Chapter 20 Cam
CAM
TWO DAYS LATER
Dale drums his fingers on the side of his coffee mug, his dark eyes locked on me where I sit across from him in the booth at the diner near my studio. The same place Ivy came after we spent our first night together—which seems fitting for why we’re meeting this morning.
And I know that look.
He’s given it to me before, times he thought I was making bad decisions that might lead me to pick up again.
But this time, it’s even more intense.
I should have expected it after the confession I just made.
Telling him what happened the other night with Ivy and explaining to him how badly it left me rattled after I walked away from her, soaking wet and confused as fuck, exposed something he’s been saying all along—she is my biggest trigger.
My sweetest obsession and what could be my biggest downfall.
I run my hand through my hair and release a long sigh to break the tension permeating the air. “Just say it.”
The corners of his lips twitch. “You already know what I’m going to say.”
“It doesn’t mean you don’t want to say it yourself, Dale.”
He smirks, relaxing back into the booth and sliding his arm across the red pleather. “I’ve been around the block more times than I can count, kid, and I’m going to tell you, whether you want to hear it or not, that what you are doing is incredibly dangerous to your recovery.”
I snort. “You think I don’t know that?”
A dark brow raises at me. “Then why are you still doing it?”
Fuck.
Because I’m a masochist.
Because I can’t imagine turning my back and walking away for good from the woman I love, who is going to give birth to my niece soon.
Because maybe I am still that selfish person I’ve been trying so hard not to be.
I bury my face in my hands and release a long, frustrated groan that I feel in every cell of my body. When I lift my head again, he’s still watching me, waiting for an answer. “Because what else am I supposed to do, Dale? Just walk away from her?”
His brow rises again, and he nods. “Yes.”
I throw up my hands. “I can’t fucking do that, Dale. She’s pregnant with my niece. My mom and I are the only people she has left to help her through this pregnancy and everything that comes after it.”
“What about her friends?” He waves a hand. “Uhhh…Marlo and somebody. Trina?”
“She was her mom’s best friend.”
He raises his palms. “There you go! She has people. People who love her, people who are going to support her and take care of her, people who aren’t fucking triggered by her.”
I glower at him.
“What? You know as well as I do that that woman is your trigger. Not one of them; she’s it.
Period. End of story. All the guilt and pain you feel that makes you want to pick up again stems from what started with her the night you first met.
All the actions you took after that were tied to her.
You look back and don’t even recognize that person who did those things because you were in the throes of addiction.
Both to drugs and whatever dopamine your system was creating where Ivy was concerned.
Then, the guilt over your actions sent you spiraling again.
But in the end, it’s always been about her, hasn’t it? ”
It has.
But it doesn’t mean I want to hear that the only way to keep myself level is to leave her when she’s in such a vulnerable state.
My hand shakes on top of the table, my knee bouncing wildly under it.
I need a fucking cigarette…
“Don’t look at me like that, Cam. You asked me to be your sponsor because, and I quote, I ‘always give it to you straight.’” He leans forward slightly, gripping his mug.
“Even when you don’t want to hear it. And right now, what you need to hear is that you need to walk away from her.
Let your mom play grandmother and step into that role and do what needs to be done.
Let her friends support her. What you don’t need to be doing is going over there and going down on that woman. ”
“Jesus, Dale…”
I glance around the diner to ensure nobody heard him, and the waitress approaches with our meals in time to force me to hold back what I was about to say to him.
“Here you go.” She sets my breakfast in front of me, but the plate full of eggs, bacon, toast, and potatoes suddenly doesn’t look as appetizing as it sounded when I ordered it.
Dale, however, grabs his silverware and dives right into his steak and eggs, slicing them up as soon as she walks away while he glances at me. He pauses with his knife mid-air. “What? Are we pretending that isn’t what happened?”
I run my hand through my hair again and shake my head.
“No, that’s exactly what happened, but you don’t have to sound so…
judgmental about it. You should have seen her, Dale…
” My chest tightens picturing how distraught she was.
The pain and frustration in her eyes when I opened that shower still haunt me.
“She was hysterical. A complete mess. She was breaking, and I couldn’t just stand there and watch that happen to her. ”
His brow furrows, the lines there deepening. “Why not? Why do you always have to be the one who comes to her rescue? Why couldn’t you have called Marlo, or Trina, or even your mother to come over?”
Fuck.
He isn’t wrong about that.
Any of them would have been at the house in twenty minutes if I had called, and they would have figured out a way to calm her and get her through the breakdown moment.
But that would have been twenty minutes too long.
“You know why.”
He finishes chewing the food in his mouth and swallows. “Because you love her?”
I give him a sharp nod.
How could I stand there, watching the woman I love suffer so much and not do something to help? How could I leave, knowing she would have to wait twenty more minutes like that to have someone hold her and comfort her?
“Do you, though?”
His question stiffens my spine, my blood running icy cold. “What the fuck kind of a question is that?”
He points his fork at me. “The kind you should actually be asking yourself if you haven’t already, and I don’t think you have.
You’ve been obsessed with this woman for over four years, Cam.
And obsessed is the right word. You let her take control of everything about your life; you let your feelings for her destroy your relationship with your brother, who was your best friend and the closest person to you.
You let it destroy your relationship with your mother because you couldn’t come clean about why you and Drew were fighting.
When you couldn’t have her, you turned to alcohol and drugs to try to deaden the pain and guilt over what you had done.
And it was all based on a lie you told her that night by pretending to be your brother.
Is that any way to start any sort of relationship? Does that sound healthy to you?”
“Fuck you, Dale.”
He holds up his hands, still clutching his silverware between his fingers.
“I’m playing devil’s advocate here. Literally my job.
This woman triggers you in every way possible, and if you continue to stay in her life, you’re going to continue to get dragged into these highly emotional situations that are very likely to push you toward picking up. ”
Dale shoves another bite into his mouth and chews, giving me a moment to think about his warning.
I cringe as the memory of holding the heroin in my hand and twisting the cap off that bottle of whiskey flickers through my head.
It’s the last thing I want to do, the last place I ever want to find myself again.
He swallows and takes a sip of his coffee. “You also know that it isn’t just bad emotions that can trigger a relapse, Cam. You could finally be happy because you got what you always wanted, but that could be just as dangerous as all those other emotions.”
Dale is right.
He usually is.
That’s why I wanted him as my sponsor—because he has been clean for almost three decades but relapsed several times before getting to that point. He’s been through it all and understands triggers better than anyone.
Except this isn’t just a trigger.
This is a person.
This is someone who is family forever now because of the baby growing inside of her.
“You’re asking me to walk away from my family.”
He pauses with a bite of steak halfway up to his mouth. “Are they your family, or are they Drew’s?”
I cringe, squeezing my eyes closed at the pain that lashes through my chest. “They’re Drew’s.”
The words hurt to say even more than they do to hear.
“And is it your responsibility to pick up the pieces? Or should Ivy be able to find a life without you and the memories of everything that happened constantly surrounding her?”
I want to tell him that isn’t fair, but he’s right.
As much as she might be a trigger for me, I am for her, too.
Every time she sees me, every time we talk, when I touch her the way I did two nights ago, it all brings this rush of conflicting emotions barreling back like a tidal wave that threatens to pull me under the dark water.
“So…you’re saying I should walk away.”
He shoves the steak into his mouth. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s my job to help you through your recovery, to make sure you stay on track, to ensure you’re avoiding things that will trigger you. Like I said, devil’s advocate.”
“And what if I don’t?”
His eyes stay locked on me as he chews and eventually swallows. “What if you don’t what?”
“Walk away.”
Dale considers me for a moment. “Then you’re making it a thousand times harder on yourself to stay sober and clean.
You’re setting yourself up to fall and to fail.
You know I will always be here for you, no matter what, but you have to understand the position you’re putting yourself in every time you see that woman. ”
I lean back in the booth and stare at the one that Ivy and I sat in that day. “Well, luckily, I don’t see her that much.”
“Oh, that’s right.” His eyes widen. “You just sneak into her house while she’s gone and drop things off and then sneak back out.”
I smirk at him. “Pretty much.”
“You know what that makes you?”
“If you say stalker…”
He barks out a laugh. “No, that’s what you were before. Now? I don’t know what the fuck you are. Maybe an altruistic lurker…” He motions toward my plate. “Eat. You need to. You look like you haven’t been.”
I clear my throat. “I am.”
But he’s right; my appetite seems to have fled the same way Ivy’s did when Drew died. Though apparently, she had a very legitimate excuse for that, whereas for me, it’s these welling emotions that always seem to clog my throat.
“Have you been painting at all?”
I glance up at him as I force myself to snag the silverware and cut into my plate. “No. Things are still too…” I shrug. “Mixed up. In a way that I can’t quite break through.”
“It was beautiful.”
“What was?”
His gaze softens. “The one you did at Max’s.”
The corners of my lips curl. “You saw that, huh?”
He nods. “Would have been hard to miss it when it was all over the local news channels and the internet. I think you’re moving in the right direction with that.”
“What do you mean?”
Dale offers a shrug. “Concentrating on the happy memories, on the things that make you smile. It seems that you and Ivy are both so bogged down in your grief, in your anger, that you’re clinging to it instead of letting it go and looking to the future.”
He isn’t wrong.
But what kind of future will it be if I have to walk away from Ivy and that baby?
The thought of it makes my stomach twist, and I drop my silverware onto the plate with a clatter and bury my face into my hands again.
Talking to Dale usually helps me sort through all the fog in my head, silences those voices and the little devil on my shoulder whispering for me to do stupid things. And today, he was the voice of reason.
But what if I don’t want to listen to reason?
What if reason is what will truly decimate my heart?