Story of My Life

Hazel meets Cam on her front doorstep, dressed for their date. When she asks how she looks, Cam simply says that she looks “fine,” which prompts her to want to change immediately. Cam stops her from doing so, insisting that he’s too hungry to wait. He gives a possible explanation for her book, claiming that perhaps her hero said “fine” because her heroine “looks so good she made him forget his entire vocabulary” (241). Cam accidentally lets slip that he’s reading one of Hazel’s novels, which she appreciates even though it confuses her. Cam proceeds to take Hazel to a fancy restaurant that both dislike. Hazel accuses Cam of purposefully trying to sabotage the date. When she attempts to pay and storm off, Cam covers the bill himself and follows her. Though Hazel is inclined to go directly home, Cam convinces her to go on a true Cam-style date.

Cam takes Hazel to a convenience store, where he buys them hoagies and beers. He then brings them to the lakefront, where he borrows Levi’s boat and takes them out onto the water beneath the stars. Hazel is begrudgingly impressed with the romantic idea.

Hazel convinces Cam to open up to her. She asks about his family, and he reveals that he, Levi, and Gage are biological siblings who went into foster care after their parents died in a car accident. They were split up and sent to different foster homes. Eventually, Gage was placed with the Bishops, who loved him, worked hard to reunite all the brothers, and adopted them. Cam admits that he feels guilty for having left them. After college, he took a job in Maryland with a real-estate developer and worked his way up while everyone else stayed in Story Lake. When his father had a bad stroke, Cam temporarily returned home to help the family, but he eventually left again. It wasn’t until Laura’s accident that he quit his job, sold his place, and came home for good. While he feels selfish about leaving in the first place, Hazel assures him that it’s not selfish to want his own life.

When Cam asks about her own family, Hazel attempts to change the subject, but she eventually divulges that she is not close with her mother, who is nearly on her seventh marriage. She also shares that her father died when she was a toddler and that she doesn’t even have pictures of him because she and her mother moved so much. When Hazel expresses distaste over her mother’s lifestyle, claiming that people are supposed to look for “the one,” not “the seven,” Cam asks if her ex-husband was the one, pointing out the flaw in her understanding of romantic love. Hazel admits that she allowed Jim to walk all over her. Cam is disgusted when she reveals that Jim—an agent who represents literary fiction—dismissed her books because they are romances.

Cam eventually has the urge to kiss Hazel as their conversation becomes more intimate. To escape the urge, he takes them back to the dock, where they are surprised to find Levi and the town pig, Rump Roast. Startled, Cam accidentally knocks Hazel into the water and then jumps in after her. After driving her home, Cam walks Hazel to her door and gives her an intense goodnight kiss to properly end their fake date.

Feeling inspired by the events of the night, Hazel immediately retreats to her office, where she writes throughout the night, churning out over 10,000 words. Darius interrupts her when he arrives at her doorstep the next morning to take her to town bingo. At bingo, Hazel informs Zoey of her progress while they watch an intense town bingo event that more resembles a sports match. After the game concludes, with the Bishop family team proclaimed the winners, Cam pulls Hazel into a private alcove. They kiss passionately again but are almost caught by Zoey, who is looking for Hazel.

Unable to stop thinking about his kiss with Hazel, Cam is barely able to sleep. When he shows up to continue working on her house the next morning and Gage mentions that Hazel is sleeping, Cam becomes annoyed that “the woman th[inks] she c[an] leave [him] sleepless while she ca[tches] up on her z’s” and decides to demo the bathroom next to her room, startling her awake (289). Wearing a tank top and short shorts, she barges in to scold him, but when his brothers join them upstairs, he hides her from sight, not wanting his brothers to see her so undressed.

Later, Hazel asks the men to pose for shots for her social media. While Cam grumpily refuses, Levi and Gage enthusiastically participate. Afterward, his brothers confront him about his behavior with Hazel. They suspect that he plans to mess with her feelings and warn him away from pursuing Hazel because the family business is on the line.

Cam picks up Laura’s daughter Isla from her first student council meeting. Isla complains about a boy who was flirting with her all summer but asked another girl to homecoming. She accuses the boy of messing with her feelings. Relating Isla’s situation to the situation between him and Hazel, Cam begins to feel guilty for his recent behavior. He visits Hazel at her home later that evening to talk, but he becomes distracted while helping her hang curtains, concerned that she’ll hurt herself. Afterward, Cam expresses his intense sexual attraction to her and his desire to have no-strings-attached sex.

Hazel expresses the same desires, and to protect their mutual interests—his family securing her business through the renovation and Cam remaining her source of inspiration—Hazel and Cam write out a mutual agreement to no-romance sex and sign it before consummating.

After sex, Cam feels the need to have another conversation with Hazel, affirming their agreement. Deep down, Cam feels some disappointment and hurt when Hazel readily confirms that the sex is casual and no-strings-attached. Instead of leaving, Cam settles in for snacks and TV, but they’re eventually interrupted by Zoey’s arrival, which prompts Cam to hide in a closet to escape detection. When Zoey finally leaves the premises, Hazel receives a text from her neighbor, Felicity, who claims to have seen Cam sneaking out in his underwear after being unable to find his pants. She agrees to keep it secret only if Hazel delivers her groceries for the next month.

Hazel continues writing her novel, including spicy sex scenes inspired by her recent experiences with Cam. Meanwhile, her social media presence has continued to pick up. One day, during construction at the house, Zoey barges inside in a fit of anger to show Hazel Jim’s latest interview. In the interview, Jim discusses how he doesn’t represent romance, only literary fiction, because they’re “gritty, worthwhile stories” that aren’t “all happily ever afters and sex” (328). He then mentions his ex-wife by name, stating that Hazel had to pander to a certain demographic to succeed but couldn’t keep up and is being dropped by her representation and, soon, her publisher. When Hazel becomes upset, she attracts the attention of Cam and his brothers, who read the post as well. They become angry enough on her behalf that they nearly drive to New York to teach Jim a lesson, only relenting when Hazel claims that she will take the high road and get revenge by writing her next best-selling novel.