Chapter 21 #2
"Nora." Her voice is gentle but firm. "You have to tell him. If he finds out from anyone else, if he has to piece it together himself, I don't think he'd be able to handle that. Not after everything else."
"But if I tell him, if he knows it was Scott on top of everything else Scott's currently doing..." I meet her eyes, letting her see my fear. "He'll go after him, Camilla. And that thought scares me more than anything because of what happened last year."
She reaches over to squeeze my hand.
"That boy loves you more than air. He's also a very different person now than he was back then. But regardless, he still deserves to know the truth."
That's the problem sometimes though.
When you love something so fiercely, so completely, it can blind you to everything else. It makes you selfish in ways you never expected—makes you want to carry their pain so they don't have to, even when that's not how relationships or healing works. And maybe that's what terrifies me most.
Not that Nate will go after Scott, but that my love for him has made me into someone who thinks she can decide what he can and can't handle. That somewhere along the way, I started believing my love was bigger than his right to know.
Camilla’s voice interrupts my thoughts.
"That said, if Nate does decide to go after that piece of shit, I'm driving."
I side-eye her, because as much as it was meant to be a joke, it's Camilla.
"Can we talk about something else?" I say, forcing a lighter tone.
"You just dropped a bomb on me, give me a second."
"You're right, sorry."
Camilla sits on the sofa next to me, grabbing my hands in hers. Her eye contact holds me still.
"You're never going to apologize to me again, okay? I know this is all kinds of fucked up right now and whatever you need from me, you have. But Nora, listen to me. You cannot carry this alone forever, it’s going to eat you alive."
I nod.
"I love you," she hugs me hard. "So fucking much."
"I love you too, Cam. Thank you."
"Always."
"Okay, so tell me about your day. I need some normalcy in my life right now before I actually lose it."
Camilla's face brightens, despite the fact that she's probably plotting her own revenge plan that could rival Nate's.
"Well, Jay asked me to be his date for your Mom and Nick’s wedding."
Something warm spreads through my chest.
"Wait, what? That's pretty official, isn't it?"
"Is it?"
Her cheeks heat up and it makes me happy seeing her feel something so obviously for someone. After everything she's been through, she deserves someone who looks at her the way Jay does—like she's both a mystery he wants to solve and a prize he can't believe he's won.
"Camilla, I hate to break it to you, but you're in love with him and he's in love with you. And it's tragic because you look at him and see the stars and he looks at you and sees the sun, but you both think the other is just looking at the ground."
"Okay, easy there, Shakespeare."
I can't help but laugh.
"He likes you. A lot. Anyone with eyes can see that. Trust how you feel about him too."
The doorbell rings before I can ask for more details.
"That'll be the rest of the gang," Camilla says, getting up to answer it.
Marcus sweeps through the door like he owns the place, Mia trailing behind with an expression of fond exasperation.
"Ladies," Marcus announces, dropping a bag full of what appears to be skincare products on the coffee table, "it's time for Marcus and his angel's annual sleepover."
"Is that a thing?" I ask.
"As of right now, apparently," Mia replies, settling into the armchair with the resigned air of someone who's learned not to fight Marcus when he gets an idea.
"Of course it’s a thing. I brought face masks," Marcus continues, pulling out an assortment of colorful packets. "And I'm talking about the overpriced good ones. None of that drugstore garbage."
"I'll get the wine!" Camilla disappears into the kitchen, and I can hear her rummaging through cabinets.
"Right then," Marcus says, settling cross-legged on the floor and beginning to sort through face masks. "Who wants to look absolutely glowing while we psychoanalyze everyone we've ever met?"
"That's not psychoanalysis," Mia points out. "That's amateur therapy."
"Even better. Nora, you're our resident literature expert. Surely you can provide some narrative framework for our character studies."
I laugh, accepting the face mask he hands me.
"I think tonight I just want to be a regular teenager doing regular teenager things."
"Boring teenager things," Camilla adds, returning with a bottle of wine and four glasses.
"The most boring," I agree.
Marcus pops the wine with unnecessary ceremony, and as we settle in for what promises to be hours of face masks and ridiculous conversation, I let myself exist in this moment—safe, surrounded by people who love me, temporarily free from the weight of secrets and corruption and all the ways the adult world tries to break you before you're ready.
Tomorrow I'll have to figure out how to tell Nate the truth about Scott.
But for now, tomorrow can wait.