Reclaim

by Martinez, Aly

  Her shoulders shook with a cry. “I don’t deserve you.”

  “I know. You deserve better. But you aren’t the only selfish one in this bed.”

  She half laughed, half cried, and I hugged her tight, smoothing a hand up and down her back, hoping she knew I’d always be there for her even when I wasn’t.

  “So much for leaving the heavy stuff behind tonight, huh?” she said.

  “Hey, the night isn’t over yet. I still owe you thirty more almost orgasms.”

  Finally, she smiled bright and white, and I hooked a leg over her hips. “Then I highly suggest you get to work, Camden Cole. The clock’s ticking.”

  And wasn’t that the truth. The clock was always ticking with me and Nora. I just prayed that, after that night, it was finally counting down to a time when we could be together for more than just a night.

  Between kisses and laughs, I stripped her out of her clothes while making proclamations about banning sweatpants for all of eternity. With brazen hands, I cataloged her every curve and dip, submitting them to memory as I explored her in ways that would make a porn star blush.

  Or at least two virgins like us.

  I found at least a handful of ways to show her my love with my fingers and my mouth, and Nora whispered countless I-love-yous I’d spend years revisiting on cold and lonely nights without her.

  We didn’t make it to thirty that night, but when we both passed out, sweaty and sated, the pure erotic beauty of Nora Stewart mid-release had been ingrained in my brain three times over.

  When I woke up the next morning, my perfect fantasy mirage had vanished. The loss was staggering, but I couldn’t help but smile when I saw our ten-dollar bill on the nightstand, a handwritten note tucked beneath it.

  Cam,

  I couldn’t bring myself to wake you up. You looked so peaceful and happy, like a weirdo smiling in your sleep. I’ll take that memory with me instead of a long, drawn-out goodbye. I would have cried, and then you would have said all the right things, making it even harder for me to go. But know this: There aren’t enough words to adequately express the gift you gave me last night. The hope. The unconditional love. The understanding that, while now is not our time, there might a future where one day the two of us find ourselves on the banks of our creek again, this time with free minds, whole hearts, and a lifetime to share.

  Until then, wherever you go and whatever you do, I love you.

  Always,

  Nora

  P.S. Alberton cabbies are brutal. They quoted me fifty bucks over the phone to get back to my car at the church.

  P.P.S. My dress was still wet, so I stole your sweats. I don’t feel the slightest bit sorry. I’ll put them to good use. I promise.

  P.P.P.S. I may not go to fancy Columbia, but after several college English courses, I can definitively say this is the correct way to the do the P.S. thing. More P’s and less S’s.

  P.P.P.P.S. I’d rather be there with you.

  Trying to reclaim your life is a lot like cleaning a house. You can work your ass off sweeping down the cobwebs and taking out the trash, but there is always a closet to be organized or a baseboard to scrub. And just when you think you’ve finished everything, it’s time to start all over again because, while you were distracted in one room, life happened in another.

  But every day when I woke up and climbed out of bed, I told myself I was getting closer and closer to the woman I wanted to be. It helped a lot knowing that the people around me were thriving too.

  Joe and his wife, Misty, were happier than ever, and because of Misty, I’d inherited a kinda-sorta stepsister, Tiffany. She was funny and always had the best fashion advice. Which, after years of forcing Thea into dresses and heels, was a nice change of pace.

  Thea’s online travel agency had taken off, bringing in more money for her to squirrel away for the future. I didn’t have to read between the lines to know she wanted that future to be with Ramsey, even if they were virtually strangers now.

  Ramsey was doing well-ish too. Or at least as well as possible when incarcerated. He had fallen in love with his career: working in the barbershop in prison. He and Joe had never been close before he’d been arrested, but it made me giggle that my brother had somehow managed to follow in his footsteps.

  Work was amazing. Stressful and exhausting, but no less incredible. I adored being a teacher. Seeing their little faces light up every morning made me feel like I’d finally found my purpose in life. I hadn’t had the best childhood, but I was bound and determined not to let any of those kids fall through the cracks the way Ramsey and I had.

  So I did something about it.

  First Step was an after-school program to keep kids engaged and surrounded by positive role models. It was a slow start, but after almost a year of paperwork and applications, I managed to secure county grants and funds to make it free for anyone who needed it.

  My next major project for the school district was a brown bag lunch program. The majority of students in Clovert qualified for free lunches during the school year, but I knew all too well how long the summers could be with an empty fridge and a bare pantry. I developed a plan to set up brown bag lunch stations around town for students to pick up healthy, balanced meals over the months when school wasn’t in session. However, it was an expensive endeavor, and I was denied city, county, and state aid at every turn. Eventually, with Thea’s help, I started a fundraiser and took it to social media.

  For as much evil that existed in our world, it was shocking how quickly we met our goal. And over the three years I’d been heading up the program, the money never stopped. I spent almost every Friday night during the summer in the school cafeteria surrounded by volunteers packing those bags until almost midnight, but seeing those kids’ faces when they picked them up meant more to me than I ever could have imagined.

  Camden’s words from all those years earlier when I was lying in a hospital bed after having attempted to take my own life filled my thoughts on a daily basis. “Something good has to come from this.” I'd never bought into his theory that I could be the something good.

  But those kids. That was enough for me.

  Camden and I had spoken exactly zero times over the last five years. I didn’t have his number at school, but I knew that Joe did. He was the keeper of all secrets in our family. If he’d been able to find Camden when I had been in the hospital, I ventured to say he had probably kept in touch with him through the years too. But reaching out to him when I was still piecing my life back together wasn’t fair. He’d told me not to let him off my hook, but constantly reeling him in just to toss him back out because I wasn’t ready for more seemed cruel. If and when I reached out to Camden Cole again, I wanted to be the woman he deserved. Though, as time passed without so much as a peep from Camden, either, I started to wonder if maybe he'd let himself off the hook.

  Around the three-year mark, I got tipsy with Thea one night and decided to look him up on Instagram. I found an account for him, complete with a profile picture of him in a suit, sexy as ever and smiling at the camera, but there were no photos uploaded to his grid. There were, however, a handful of photos other people had tagged him in.

  One on a snowy mountaintop, his hair a tousled mess beneath a pair of ski goggles. There were six grinning men all huddled around him, and it made me smile to know that Camden had finally found his tribe of friends.

  Someone else had tagged a picture of him at what appeared to be a restaurant, a cake with sparkling candles lit in front of him. It had been posted four months after his birthday, so I wasn’t sure what he was celebrating, but I just liked knowing he had something to celebrate at all.

  But the picture that hit me the hardest was an image of him standing beside a gorgeous blonde. They looked like Ken and Barbie. He was in chinos and a baby-blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows—pure Camden Cole preppy. She was in a white silk blouse tucked into a high-waisted black pencil skirt and capped off with black stiletto pumps. She was taller t
han I was. Classier than I was. Prettier than I was. But most of all, she was standing in what should have been my spot at his side, and he was smiling ear to ear with his arm draped around her hips.

  The caption read: Nothing better than a night out with this guy.

  And she wasn’t wrong.

  I cried myself to sleep that night, simultaneously mourning the loss of a man who had never truly been mine and hoping he’d finally found someone who could make him happy.

  Stalking Camden Cole quickly became my favorite guilty pleasure. He never added any pictures of his own, but every few months, one of his friends would tag him in something. As far as I could tell, Pencil Skirt Barbie hadn't lasted long, but as the years passed, it wasn't unusual for other girls to appear in photos with him.

  What had I expected though? He was a gorgeous man in his twenties. Honestly, it was more surprising I hadn’t run across engagement or wedding photos yet.

  Deciding to follow Camden’s lead, I allowed some of the teachers at school to set me up on a few dates. Most were dumpster fires, though a guy named Noah earned a second date. He was nice enough, funny enough, kind enough.

  He just wasn’t Cam.

  So I threw myself back into work and swore men off for good. Well, all men except for my secret late-night rendezvous with whatever picture of @CamdenCole1019 had been recently added.

  Between working on myself, working for the kids, and working toward keeping Thea from becoming a crazy cat lady sans the cats, time moved on.

  Until one day, it stopped.

  “You have a call from inmate—”

  After twelve years, I didn’t need to listen to the rest of the message. I pulled the phone from my ear and pressed the number one to accept the call. While I waited for the line to connect, I paused the “How to Make Creamy Tuscan Chicken” video on my iPad and dried my hands on my pink-and-white floral apron.

  It had been a long day at school, complete with a first-grader sneezing in my face only to turn around and puke on the floor, but hey, at least it hadn’t been the other way around. Thea was losing her mind, struggling with the latest update to her website, Travel For Me. I’d decided to cook her something yummy in my never-ending attempt to take her mind off things. I was a good roommate like that. Plus, I’d really wanted that Tuscan chicken since I’d stumbled across the recipe on my weekly Peeping Tom stroll through Instagram. Win. Win.

  “Nora,” Ramsey choked across the line.

  I froze, my whole body going on alert. “What’s wrong? What happened? Are you okay?”

  There was some movement on his end, and I sucked in a deep breath, ready to face whatever hell the Department of Corrections had thrown his way this time.

  “The parole board approved my release,” he whispered as if speaking the words out loud might accidentally change them.

  “What?” I gasped. “They approved it?”

  This wasn’t our first parole hearing. Ramsey had had one every twenty-four months since he’d become eligible after year six. The Caskeys did everything possible to keep Ramsey locked away. For a family who lived in denial about who their son had been, they sure held a lot of clout in the legal community. With Jonathan being a decorated cop, his dad the former mayor, and the entire Caskey name being something of a Clovert dynasty, they had entirely too many favors to call in.

  After Ramsey’s hearing at year ten, we’d had a good cry together during a visitation and decided not to put our hopes into an early release. He hated seeing me crushed each time he was denied, despite being a model inmate. And I hated knowing that, after everything he’d sacrificed, he was still trying to protect me.

  We didn’t talk about his parole hearing this time. I didn’t spend months collecting, drafting, and rewriting letters to present to the board with the hopes they’d actually be read. And I didn’t lose myself down a rabbit hole of hope only to end up in a black abyss of depression for days after the decision was made.

  We didn’t give up though. Ramsey still put in his paperwork and worked with his attorney. I still prayed to any and every God in existence, but we went into it with real expectations and restrained hope for the very first time.

  And somehow, someway, it had finally happened.

  “Holy shit, Ramsey. Is this real?”

  He let out a loud laugh that cracked at the end. “God, I hope so. I could be out of here in a matter of weeks, Nora. Fuck.”

  Weeks.

  Over twelve years in a cell and he could be home in a matter of weeks?

  My nose stung, and tears burned my eyes. “Wait, is this a done deal? When the Caskeys hear, Jonathan is going to lose his shit. Is there anything he could do to mess this up?”

  “I…I don’t think so. They brought me the paperwork and had me sit in on a call with this guy named Lee who’s been assigned as my case agent. He’s supposed to be calling you to check out the house and stuff.” He blew out a ragged breath. “I think this might really be it.” Emotion lodged in his throat, making his words jagged as he forced out, “Please let this be it.”

  I ignored the twist of the permanent knife in my heart when it came to Ramsey’s time in prison. There was not a day that passed when I didn’t feel a sense of guilt, but I was no longer drowning in it.

  We’d both made choices that day. They were both right and wrong depending on whose eyes you were looking through. I wished every moment of every day that I could change the past, but I couldn’t turn back time. It had taken a lot of years and soul searching for me to get to that place of peace. The pain was still there, but I no longer allowed it to dominate my life.

  If this was real and Ramsey was finally coming home, there was a chance we could put this behind us once and for all.

  “I have to tell Thea,” I rushed out, the combination of excitement and adrenaline making my body hum like a hive of bees had taken up residence in my veins.

  “No,” Ramsey barked.

  Jesus. Those two were going to be the end of me.

  I’d spent twelve years being the middleman for Ramsey and Thea.

  Ramsey desperately, and somewhat successfully, trying to force her to let him go.

  Thea holding on to a ghost and the promises made by a seventeen-year-old boy.

  Both of them equally as stubborn.

  Leaning around the bar dividing the kitchen from our living room, I peered down the hall. Thea’s door was still shut, and if I knew her at all, she had her headphones on, watching travel videos while planning a top-of-the-line vacation she should have been taking herself. But just in case she wasn’t, I kept my voice low as I laid into my brother.

  “What the hell do you think is going to happen, Ramsey? You’re going to get out and she’s not going to find out? If nothing else, she deserves the chance to yell at you. You cut her out of your life completely.”

  He let out a groan. “I’m not having this conversation with you again.”

  “Fine, then just listen to me have it.” I looked at her door again. “I love you and I respect you, so I’ve kept my promises. But when you get out of there, that word is no longer valid. You owe her a conversation. Hell, you owe yourself a conversation. You love her, dummy. Let her love you back.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, please. I’m the only one who knows what I’m talking about here. But I’m going to drop it for now because today is huge and I don’t want to spend it fighting with you over the inevitable.”

  He cussed under his breath, but I smiled.

  He was coming home.

  Ramsey was finally coming home.

  We talked for a few more minutes. I asked a million questions he didn’t have the answers to. And we briefly talked about the logistics of his homecoming. He asked me to find a place for us to live without Thea. I lied and told him I would. If ever two people needed to be under the same roof, it was them. I’d tried to keep the drawers in my head as empty as possible over the last few years, but I was positive Cupid had told a few w
hite lies in his time too.

  After we’d exchanged I-love-yous, Ramsey and I hung up. I took the chicken on the counter and put it back in the fridge. Tuscany could wait for another time. Thea and I were officially going out to celebrate.

  It was so close to being over.

  Ramsey could be free.

  Thea could be free.

  Maybe then I could be free too.

  “This isn’t legal!” I yelled from the wrong side of the bars of a Clovert jail cell.

  So, remember that “maybe then I could be free too” horseshit?

  Yeah, things didn’t exactly happen like that after Ramsey got out of prison.

  What did happen was Officer Jonathan Caskey found new and unique ways to torture my entire family.

  The day Thea and I had picked Ramsey up from prison was a dream come true. Sure, it had been hard for him to adapt to his new life of freedom—well, at least partial freedom since he was still on parole for the next three years. He and Thea… Well, that was a challenge to say the least. But, eventually, everyone got on the same page.

  It only took a week before Jonathan Caskey showed up at our door, claiming he had information about Ramsey selling drugs out of the back of Thea’s father’s barbershop.

  A fucking week. Of course, the cops found nothing, but that didn’t mean Jonathan didn’t get off on fucking with us.

  We decided right then and there Ramsey would never be safe to finish his parole that close to the Caskey family. He requested a transfer from his parole officer and he and Thea moved upstate to Dahlonega. It sucked on epic levels. I’d just gotten my brother back, and thanks to the fucking Caskeys, I’d lost him again. But it was okay. He was happy and safe with the woman he loved. That was all I’d ever wanted for him.