#* cami

Friends wasn't quite the word he'd have ever used to describe what he and Cami had ever been. The clash of personalities had been irritating at first, annoying even. After a while, he no longer detested the barbed comments and bitten insults had left him with an unspoken fondness for the hellion Caravelli well before he'd solidified any sense of a place among them. Once little more than an angry soldier plucked from his prison cell, the now enforcer carried a reputation that didn't quite reflect that of the woman he approached now. He was blood, broken bones and flames that consumed - whole she was, well... this. The opulence of the room left him starkly out of place, easily noted by the way her current company dismissed themselves and turned on their heels quicker than the glare could peel itself from Lucia's features, "Did you pay one of the hotel staff to follow and clean up behind me?" A slight glance over his shoulder at the quiet and rather timid looking middle aged woman enough to shake her into looking otherwise occupied with one of the drapes. "I showered for this and everything." Flute glass in hand, he offered her another, "Added a little kick in that for you, by the way."

Los Angeles had been the only place Nate had ever called home and hailing from a large family before he'd ever tethered himself to something bigger meant that his ties to the city itself - and the people within it were monumental. It was almost unheard of for the veins of Los Angeles to not know the Cooper family in some way, even if only through word of mouth. While he'd never sought to use it to his advantage; it certainly had plenty. Case in point; the phone call he'd received an hour ago from an old high school friend he'd not heard from in at least a decade. Shrouding himself against the crowd as he entered the establishment remembering very quickly the hundreds of nights he'd spent getting thoroughly plastered within its walls. They weren't particularly fond memories, and he wasn't all that interested in watching Cami make one of her own. Whether she'd noticed the attention she was getting from those around her or not was anyone's guess, but from what he'd been told over the phone, it would undoubtedly go south very quickly. "Cami," he spoke lowly, not looking to order her about in any capacity right here and now. The pressure that constricted him from all sides already felt like enough without the Barone daughter and her vicious tongue setting her sights on him. "Come on, it's time to go."