Chapter Eighteen Cameron
Chapter Eighteen
Cameron
Isat in the waiting room of the clinic while Sloane was inside meeting a therapist for the first time.
She’d asked for help and counseling.
After all these years.
But I hadn’t realized that her history was this bad. I never knew.
I knew she didn’t get along with her parents. It constantly strained her whenever we saw them. She only agreed to visit once every two months, and even that felt like a negotiation.
But I didn’t know the wounds ran that deep, that the damage cut that harsh.
My mind went back to that night, three days ago, when she called for help.
Each time I remembered it, a shiver ran through me.
How I jumped out of bed and ran to Mom’s room, banging on her door, asking where she kept the spare keys. I grabbed them and drove straight there without a second thought.
And when I found her—curled up on the bed, her hand still clutching her phone, crying so hard she didn’t even notice me—I just sat beside her. I pulled her into my arms, and she started mumbling things.
As if she were talking to herself.
Or to me.
But not really aware that I was even there.
Sloane was crying in my arms for hours. She couldn’t stop, and I didn’t know how to help her.
Through her tears, she kept mumbling about Xander, her brother, who, from what I knew, died in a car accident. But she was telling me things I hadn’t heard before—pieces of a story that didn’t fit the version I thought I knew.
I tried to make sense of it all, gathering what I could from her broken words.
She spoke about the pressure they both grew up under, how they never really got to be kids. No carefree teenage years. No space to breathe. Just the constant weight of expectations, all laid on them by their father.
She told me about the beatings, how their father took it out on Xander more than anyone knew. About how it broke him down slowly until there was nothing left to hold on to. He took pills to end his life. By the time she drove him to the hospital, he was already slipping away.
And then—the accident.
When the police and EMTs found her, she was badly bleeding, sitting in the back seat, and holding a lifeless Xander in her arms. His body was still, untouched by the crash—no fresh blood or bruises, only the cold stillness of death. She stared ahead with a vacant gaze, numb and frozen in shock.
Sloane stayed like that for days.
And her twisted parents didn’t do a thing.
They showed up only when she was admitted and again when it was time to take her home.
The days in between, when she was lost inside herself and barely holding on, she spent completely alone.
And worst of all, she never even got the chance to go to Xander’s burial. One more wound left open.
She said she was the one behind the wheel. The crash didn’t kill Xander—he was already gone before it happened. But maybe her decision did.
Because she didn’t wait. She panicked. She tried to save him herself.
The emergency team arrived just after she left. They traced the address through the landline she’d used, and it was registered to the house. Due to a roadblock, they arrived fourteen minutes later, exactly three minutes after she drove away.
“They might’ve saved him,” she whispered. “If I had just waited... they might have saved him.”
I held her tighter. I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing that could undo it. Nothing that could make it right.
All I could do was stay.
And then she told me the last thing he said to her.
He told her he loved her.
I felt the tremors run through her as she said it, how hard it was for her to force the words out, maybe because it brought her back to that moment, to Xander dying in her arms.
My mind went back to the times she’d said those words to me. All four times, spread across the years. It must have hurt so much each time she said it.
I pressed my lips to the top of her head and closed my eyes, feeling the burn of tears behind my lids.
She still said it to me, even though it tore her apart. Those rare words were monumental for her, and now, knowing the cost, they fill me with crippling guilt.
“I begged him to stay, Cam. I did. I begged him not to leave me.”
And I had left her, too.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what she must have felt.
That guilt settled heavily in my chest, choking the air from my lungs.
She sobbed so hard her words barely came through.
“But he didn’t. He chose to leave me.”
I rubbed her back gently and said softly, “You’re not alone, Sloane. I promise I’ll always be here.”
She shook her head slowly and closed her eyes, but she didn’t say anything.
I sat there, her head on my chest, my eyes stayed with her until she finally drifted to sleep.
Sloane kept it all to herself for years—the trauma, the guilt, the fear of being left behind. She forced herself to believe she was better off alone.
She was afraid of affection, convinced she didn’t deserve it, and certain it would only end in pain.
She never spoke about it to anyone.
She had just buried it deep, locking it all away... until it finally exploded.
It took two days before she could even begin to function again, before the tears finally dried.
Right then, all I wanted to do was march to her parents’ house and fucking break their bones.
How could parents do this to their own children?
How could they not love them, not care for them the way they’re supposed to?
I would never do that to Harper. Sloane wouldn’t either.
God, to think what Xander went through.
And their parents could sit there at dinner with Sloane, relentless in their pressure, pushing her toward a career path, making it clear she was never good enough. Without a fucking shred of guilt for driving their son to end his life, they still did the same to their remaining child.
Sloane would never go back there again. Never.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Caroline.
She was the one who helped us get an appointment at this clinic through her connections, even though it was already fully booked.
Sloane was the one who suggested it, once she was finally lucid enough to remember that Caroline had mentioned a friend who owned a psychiatric clinic. She asked me to call her.
“At that time... I was thinking of going,” Sloane said quietly. “I—I wanted to ask Caroline to help. To get me in. But I didn’t... I couldn’t. I was still scared. Because therapy, counseling... it meant talking. About it. About everything.”
And I knew, for her, talking about feelings was the hardest thing of all.
Caroline, clearly confused about why we were suddenly asking for that kind of help, came right away. She climbed onto the bed, knelt in front of Sloane, and hissed at me, “What happened?”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to say at the time. I didn’t even know if Sloane wanted Caroline to know.
But then she shocked us both—reaching out, gripping Caroline’s hand, and whispering, “Get me help, Car. Please help me. Please. I can’t do this anymore.”
Caroline was so stunned that all she could do was gape at me, demanding an explanation.
I picked up the call and heard my sister say, “How is she? Are you still at the clinic?” She sounded worried. Of course, she was. She had come over and seen it for herself—the state of ruin Sloane was in.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Fuck, Cam. What really happened to her?” Caroline asked. She only knew fragments, not the whole story. “Why didn’t we see it?”
I didn’t know how to answer.
Maybe because Sloane never let anyone see. Maybe because we weren’t looking hard enough, or maybe we saw just enough to be afraid of what it meant.
She was always quiet about her pain, controlled and composed. She wore it like armor.
And now that it had cracked, it was as if everything underneath had been rotting for years.
“Probably because she hid it well,” I said finally. “Or maybe because we didn’t look close enough.”
“What are you going to do now, Cam?” Caroline asked.
“I’m going to stay with her,” I said, determined. “Until she doesn’t need me anymore.”
“Sloane’s taking a month off, and I had to fight Robert for that. And now you want to take leave too? How am I supposed to explain that to our CMO?”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Car. I can’t really think straight right now. If I lose my job, then so be it.”
Caroline went silent for a moment. “Alright. I’ll see what I can do. Keep me posted on Sloane, okay? I’m worried here.” She paused. “Are you going to tell Mom?”
“If Sloane is okay with it, I probably will,” I said. “Sloane loves Mom. Maybe being with her will help in some way.”
“I agree,” Caroline said. “I have to go. Call me as soon as you can, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
Then I saw Sloane walking toward me down the hallway, looking utterly exhausted. I jumped up from my seat and went to her.
“I want to go home,” she said softly. “Take me home.”
Sloane moved through the days quietly, but something had shifted. She was beginning to talk more.
She told me about her therapy sessions.
On that first day, she couldn’t get a single word out. She just sat there, frozen.
And to her surprise, the therapist hadn’t pushed.
“He said he didn’t expect me to talk about it yet,” she told me. “That we’d go slow. Build trust first.”
I saw it then—the way her shoulders eased a little just from saying that out loud. Relief.
I stayed with her almost every single minute of the day. I slept beside her, sat next to her, careful not to move too much, afraid of breaking the fragile calm. She was there physically, but her mind was still miles away, lost in a place I couldn’t reach.
Then, when she couldn’t see me, panic would hit her like a wave. She would call my name, her voice trembling with fear and desperation. I’d rush to her side, take her hand gently, and whisper, “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She held onto me like I was the only real thing left, her grip tight and desperate. In those moments, all I could do was be present until she found a little peace inside all the chaos.
Harper brought light into the dark days with her endless chatter and giggles. Slowly, I saw Sloane’s smile return—small, fragile, but real. Whenever she held Harper, calm would settle over her face, a brief moment of peace in the storm.
At the next therapy session, while waiting, I approached the receptionist and said, “I need a session. I need to talk to someone. I want to know how to help my wife.”
The clinic was very helpful, especially Caroline’s friend, Burke Kensington, the owner, who quickly arranged a session for me the following week.
But later that day, something unexpected happened—something I hadn’t even realized I’d forgotten in the midst of everything else.
I received a text from my lawyer:
“The court has approved your divorce. You both are officially divorced now.”