I saw Sarah look up at me out of the corner of my eye. If she wasn’t here, I would be digging through the kitchen drawers for a murder weapon right about now. Instead, I resolved myself. Turning toward the stairs, I started to make my way up to my room. In my closet I pulled out a duffle bag and began throwing all of my clothes in, not caring if they were folded neatly.
“What are you doing?” Camden asked from the doorway.
“Leaving.”
He felt him come into my room and approach me from behind. “Why?” He sounded confused.
“Because I need out, I need to step away to get a break from everything.” I went back to my closet and collected more things.
His arm shot out, and he grabbed my wrist. “Would you stop for a minute and talk to me?”
I faced him. “What do you want to talk about, huh? Do you want talk about the fact that you didn’t think of me again when there was something that was obviously important? Or how about that you conveniently didn’t tell me about Bree when knowing that you had a sister is a pretty big fucking deal. Or maybe even that I told you that I loved you for the first time and you had nothing to say about it.” My chest heaved as air rushed out of me, and I broke out into a full on sob.
He tried to bring me into him, but I yanked my arm away. It pissed him off. “So you’re just running away. You’re not even going to give me the chance to talk to you, is that it?”
“You’ve had plenty of chances to tell me the shit that you’ve kept from me. Clearly I’m not a vital person in your life. You place your value in other things, and I’m too far down on your list of ‘what Camden gives a shit about’ for you to care.”
He moved fast. Ripping the clothes out of my hands and throwing them against the wall, he clasped the back of my neck and made me look him in the eyes. I’d never seen him so angry in all the time that I’d known him. There was no mistaking the intensity of his words when he spoke. “You ever say anything like that to me again, I can promise you this is done. You’ve never been low on my priority list, and if you ever were, believe me you’d know it. I do things in my own way. You needed to take some time to process how you felt about me. That was fine, I was giving you that time. But in no way was that a reflection on my feelings. Was I wrong for not telling you about Breslin? Hell yes I was wrong, and I regret it. Should I have called you when Sarah came knocking on the door tonight? Yeah, probably. But everything I do Keegan, I do it in my own way. It’s not because I’m trying to be mean, or facetious, or blatantly hurtful. I’m about done with you lashing out at me because you’re pissed off. If you haven’t noticed I’m not a very tolerant man. It fucking ends now. So you either get on board and deal with how I am, and I will try to make a concerted effort to be more open with the shit that comes my way, or you walk away. I won’t stand here and let you accuse me of not caring, when I actually care more than you could imagine.”
His fingers were digging into my hair, and I was panting so hard that my lips were dry. I felt so bewildered by his words that I wasn’t even sure how to respond to him. Instead I stayed silent going over every word, processing each one so that it made sense. Apparently it was the wrong thing to do, because Camden abruptly let go of me and took a step back. His eyes bounced back and forth between mine. The one emotion that was so easy to read from him was pain. Somehow in my silence I’d crushed him and now he was the one pulling away. My heart lurched and I wanted nothing more than to say, ‘wait, I love you. Let’s not do this, can we just start over?’ But I didn’t. My feet were plastered in place as I watched him close his eyes and take a deep breath. When he opened them again, he shook his head at me and walked out. Without a care that Sarah was downstairs or that Macie might still be in the car, I flung myself onto my bed and curled into the fetal position and cried.
Camden left me.
THE NEXT MORNING I WAS LYING in my bed staring at the yellow walls. Walls that Camden had painted for me because he was trying to do something nice, something to show he cared. The fact that I had a bag packed beside my bed was weighing heavily on me, but the idea of walking out of the apartment not knowing when I’d be back made me want to hurl myself off a cliff. If I walked out on Camden, that would be it. He wouldn’t forgive me, and there’d be no coming back. There was a light tapping on the door before it was opened and in walked a showered and refreshed Bree. I thought she had left town already but apparently not. Lucky me.
“Hey, mind if I come in?” she asked.
Uncurling myself, I scooted up the bed and pushed my hair behind my ears. “No, come on in.” I really wasn’t in the mood to talk to anybody, and certainly not her. I might know who she was now, but that didn’t mean my brain was yet computing that she wasn’t the enemy. I should get to know her though. Camden protected her, he loved her, and he was a part of her, because they shared the same DNA. And anything that was Camden, I loved.
She came and sat down next to me, stretching out her long toned legs and getting comfortable next to me like she’d known me her whole life. “How’re you holding up?”
“Fine I guess. Just happy that my sister is safe.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that. That must’ve been pretty scary.”
“Yes it was, more than you know.” I was fidgeting with my blankets.
There was an awkward silence that loomed between us, and neither one of us were speaking. She glanced around my room and smiled. “Like your room. I have the same colors in mine.”
I didn’t know how I felt about us sharing the same tastes. Maybe that was why Camden picked what he did. “Thanks,” was all the response I gave her.
“So this isn’t awkward at all,” she said sarcastically.
I had to give her credit, she was trying. I smiled over at her. “I’m sorry, I’m just not much for talking right now.”
“I figured as much, which is why this might be perfect timing for me to do some talking, if you’re willing to listen.”
Intrigued, I sat up a little straighter. “Okay.”
She started off by telling me about her mom, how she never was around, and how she made Bree feel like she didn’t want her. “It wasn’t like that all of the time though. We’d have moments where she’d come home with all the ingredients to bake cookies, and she wanted to spend time with me. Or we would camp out in the living room and watch cartoon after cartoon laughing. It was like she wanted to love me, she just didn’t know how. Paul, my dad, he didn’t realize she had been depressed when the courts gave her half custody. He’s told me, had he known, he would have never let me live there. Paul’s a good man. It’s where Camden gets it from. In fact that whole family is good people.”
“They’re your family too.” I pointed out the obvious.
“Yes, but as you grow older, you question things that were done to you, and how having a different life would have led you in a different direction. I don’t blame Paul or Donna for my childhood. They tried to get me to come live with them, but for some reason, I just couldn’t leave her. I’d become the parent, and she was the child I raised.”
Wow, didn’t I know that feeling? Sitting here next to her it felt like every word that was pouring out of her mouth were words that I was supposed to hear, to relate to. Our childhood stories alone were so similar you’d think we lived side by side in the same world. Except, I didn’t have a dad who wanted me. If I’d had one who was like Paul, I probably would have a lot more questions about my life and how different it could have been.