He never let go of my hand as I stared up at the ceiling, trying to harness the power to disappear, while nurses came into the room to poke and prod me, no doubt passing judgment too.
I was Nora Stewart. Judgment was nothing new.
When the room got quiet again, Joe gave my hand a squeeze and offered me a weak smile. “I’m going to run and grab a coffee and let you two talk for a while.”
My brows furrowed. “You two?”
He jerked his chin to the foot of my bed, and I sat up a fraction to follow his gaze.
And there he was, like a fever dream: Camden Cole sitting in a chair with his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled in front of his mouth, his piercing, blue eyes locked on mine with a burning intensity that seared me to the core.
However, it was the red rim of his eyes that shattered what little was left of me.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” I stammered.
“Currently?” he asked from behind his hands. “Losing my Goddamn mind with worry.”
“You good?” Joe asked me.
I never tore my eyes off Camden as I nodded.
The door quietly clicked behind him as he left us alone.
Camden used his hands to scrub his chin, and if I’d been capable of it, I would have laughed because that scrawny nerd from the creek now had a five-o’clock shadow and muscles that showed beneath his gray, two-tone Henley.
He let out a groan and suddenly stood up, like all the way up. Jesus, did he ever stop growing?
He walked to the side of my bed and peered down at me, a storm raging in his eyes. “Scoot.”
I blinked. “Um, where? This bed is tiny.”
“Nora, I just spent eighteen hours jumping from standby flight to standby flight all the way from New York, terrified you might die. I don’t care if we have to share a postage stamp. I need you to scoot over so I can lie down with you.”
There were approximately a dozen things in his statement that I had questions about, but nineteen-year-old Camden Cole did not look like he was playing around, so I made scooting over a priority.
After toeing his shoes off and surprising me with clean, white, non-holey socks, he wedged his large body beside me. On his side, he draped one arm across my middle, curling his other under his head.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye, completely unsure if I was supposed to cuddle into him or what the hell we were doing after four years of not seeing each other.
“This okay?” he asked. “You comfortable?”
I was a lot of things. Confused. Lost. Overwhelmed by guilt.
But because it was Camden, comfortable was one of those things too.
As an answer, I rolled toward him and buried my face in his broad chest.
His whole body sagged as he began stroking the back of my hair. “Nora. Nora. Nora.”
In a way, Camden and I were strangers, but as his heart played in my ear, I felt two puzzle pieces clicking into place. A calm washed over me. The dark cloud of my betrayals still existed outside of Camden’s embrace; it just didn’t seem so ominous anymore. He knew all the dirty and broken parts of me and still came back, holding me as though he could keep me together.
Sliding an arm around his back, I curled in close, shifting to tangle my legs with his. “I’m tired, Cam.”
“I know,” he whispered, hugging me tight.
“No, you don’t. Nobody understands. I’m a disease who infects everyone who gets close to me.” My breathing shuddered. “It hurts. Everything hurts.”
“Do you remember our first summer together when a grasshopper got into the container where we held the extra worms? You screamed so loud when you opened that thing and it came flying out like a bat out of hell. It got on your shirt and then hung on for dear life. With all the racket you were making, the damn thing had to have been terrified, but he never jumped off. I had to peel it off your shirt, one leg at a time.”
I gagged at the memory. “Thanks for reminding me of that. Awesome timing.”
He chuckled and pressed his lips to the top of my head. “I’m the grasshopper clinging to your shirt, Nora.”
Now, if that wasn’t some good old classic Camden Cole rambling, I had no idea what was.
I tilted my head back, resting my chin on his pec, and peered up at him. “You do realize I have no idea what you’re talking about, right?”
My cold, hollow chest filled with a warmth I hadn’t felt in years when he grinned down at me.
“When I left the ten-dollar bill on your nightstand, I genuinely thought you’d find your way back to me. A phone call. A visit. Anything. But as time passed and I got older, I realized I fell in love with a girl who had no idea how to be loved.”
My stomach wrenched, and emotion made my vision swim. “Camden, I—”
“No, just let me talk. Hear me out.” He tucked a stray hair behind my ear and let his thumb linger at my cheek, sweeping back and forth. “I know you love me, Nora. It’s flashed in your eyes every time you’ve seen me since we were kids. It’s like every light in the house suddenly comes on, but it terrifies you, so you spend the whole time we’re together running around, turning them all off, convincing yourself that you don’t deserve for people to love you back. But we still do it. Joe loves you. Thea loves you. Ramsey loves you.”
He paused and sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll always love you. But it can’t be me. I know it now more than ever.” He caught a tear as it slipped from my eye. “I told you I would always come back, and I will keep that promise until the day I die, but what you need is someone who can be here for you. Someone who can stay. I can’t be the only one who knows about this, babe. These secrets are eating you away from the inside out. You gotta let it out. You gotta tell Joe the truth.”
My eyes flared, and I shook my head so fast it vibrated the bed. “I can’t do it. I promised Ramsey—”
“To live,” he interrupted, his tone so sharp it cut through my anxiety. “Jesus, Nora. I don’t know Ramsey, but I guarantee you he has not spent the last four years in a cell just for you to end up in a grave.” He inched down the bed so we were eye to eye and rested his forehead against mine. “All the pain. All the devastation. All the heartache. Something good has to come from this.” He took my hand and intertwined our fingers. After bringing my knuckles to his mouth, he kissed each one. “Let it be you, Nora. Be the good.”
“How?” I croaked through ugly sobs. “Just tell me how. After everything I’ve done.”
“You have to forgive yourself and let people in. You can’t change anything that happened. Some choices you don’t get to make. Some are just made for you. But I swear to you, with my whole heart, not me, not Ramsey, not Thea, not Joe, regardless of what happened in the past, none of us would ever choose a world where you don’t exist.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed him. Eighteen years' worth of drawers in my head disagreed with his logic. But if there was ever a moment I needed to hope, this was it.
I was at absolute rock bottom. What was there left to lose?
Oh, right…
“What if he hates me? What if he hears the truth and never wants to speak to me again? I’d be all alone.”
He sighed. “Then I guess our only choice is to sneak you into my suitcase and fly you back to New York with me. Fair warning, my roommate is a total douchebag. He plays bass in a band called Streets of Eyeless Brutality, hosts concerts for all six of his fans in our apartment every Saturday night, and has never once been to the grocery store but always manages to have food in his mouth, but other than that, Mooney’s decent. He’ll like you.”
The slightest smile tipped my lips. How did he do that? How did Camden Cole always know what to say to put my turbulent mind to rest? Anchoring myself to him and his new life in New York wasn’t an option, but Camden made it feel like anything was possible.
Even telling Joe. Something I so desperately wanted to do but was terror-stricken no less.
“How long are you in town?”
&n
bsp; The side of his mouth hitched. “I guess it all depends on how long you need me to stay.”
Forever hung on the tip of my tongue, but that wouldn’t have been fair. He might have thought he loved me, but he had a whole life that didn’t revolve around a girl who couldn’t decide if she wanted to live or die.
“Do you have classes or work or whatever to get back to in New York?”
He smiled, bright and beautiful. “Yeah. I go to Columbia.”
“Wow,” I breathed.
“Don’t be too impressed. I’d have gone to University of Antarctica if it had gotten me farther from my parents.” He winked.
It was wrong to ask him to stay.
It was wrong to ask him for anything.
But I really wasn’t ready to let him go. “Can you stay the night? And be here when I tell Joe. Whatever that entails.”
Pride beamed in his eyes. “Of course.” He released my hand but only so he could drag me into a hug. “Oh God, of course!” He shoved his face in my neck and laughed, and only then did I realize Camden had been living with the infection of my secrets too.
He deserved a break.
We all deserved a break.
He clung to me until Joe returned, and then, true to his word, Camden sat at my side, holding my hand while I confessed the depths of my soul. The truth poured out of me in a waterfall of confessions. Everything from how bad it had been with my dad, to Josh, to the night my choice ended his life. Ramsey at the police station. The guilt that had been ricocheting inside me ever since I’d promised my brother not to say anything. All of it, every single bit, right down to the moment I’d swallowed the bottle of pills.
As to be expected, Joe was shocked.
He cried.
I cried.
Camden held me tight.
When it was all said and done, nothing was better and everyone was still caught in my web of lies, but the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders.
The only time Camden left my side was when Joe pulled me into his arms, apologizing for things he had no control over. With a proud smile on his face, Camden winked at me before he stepped outside under the pretense of making a phone call. Joe immediately filled the gaping hole he’d left behind and perched on the edge of my bed, his hand wrapped around mine.
“We’re going to get this sorted,” he said, looking far older than his forty-five years. The room fell silent and Joe stared off into space, thought crinkling his forehead.
“How’d you know to call him? How did you have his number?” I asked.
“Who? Camden?”
I twisted my lips and leveled him with a glare. “No, the mouse in your pocket.”
He grinned. “You aren’t the only one who can keep a secret.”
“Good, then you owe me a confession too. Spill.”
He chuckled. “He showed up on my doorstep a few years back. Right after Ramsey went to jail. I opened the door and Camden barely introduced himself before falling into a long, drawn-out dissertation about how I needed to let you move in with us.”
My brows shot up. “What?”
“The boy didn’t let me get a single word in for five solid minutes.”
Yeah, that sounded like Camden, but he’d gone to Joe? About letting me move in? “Why would he do that?”
Joe shrugged. “He didn’t think it’d be safe for you at your dad’s without Ramsey around, so he all but dropped to his knees, begging me to let you move in and be close to Thea. I thought about it for a few days, but he was right.”
I slapped a hand over my mouth. Of course it had been Camden looking out for me even when he was fifteen years old and I’d told him to love someone better. He had no idea how many nights I’d wanted to end it all, and the ten with his chicken scratches across the back was the only thing that had kept me alive. The very thought of Camden was a flicker of peace to my tumultuous soul.
“He calls every so often to check on you, I thought you might need your friend.”
“I don’t deserve him,” I choked out around the lump in my throat. “It’s been years since we saw each other, and he dropped everything to fly across the country just to be here. Who does that?”
Joe gave my hand a squeeze. “Someone who loves you. Someone who was scared out of their mind by the idea of losing you. Someone who sees all the incredible things about you even if you can’t see them yourself. Nora, you are a beautiful, smart, funny woman with a heart so big it swallows you sometimes. Camden is exactly the kind of man you deserve. But he and I can both tell you that until we’re blue in the face and it won’t matter until you can look in the mirror and feel like you deserve him too.”
God, what I wouldn’t have given to be that woman—the one who was good enough for a man like Camden. A woman who was more than just his true friend. But the very idea of her was so far in the future that she was barely visible on the horizon.
Different day, same negative Nora.
That stopped here. In this hospital bed. Camden was right. I had to be the good in all of this mess.
Hell, at least the woman I aspired to become was on the horizon now. Barely was still progress, and even if I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get there, I wouldn’t stop until I did.
Closing my eyes, I rested my head on Joe’s shoulder. “Help me. Please.”
He put his chin to my forehead and sighed. “That’s all you ever have to say, sweet girl.”
As if he’d been summoned, that gorgeous man came strutting back into the room, holding three bottles of Coke and a fist full of candy bars.
His grin was so infectious my mouth had no other option but to follow suit.
“I brought us a snack,” he announced. “You still a Snickers girl, or have we moved on to Twix?”
Fuck the candy. I was a Camden Cole girl, any and every way he came.
Or at least I wanted to be.
Camden stayed with me that night, wedged in the bed beside me, holding me close and prattling on about anything and everything that had happened to him over the last few years. He missed his prom because of his appendix, which was an awful story but got me a great shot of his abs when he showed me the scar. He laughed through the entire story of how he used Stewart and Cole Worm Farm as the basis for his accounting class project. Camden was valedictorian of his senior class and had been granted so many scholarships that his full first year at college was practically paid for. I smiled more in that time than I had in all the years he’d been gone combined.
Joe worked his magic and found a two-week inpatient program for me that was going to cost him a small fortune, but he’d just smiled and told me it was a small price to pay to get his second daughter happy and healthy.
Have I mentioned that Joe Hull was the absolute best? I didn't deserve him, either.
But I was hell-bent on getting there.
When it came time for Camden to leave the next day, it felt like I was losing an integral part of myself. He made me swear to call if I ever needed anything, but with renewed hope and a second chance at life, I prayed I wouldn’t have to. I wanted to be able to call him when I wasn’t a burden.
It was the first time we’d ever been together and didn’t exchange the ten-dollar bill, but if I was going to get through the next few months and years, I needed as many reminders of what I was fighting for as I could get.
I couldn’t expect, nor would I ever ask, Camden to wait on me. We’d shared one kiss and immeasurable love in the seven years we’d known each other; however, he had a life to live too. I wanted the world for Camden Cole even if I wasn’t the one who could give it to him.
I needed to find the real Nora Stewart again, and while leaning on him for support would have been easy to do, it wouldn’t have been fair or healthy for either one of us. We agreed that if he ever passed through Clovert, he was bound by pinky promise law to find me immediately. And if I ever found myself in New York—yeah, right—I was required to do the same.
Letting him go was bittersweet but nece
ssary. And it only made it that much more satisfying when, three years later, I finally got the chance to repay him for being there on the day that ultimately saved my life.
“Thank you for coming,” I said, hugging a random old lady for the billionth time that day. My mom stood beside me, looking every bit the part of the devastated widow despite the fact that my parents hadn’t shared a bedroom in almost five years.
“He was such a good man,” old lady number twelve hundred and seventy-eight said, giving my hand a squeeze.
I nodded and forced a tight smile.
A few days earlier, my dad had dropped dead of a heart attack in my parents’ driveway while climbing in his truck to go to work. It was truly shocking. I hadn’t known that my dad had a heart until that day.
It was weird thinking how I’d never be the butt of one of his jokes again—a relief but still weird.
Old lady number twelve hundred and seventy-nine stepped up. “He’d be so proud of you.”
Yeah, right. When I was a kid, I’d always assumed when I got older and bigger—maybe more coordinated—he’d be proud of me. In my twenty-two years, that day never came.
My cousin Jonathan scoffed. “He probably died to avoid being embarrassed anymore.”
Now, it should be noted that Jonathan wasn’t a prepubescent kid who had spent the last decade trapped in time. In fact, he’d grown up quite a bit. Jonathan Caskey was a twenty-six-year-old police officer in Clovert now. In a true show of how fucked up that side of my family was, he’d carried a framed picture of Josh with him the day he’d graduated from the police academy. At least that was what I had been told.
There was no fucking chance I attended that shit show.
Yet there he sat, at my father’s funeral, insulting me from the second pew. I scratched the side of my head with my middle finger, hopefully hiding it from old lady twelve hundred and eighty as the line of condolences continued.
The end was near on this circus. Since my father had been cremated, there was no graveside service to attend. Before I headed back to New York, Mom and I were planning to scatter his ashes near the overlook behind his precious papermill.
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