocean, the same buzz he always got when he
came
surfing but swiftly checked himself. There was no
ecstasy to be had here. All that was done. For a moment he felt his love of
surfing had been forever dented by the events of that morning.

It would serve him
right.

He plunged forward,
following Jay at a fast crawl.
Christ, where was he going?
Jay was
dozens of yards up ahead, swimming towards a far out buoy.

Both of them were fit,
this long distance swim wasn’t going to tire either of them quickly but God,
Jay had to stop soon, didn’t he? An icy hand gripped Cameron’s heart without
warning. Jay could just keep going. Swim into sharks or dangerous tides, be stricken
with cramp. Perhaps that was his idea. Perhaps it was more preferable to life
without Cameron.

Cameron’s throat felt
full of bile. He cried Jay’s name and was swept under by a furious wave. For a
moment he was upside down, flailing, water in his lungs before he came retching
to the surface, searching for Jay through stinging eyes.

“Jay, please.”

Another wave slapped him
hard. Suddenly the ocean felt like his enemy.

Jay had stopped at the
buoy, holding with one hand, chest heaving, face flushed. “Go away.”

Cameron reached him. He
treaded water, catching his breath,
then
he leant
forward.

“Don’t. Get off me.”

Cameron cupped Jay’s wet
head and brought their lips together. He tasted salt on Jay’s mouth; he tasted
the love he had thrown away three years ago.

Jay gave a soft moan
against his mouth. Rather than shoving Cameron away again, his arm curved
around his neck. Their bodies pressed together beneath the water and they both
went under.

Cameron spluttered back
up, gripped Jay around the waist before he had chance to protest and kissed him
again. He felt the instant force of Jay’s desire, his tongue in his mouth, his
sweet, sweet lips. Kissing Jay was sometimes just as good as making love to
him. Cameron remembered their first kiss, after a month of dancing around each
other and wondering if Jay felt the same. They were sat in his car at the
furthest point of the Cove, overlooking the lighthouse. He’d brought some
beers, drank one while Jay had drank three and been merrily tipsy. Cameron
hadn’t waited for him to get any drunker. He intended for Jay to remember what
he’d done. He’d leaned over, taken Jay’s chin in his hand to turn his face to
him and laid the smooch on him.

It had been the greatest
night of his life without doubt.

Jay had responded then
as now, with a soft moan, his fingers pushing into Cameron’s hair. They’d
kissed for ten long minutes before Jay had crossed the divide between them,
straddling Cameron’s lap with his ass pressed against the steering wheel,
honking the horn loudly.

They’d both giggled like
children and Cameron had fumbled with the lever to push his seat backwards.
Then he’d slid both hands up Jay’s shirt to touch the satin soft skin, trailing
his fingers down the glorious curve of his spine as he fell in love.

Jay pulled away and
brought Cameron back to the here and now. He stared at him with his pupils huge
in his hazel eyes and diamond drops of water on his thick lashes, his sensual
lips kiss-swollen and pink.

“Come on.” He started to
swim away.

Cameron hesitated for a
moment before he followed with his desire coiled thick like honey in his
stomach. He hardly dared to hope.

The waves swept him
fiercely towards shore. Both their surfboards floated in the water. Cameron
waded out as Jay came to him, both arms around his neck, pressing a needy kiss
to his lips.

Cameron muttered a curse
and scooped Jay close. They clung together before Jay pulled him down to roll
around in the sand.

They’d done
this one or two times
. One night they’d been naked on this
very beach and gone the whole hog with an anxious Cameron looking for
headlights and flinching at every sound.

He crushed Jay beneath
him,
thrust a thigh between his legs to press against the
bulge in Jay’s shorts.

“Not here,” he tried to
gasp as Jay gripped him through his wetsuit, massaging his hard cock.

“I want you.”

“Christ,
it’s
broad daylight.”

“I don’t care.”

Cameron stumbled to his
feet, his wetsuit obscenely tented. He grabbed his board and motioned for Jay
to follow him.

The two of them hurried
up the steps to Cameron’s car and stowed their boards. When Cameron started to
peel his wetsuit off, Jay helped him, pressing kisses between his shoulders,
touching uncovered flesh.

Cameron was on fire. He
stripped to his tiny running shorts and then he scrabbled in a bag in the trunk
for his wallet.

“What are you doing?”
Jay sounded impatient, almost desperate.

“Looking for something,
what do you think?” Cameron pulled free a condom and held it up.

For a moment Jay seemed
to hesitate. He’d given all the signals that he wanted this; had Cameron read
him wrong?

He stood and stared into
Jay’s beautiful eyes for a moment, reliving their past with his heart caught in
the palm of this man’s hand.

Then Jay turned
abruptly. He gestured back to the beach. “Down there in the cave.” Without
another word, he set off walking.