The Bacelor: Make A Sex Deal

Hannah sat in one of the center seats with her arms folded across her chest.

Anger filled her expression, a glare mounting in her eyes.

Her lips were pulled into a thin, hard line.

I was positive she had witnessed the kiss Oaklyn and I had just shared outside-any of the four windows to Hannah’s left would have given her the perfect view.

Not that it fucking mattered.

My presence in Sedona, along with the fact that we were boarding The Dalton Group’s private jet rather than the commercial flight Oaklyn was supposed to be on, proved we’d spent the last four nights together.

That we were more than just friends.

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Me.

“Hey, lovebugs,” Hannah said, her voice carrying across to where we stood, causing Oaklyn to turn toward my sister. “How was your little vacay? Did you enjoy the desert together?” Her eyes narrowed. “What, you really thought I wasn’t going to find out?” She shook her head, like a teacher scolding a student. “Come on. You guys know me way better than that.” She nodded toward the seat next to her. “Why don’t you come in? You have a whole flight to explain to me how long this relationship has been going on for and why the hell I had to find out like this.”

My hand moved back to Oaklyn’s stomach.

There was zero need for her to push it away at this point.

“I guess it’s time to tell her,” I whispered. “Jesus Christ.”

Oaklyn clung to my hand. “This is the last thing I wanted. Damn it, Camden.”

“I know. Me too.”

She made her way onto the plane and took a seat across from Hannah, setting her purse on the floor. I took the spot beside my girlfriend, immediately calling over the flight attendant.

“Vodka. Rocks. And keep them coming,” I told her.

“I’ll have the same, thank you,” Oaklyn said to her.

When it was just the three of us, I studied my sister’s expression. It hadn’t faded even a little, her edges harder than before.

I dug for the right words. Where to start. How to make her understand that betraying her trust and lying had been so fucked up of us, but that it was the only way we had known how to do it.

“I don’t know if you’re going to believe me when I tell you this, but we had every intention of coming to you tonight and telling you about us.” I glanced at Oaklyn, worried that she was on the verge of falling apart. With the way her eyes were filling and her chin was quivering and her posture was sinking even deeper into the chair, I could tell she was seconds from losing it. “As soon as we got on the plane, I was going to text you and find out if you were free this evening. If you weren’t, we were going to tell you tomorrow.”

Hannah tucked her legs beneath her, resting her arms on the armrests. “Sure you were.”

“He’s telling the truth, Han.” Oaklyn’s voice was so soft. “I swear.”

“And what were you going to tell me exactly?” Her eyes penetrated mine. “That you’ve been fucking my best friend behind my back for, what, months now, and you’re going to dump her, just like you do every other woman? Camden”-her head dropped, her arms moving back to her stomach-“I can’t handle you hurting her and treating her like you do all the other women you’ve been with.”

“I’m in love with Oaklyn.” I let that settle in, watching as my sister slowly looked up at me. “Yes, you heard me correctly. I love Oaklyn. She’s nothing like all the other women. She’s the only woman. And the only woman who will ever be in my life again.”

She stared at me, blinking, processing, her gaze gradually moving to Oaklyn. “Why didn’t you tell me? You tell me everything-that’s who we are. We share every single part of our lives with each other. Yet this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to you, and you wouldn’t name him. You would barely even talk about him. Why?”

The first tear fell down Oaklyn’s cheek, and I released her hand to catch it.

That simple graze of her skin caused her to look at me, love exploding from her eyes before she glanced back at my sister.

“Because you wouldn’t have understood.” Her answer was honest, raw. And the emotion in her voice and face showed just how hard it was for her to admit that. “Because if I’d told you I was in love with your brother, you would have said to me everything you just said to him. I didn’t want to hear it. If it was a mistake, I didn’t care; I still wanted to make it.” Another tear dripped, but I let that one fall. “Because Camden is the only man I’ve ever wanted to be with. The man I’ve thought about since the day we met as kids. The man I wanted to take my virginity.” She paused to breathe. “If I had said those things to you, you would have looked at me like you’re looking at me right now. You would have tried to stop me. You would have listed every reason why I shouldn’t have those thoughts.” She looked at me one more time and said, “I didn’t want to hear it, and I didn’t want to be stopped.”

“This was a better alternative?” Hannah shot back. “To lie? To do it all behind my back? Knowing I would eventually find out?”

“Hannah,” I barked, “be careful how you speak to Oaklyn. She might be your best friend, but she’s the love of my life, and you might not like how things went down, but know this: best friends or not, you will not make her feel worse than she already does.” My teeth ground together. “And you won’t make her feel ashamed of what we did.”

While my sister stewed on those words, I returned to her line of questioning and said, “To answer you, I didn’t think you’d find out. I thought we’d been fairly careful. I was sure that tonight or tomorrow would be the first time you heard or thought of any of this.”