Chapter 35 Cam
Chapter 35
Cam
“Thank you for dinner,” I said a little while later. Dusty and I were sitting on the bar stools at my kitchen counter.
He smiled at me. “I’ve been waiting for us to have something like this for a long time.”
“Falafel?” I asked, confused.
“No, weirdo.” Dusty reached over and flicked my nose. I smiled at him. “Time.” He kissed me then. Softly. “I didn’t know if we’d ever get it, but I hoped for it. I hoped for you.”
I felt so many things at once, but not all of it was good. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “That I was the reason our time got cut short last time.”
Dusty lifted his hand, and I felt his fingers curl around the back of my neck. “I need you to know that I don’t blame you, angel—for leaving me in Montana. I don’t blame you at all.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. Thinking about that hurt. “You don’t?”
“Not at all. I mean, I was heartbroken for a long time, but with every year that passed, I realized that even if you’d stayed, that didn’t mean we would’ve made it. Maybe things would’ve gotten so bad we couldn’t fix them. I knew you weren’t happy. I knew that the life I longed for then wasn’t the life you saw for yourself.”
“I saw a life with you,” I said. “And…I think that was kind of the problem. I didn’t really see me or what I wanted. I just saw you, and then I realized I was living your life instead of mine or even ours,” I said honestly. I didn’t leave Dusty because I didn’t love him or want to be with him. I left him because I wanted something for myself, too. I didn’t know that then, but I knew that now. The problem, I realized once I got home, was I didn’t know how to go for it, so I ended up living the life my parents wanted instead.
“I think…I think that you choosing to leave—even being brave enough to—is what makes right now possible,” Dusty said as his thumb moved back and forth along my cheek.
“How do you mean?”
“We were young, Cam. And that doesn’t mean our relationship wasn’t real or substantial or all of the things that we know were true.” He paused for a second. “We were in love, and as much as I wanted that to be enough then, I don’t think it was.
“There’s all of these things we can’t control that push on us—timing, dreams, stress, hopes—and it makes sense to me that two eighteen-year-olds couldn’t handle that heat. We went in two separate directions, but roads that go in opposite directions come back together all the time.”
“Is that what we’re doing now?” I asked. “Coming back together?”
“I hope so,” he said. “That’s what I want. Do you?”
“You’ve always been so…forthcoming,” I said with a small laugh. “It used to make me nervous. I felt like I wasn’t worthy of someone so…sure about me.”
“And now?”
“It still makes me nervous,” I said honestly. “But it also makes me feel more secure in where we’ve been and where we’re at and…where we’re going.”
“And where are we going, angel?”
“Forward? How does that sound—” Dusty kissed me before I could finish. I let everything around us fall away. It was just me and him and all the things we felt for each other. Three words got stuck in the back of my throat, and even though I didn’t say them, I think Dusty knew.