Chapter 1 - Cam #2
A sad smile pulls at my lips, remembering all those times I sat outside her house or the garden center, waiting to catch even a glimpse of her.
“I couldn’t stay away.” I let my shoulders rise and fall.
“And the day I hit a year, I called Drew…” My heart lodges in my throat, and I gulp to clear it.
“I told him that I was planning to approach you, to tell you what happened, and that I was in love with you. And he flipped. This place”—I motion around us—“was where I lived before I moved back to London. I rented it out to other people while I was gone. But no one was occupying it at the time I came back, so he knew where to find me…” I take another long drink of liquid courage I’m going to need to finish telling her this story.
“He came here that same night I called to confront me.”
Shaking hands clenched in her lap, Ivy watches me with tears streaming down her cheeks. “What night?”
Her voice breaks because she already knows the answer.
I can see it in the darkness creeping into her gaze.
Choking back a sob, I force myself to say the words I know will destroy her. “The night he died. One year to the day I got clean…”
Her mouth falls open on a silent gasp, and she scans the loft as if she’s going to see evidence of something. “Wh-what happened, Cam?”
“We argued.”
I take a sip of the whiskey, letting the burn of the alcohol down my throat warm my gut, when my entire body has felt ice cold since the minute I opened that box from Drew.
No amount of alcohol is going to relieve that.
Nor will the drugs sitting beside me that I’ve been fighting with myself over for the last several hours.
I knew that when I called my old dealer. I knew it when I opened the door for him and took it. I knew it when I popped open this bottle and took my first swig.
But I was so desperate not to feel that I did it anyway.
The only thing that’s kept me from sticking that needle in my vein has been how badly my hand shakes each time I try to pick it up, and my sponsor Dale’s words echoing in my head, telling me not to do it.
I rest my forearm on my knee and let the bottle dangle between them. “I told him he was an asshole for sending me what he sent me…”
Ivy’s hand flies over her mouth, and her eyes dart to the package on the floor at the G.I. Joe doll lying at her knees. His peace offering. An olive branch. “Oh, God, no…”
She knows.
She understands the ramifications of what I said to him.
How everything got so twisted.
My eyes drift to the doll, too. “Of course, I didn’t know he had sent that. I was referring to the invitation.” The one she sent. “He flew off the handle like I’ve never seen him before. We were screaming at each other, and I told him that you deserved to know the truth before you two got married.”
Her tears flow freely down her cheeks, and she struggles to swallow. “Wh-what did he say?”
The corner of my mouth quirks up, despite me fighting it.
“He said I was ruining everything, but that it wouldn’t matter, because you would choose him.
But he was scared. I could see it in his eyes.
And I was happy he was scared because I was so pissed…
about something that, turns out, wasn’t even true. ”
She shoves her trembling hands through her hair, tightening her grip on it. “Oh, God…”
I finger the bottle, brushing my thumb across the lip. “I was brutal. I was ruthless. I let my anger take over, and I told him the only reason the two of you ever ended up together was because of me, and once you knew the truth, you’d call off the wedding. He told me to go to hell and left.”
“Wh-where was he going?”
His words that night still ringing in my ears as if he had just said them, I offer her a half-shrug. “I assume home to you to try to cut me off at the pass and tell you everything before I could.”
Her entire body shakes violently as she waits for what she must know is coming, and I have to muster up all the courage I have to get the words out, including some more of the liquid variety.
I chug the whiskey, wincing this time as my head spins from the alcohol now coursing through my bloodstream.
My vision blurs staring at the mostly empty bottle.
“As soon as he left, I felt terrible about it. I ran out after him, but he had already pulled away from the curb, and there was no way I was going to catch him on foot.” I release a little snort.
“I even tried running after him for the first block or two, but he wasn’t stopping for me. He was driving like a bat outta hell…”
I raise my eyes to meet hers.
It’s all I need to do to confirm what happened.
“Oh, God.” She presses her hand over her heart as a hiccupped sob steals her breath. “The stop sign he ran…”
I nod slowly. “Two miles from here.”
“Oh, my God.” Ivy sucks in a sharp inhale as her chest starts rising and falling rapidly. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
She repeats the words over and over and over, then covers her mouth with her hand and gags.
“Shit, Ivy—” I try to push up, but the room spins violently, and I crumple back onto the floor. My head slams back against the bricks again, and I squeeze my eyes closed long enough to get the world to stop its rotation, then open them.
Ivy turns away from me and crawls to the wastebasket next to the kitchen island and dry heaves over it.
I shift up to attempt to get to my feet again, but she holds out a hand to me.
“Don’t. You. Come. Near. Me.”
Her words are like another sharp slice from the knife lodged in my heart, but I drop back onto my ass and let my head fall against the bricks. This time, the sharp bite of pain is more than welcome. It isn’t anywhere near what I deserve. “I told you that you would hate me.”
“Did you—” She heaves again, gasping for air as she tries to gain control of her body. Her hands tremble, clutching the edges of the wastebasket, her eyes clench closed, and her lips quiver. She finally glances over at me. “Did you know he was in the accident?”
I shake my head “No.” Tears burn my eyes, blurring my vision of her, and I swallow back another sob. “I was going to call him to apologize the next day. Give him some time to cool off, but then my mom called that night…”
Ivy heaves again as I fight the desire to do the same fucking thing.
Reliving that moment, hearing Mom say those words and knowing I had caused it—all of it threatens to drag me even deeper into the dark abyss of despair I’ve already dived into tonight.
“It was my fault, Ivy, all of it. I killed Drew. If I hadn’t kissed you that night, if I hadn’t come back, if I hadn’t fought with him, if I hadn’t said those things and made him leave that angry, he’d still be here.
Everything would be how it’s supposed to be.
He’d still be alive, you two would be married, and I’d be back in London… ”
Ivy settles back on her ass and leans against the kitchen counter, watching me warily, her face pale and clammy looking. She wipes her mouth with the back of her arm as her tears continue to roll down her cheeks.
The way she looks at me—like I’m a complete stranger instead of the man she’s been sharing a bed with—destroys what’s left of my heart. That knife so deeply embedded in it finally tears away the final pieces so that nothing is left except my guilt and agony.
I swallow back the desire to beg her forgiveness because there’s no way to ask for that from her.
Not with what I’ve done.
What I’ve caused.
“Did you go back to London?”
There it is.
At some point, she was going to realize it was a full month after Drew died before I showed up on her doorstep, and she was bound to want an explanation. It’s the least she deserves.
I shake my head. “No. When my mom called and said he had died, and I realized what I had done”—I take a sharp inhale and chug on the bottle again, taking several long swallows and hissing at the burn—“I couldn’t leave her.” I meet Ivy’s gaze. “I couldn’t leave you.”
“But—” She shakes her head. “You didn’t come to the funeral. Your mother says she hasn’t seen you in years. I don’t…”
I press my lips together, trying to control the emotions warring inside me.
Ivy needs answers, but the more I give her, the worse I feel.
The more confident I become that there will never be an end to this torment.
“I couldn’t face her knowing what I had done, that I was the reason she had lost Drew.
I couldn’t face you, but I made sure you were both okay as much as I could. ”
Her brow furrows again as she narrows her eyes on me. “What do you mean?” After a few seconds, her eyes widen slightly. “Why did you come to my house that night—that specific night?”
I suck in a deep breath and release a heavy sigh.
“Because it was supposed to be your wedding day. I watched you sign for that delivery, and I knew what it was because my mom told me they were supposed to be delivered that weekend. I knew it was his ashes, and I knew it was undoubtedly the most excruciating day of your life. I had already seen how distraught you were, and I was worried about you. I wanted to—”
Shit.
It doesn’t matter what I wanted to do that night or any other time.
None of it matters.
Nothing will ever make this okay for her.
She bolts back up onto her knees and heaves over the trash can again, tears dripping down her face as her body revolts against the information I’m giving her.
And that need to explain, even if it doesn’t mean anything, overwhelms me.
“I needed to make sure you and my mom were all right, but I couldn’t tell you guys what I had done.
What had happened. I couldn’t—” I choke on a sob.
“You asked me why I ordered a beer at the bar, if it was to test myself.” I shake my head.
“I don’t do it to test myself, Ivy. I do it to torture myself because I deserve it.
I deserve every ounce of agony I suffer staring at that pint of beer or double shot of whiskey sitting on the table or bar in front of me.
I deserve it because it is nothing compared to what he suffered in his last moments…
because of me. Because I was selfish. Because I wanted something that wasn’t mine.
Because I took a taste of it, knowing I shouldn’t and couldn’t have it.
I sit and stare at that drink I can’t have to remind myself what one taste of you cost me. ”
She whips her head toward me, and the pain and hatred in her eyes are enough to make me recoil. “I thought he was having an affair.”
I clench my hand around the bottle. “I didn’t know you would think that. I had no idea. I would’ve told you sooner if I had—”
“Fuck you, Camden.”
With her body trembling, she rights herself and struggles to stand, grabbing the counter to keep herself steady.
“Ivy, please—”
I somehow climb to my own unsteady feet, hand pressed to the brick wall to keep myself from tumbling over. The whole room spins, her beautiful face a black and white and gray kaleidoscope. I squeeze my eyes closed until it stops. When I reopen them, she’s already on the move toward the door.
Doing exactly what I knew she would when she found out the truth, leaving me without a look back.
“Ivy, please, I’m so sorry.” A strangled, desperate sob slips out. “I—”
She stops and whirls to face me, her hands fisted at her sides.
“You don’t get to apologize to me. This is all your fault, Cam, all of it.
You took Drew from me. You tainted my memory of him, of what we had.
All for what? So you could prove that you could take me?
What kind of sick fucking game is that? One I want no part of but you put me at the center of it anyway. ”
Her steps move her toward the door, but then she pauses for a moment and turns.
A second passes where I can physically feel her hatred, rage, and anguish rolling off her.
Then she stalks toward me and bends to scoop up the needle and heroin that have been sitting beside me for hours.
With her eyes locked on me, she closes the final few steps between us and snatches the bottle from my hand.
With it clenched tightly in her trembling fist, she eyes it and then her gaze drifts to the drugs in her other hand. “But I’m also not going to be responsible for you killing yourself.”
She turns and storms out the still-open loft door.
Her heavy footsteps on the metal staircase ring in my ears as I slide back down the brick, not even caring about how it bites and scrapes my bare skin.
I thought losing Drew was going to kill me.
But I was wrong.
It’s this.
Seeing how badly I destroyed Ivy and obliterated everything good in her life.
Losing her is what’s truly going to do it.