Aftershocks
AFTERSHOCKS
RACHEL
Cam and I drove in silence for the first few minutes. Adrenaline had been pumping through my body for the last hour, and I was finally calming down as I reflected on what happened. I had seen Britt arguing with her mother near a hotel restroom. Britt’s mother’s body language suggested that she really wanted a more private word with her daughter. While they were distracted, I slipped into the restroom ahead of them. I had a feeling it was going to be my chance to catch their conversation if they came in.
Even as I sat with my dress hiked up, holding my breath, crouched on the toilet seat with my purse between my teeth, I could not have imagined all that would trickle out of Britt’s mouth.
“What are you thinking?” I asked Cam as the Jeep came to a stoplight.
“I don’t know. Do you ever reach a level of stress where you’re kind of calm?”
I released an uneasy laugh. “Oh yeah. Like you’ve passed beyond stress, beyond hysteria, into the realm of indifference, which teeters on the edge of complete shutdown.”
“Yes. Exactly like that. Sort of a quiet state of emergency. That’s where I am.”
I waited to speak, knowing Cam had more to say and was trying to find the right words.
“This definitely saved Roman, though,” he said. “I’ll be eternally grateful to you for that. I … I can’t wrap my head around all this. It seems like something that would only happen to other people, not us. It’s too crazy.”
“I know. I know. Like, what the hell?”
Ron and Victoria were already inside when Cam and I pulled into the long, winding driveway. Cam insisted he open my door, something I’d gotten used to while I was with him. I never thought I’d enjoy someone doing that sort of thing for me, but because Andrew never practiced those chivalrous details, I welcomed them from Cam. It never felt like he was trying too hard or that he was trying to control me. It felt like those were the manners his mother had taught him from an early age.
“Seeing Mom lay Britt out was everything, though,” he said, finally smiling. “That image of her going down … I will replay that over and over in my mind and never get tired of it.”
I laughed. “I know. All of this was so worth getting fired for.”
Cam froze. “Wait …” When I tried to walk past him up to the door, he stopped me by gently touching my arm and bringing me to face him. “What did you say?”
Oh no.
I rubbed my neck, avoiding his steely glare. “Nope, nothing.”
“Kicklighter,” he insisted. “You got fired? How?”
It was no use. Cam wasn’t going to let this go. “My mother said that if I went to this wedding with you, she was going to fire me.”
“No.”
“I’m sure she was bluffing.”
“And if she isn’t? You said she’s the business owner, correct?”
I nodded reluctantly. “Well, yes, but?—”
“So she does have the power to fire you.” He turned his back to me, shaking his head. “You should never have put your career at risk for me.”
“Trust me, it was worth it.”
“No, it wasn’t. Your job, your family, and the livelihood of your business, which you said would crumble without you, was not worth it.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” I said, my nostrils flaring as I tried to exhale the unease out of my chest.
Cam whipped around. “Yes, I do when it’s about you losing yourself in someone, which you said you never wanted to do again. I don’t want you to lose yourself in this, in me. I don’t want you to put my wellbeing before your own.”
“That’s not your call! Why do you care so much anyway?”
“Because I’m not worth it! Because I’m not sure that I could ever be the man you need and deserve.”
“That’s only for me to decide, and besides, I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me.”
“You say that now, but what if months from now you start resenting me because you lost your career to come to this awful wedding?”
“I don’t see that happening, especially since you won’t even officially ask me out on a date!” My words tumbled out in a rush, barely leaving me time to breathe between sentences.
I was on such a high from saving Roman from Britt, and now everything was crashing down around me. Despite my efforts to explain myself, Cam’s face remained hardened with doubt. He couldn’t understand that this wasn’t about him, it was about me finally standing up for myself. I didn’t care about my mother or my career. Part of me wanted to leave all of that behind and start something new, and up until now, I thought that something new would involve Cameron Nash.
My nerves clenched as he backed away from me and moved toward his car.
“What is going on out here?” Victoria said, opening the door.
“I think your son is actually going to leave me standing in your driveway.”
“Coming with us today saved Roman but got Rachel fired, Mom,” Cam shouted over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry?” Victoria’s eyes widened. “Will both of you come in so we can discuss all of this?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It’s fine. Cam? You’re seriously leaving me here?”
“This got too complicated.” His jaw tensed as he opened the Jeep door. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I can’t even process all that’s happened today. Mom, can you please get Rachel home?”
“Cameron!” Victoria shouted. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer and peeled out, leaving two black tire marks in the driveway and my head spinning.
“Rachel, please come inside,” Victoria said.
“Everyone okay?” Ron asked.
My entire body started to shake from my head to my toes. “Um, I don’t feel like coming in now. Mind if I wait for a ride inside, though?”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll drive you if you want to go home or you can come inside, have a glass of wine, and decompress. We can talk about this.”
I glanced at Ron, who was motioning for us to come in, and since sweat started to bead off my back, I accepted. I couldn’t be alone right now. Laura and Emily were both out of town, though each had texted me, eager to hear how the wedding went. I lowered myself in a plush chair at Victoria’s dining room table while she hustled to get me a glass of wine. I was too stunned to cry and too shocked by Cam’s reaction to feel anything. I could only sit at the table and rub my forehead.
She paused and then set down her glass. “You know, I think we may need something stronger.”
“I’ll get it,” Ron said. “You two sit and relax.”
Victoria obliged, sitting next to me. She extended both her hands. I met her gaze as mist filled her eyes. “I want to thank you for having the courage to do what you did today.”
I took her hands in mine. “At least Roman is free, unless Britt somehow convinces him to go back to her.”
“He won’t. He’s done. He finally saw her for who she really was.”
Ron set two pink cocktails with fancy garnishes down in front of each of us. I didn’t care what the drink was, I just wanted to pour it down my throat.
“And I apologize that Cameron acted the way he did. I’m going to talk to him.”
I put my palm up. “No, please don’t. If I’m being perfectly honest with myself … well, he’s not entirely wrong.”
“He’s not? You didn’t risk your job to attend this wedding, did you?”
I massaged my aching temples. “No, maybe. I don’t know. I convinced myself I was doing this for myself and to take a stand against my mother, but … will I be resentful if, in a month’s time, nothing materializes between Cam and I after all?”
“What do you think?” Victoria asked, resting her head on her hand.
“I don’t know, honestly. My relationship with Cam has been confusing this entire time.”
“I know he loves you. I know it. But he buried all the trauma from Britt down deep and didn’t deal with it for the longest time. Going to Jill’s wedding brought it all up to the surface, so he’s stuck with trying to heal that part of himself and trying to give into his feelings for you. It seems like an endless war within him. It overwhelms him and he shuts down.” Victoria sipped her drink. “He was always my turbulent child. Roman was always the calm, patient one while Cameron was my little wildling. He gets lost in his own head sometimes and decided a long time ago that he can’t trust his heart.”
“I get that, I guess.”
After cleaning up the kitchen, Ron excused himself to the office, leaving us to have some privacy while he read the paper. He had folded it up under his arm when the doorbell rang.
Victoria’s brows knit together while my heartbeat ticked up.
Cam wouldn’t ring the doorbell. He would walk in.
Ron answered it and Victoria and I rose to our feet once we recognized the voice in the entryway.
Roman.
Roman with messy dark hair and bloodshot eyes.
Roman out of his tux and wearing a ratty T-shirt and khaki shorts.
He paused in the doorway with his head low, and we all waited for him to speak. Roman sniffed and wiped under his eyes with the back of his hand and Victoria rushed to him. They embraced and I suddenly felt like I shouldn’t be there to witness this. I was an intruder peeking in on the most private of family moments.
“Uh, I should go,” I said, picking up my purse.
“No, please,” Roman said, releasing Victoria. “Stay.”
“I appreciate that, but it’s obviously been a crazy day. I’ll call an Uber. You two have a lot to talk about, I’m sure.”
Roman’s cobalt blue eyes locked onto mine. “I’ll drive you.” He seemed to realize he was being too intense and took a step back. “Only if you don’t mind. I would like to speak with you, if that’s okay.”
The corners of my mouth tugged up. “Yeah, sure.”
And so, while I began the night hoping it would end in Cam’s arms, instead, his jilted brother was driving me home in his Audi SUV.
What a world .
I gave Roman the directions, and a few awkward moments of silence ticked by before he spoke. “Thank you … for exposing Britt.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“I should have listened to myself when I answered the question you asked me back in Cayman.”
“Was Britt worth it?”
“That’s it. The answer was no. I was going to break it off with her and when I tried to do that, the next day she showed me a positive pregnancy test.”
“What?” I angled my body so I could see his face. “But she wasn’t pregnant.”
“A coworker of hers named Mara stopped me before I left the Scott. Britt was at her house not long ago celebrating the fact that Mara was pregnant. She thinks Britt stole her test.”
“First of all, gross. Second of all, that woman is diabolical . I’m sorry, how … how did you ever fall in love with her? How did you ever think blowing up your brother’s wedding was okay? I still can’t wrap my head around that.”
He got quiet for a second, leaning his arm on his window and taking the wheel with one hand. He rubbed his thumb against his dark stubble. “Britt said that Cam was abusing her.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Roman continued. “She even had bruises on her arms, but now I think she did that to herself. She said if I ever confronted Cam, he would continue to stalk and harass her. She played on the side of me that needs to save people. There’s way more to it than that, but I really thought I was saving her.”
“You had to have known that Cam being abusive was impossible.”
“I did and yet, she convinced me. It’s going to take a lot of therapy to get to the bottom of why I did what I did, but for now, that’s the short answer, I guess.”
My heart couldn’t help but ache for this man. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to drop you off at your house, thank you again for saving my life, and then I’m going to go get drunk with my brother.”