Chapter 41 Cam
Chapter 41
Cam
When I got in my car, I banged on the steering wheel a few times in frustration. God dammit. I turned my car on and drove straight for Rebel Blue. I needed to talk to someone. How did things get so messed up?
Yesterday, I thought Dusty and I had a guaranteed future. Today, I wasn’t so sure. And it wasn’t just about the house. Maybe I was wrong—maybe what I felt for him wasn’t something new, built to last. Maybe these were the same feelings of that seventeen-year-old girl, so desperate to be loved, ricocheting back on me, and I couldn’t see the reality in front of my face.
The thought made my stomach turn, and I started to question everything.
My thoughts blazed like a wildfire through my brain as I drove until I ended up on Wes and Ada’s doorstep.
I probably should’ve called or texted first, but oh, well. I knocked on the door.
Wes opened it a few seconds later, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. His feet were bare, and his dog, Waylon, was at his side—like always.
“Cam?” There was worry in his voice. I could only imagine what I looked like. “What’s wrong?” He stepped out onto the porch and put his hands on my shoulders, steadying me.
“Is Ada home?” I asked.
“She had a client meeting—I can call her. Find out when she’ll be back?”
“No,” I said, deflating a little. “It’s, um, it’s fine. I’ll just talk to her later.”
Wes’s eyes were brimming with concern. “Do you want to come in? I’m no Ada, but I’m a good placeholder until she gets here.”
I chewed on my bottom lip for a second before I nodded. Wes led me inside, and Waylon licked my hands on the way in. Ada and Wes had slowly been remodeling this house on Wes’s slab of Rebel Blue. They weren’t done yet, but every time I came here, there was something new to explore.
Wes led me toward the couch, and I couldn’t help but flop down on it. He sat in the big comfy chair across from me and pulled out his phone. “I’ll text Ada and tell her you’re here,” he said.
“Sorry for barging in,” I responded, suddenly self-conscious.
“Don’t apologize,” Wes said. “What’s going on?”
I grabbed one of the pillows off the couch and hugged it over my face. “Dusty,” I said into the pillow.
“Sorry,” Wes said. “I didn’t quite catch that, but I think you might have said Dusty?” I nodded. “Ah, I heard you two were canoodling.”
I took the pillow off my face and glared at him. “Canoodling, really?”
Wes smiled, dimples on display—my daughter got those, too—and shrugged. “You are, though, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But also maybe not anymore.”
“Ah,” Wes said like he understood. “I see. Wanna talk about it?”
I let out a long sigh and nodded. “I don’t know. Things were going well—I thought we were going to make it this time. But then today, I got this bomb dropped on me, and I’m not handling it well.”
“What kind of bomb?” Wes asked.
“A big, destructive, and out-of-the-blue bomb that is making me wonder if everything was too good to be true.”
“Does he have a family in Connecticut or Australia or something?” Wes asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing like that.”
“But it’s gotta be pretty bad for you to be second-guessing, right? From what I’ve heard, things seem to be going pretty well.”
“What have you heard?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
Wes shrugged. “Ada says you’re happy. Riley wouldn’t shut up about him when she slept over a few weeks ago. I don’t know—it makes sense to me that you guys found your way back to each other. I always envied you guys’ friendship in high school and then you started kissing and shit, and I thought you’d be together forever.”
“Wes, you had more friends than anyone I knew.”
“But I didn’t really have a best friend like you and Dusty or Teddy and Emmy or Brooks and Gus. I wanted that. I always thought you guys were lucky to have it. And now I do have a best friend, and I know I was right to want it.”
My heart softened for him. Wes loved Ada so loudly and so much.
“Well,” I said, “it’s not really going well anymore. I found out this morning that he bought the house I’m living in like five years ago, and he didn’t tell me.”
Wes blinked slowly. “And this is a bad thing because?”
“Because he lied about it. Because that means it’s not really mine, and I truly still don’t have anything of my own, and the house that was supposed to be my fresh start actually came with its own baggage.”
“Okay…” Wes replied slowly. “But you’re renting it anyway, so it wouldn’t have been yours either way, right?”
I worried my bottom lip. “That’s not the point. The point is that he let me believe that Anne owned it this whole time even though he did. Plus, he knew how much I loved the house, so I don’t like that he bought it with me in mind.”
“Do you know he did?”
“He said that wasn’t the only reason but that it was one of them. He said he didn’t move in because he didn’t want to live there without me.”
Wes nodded again, and it looked like he was fighting a smile. “So you’re mad because your high school slash current boyfriend bought you a house and let you live in it when you needed a place to go?”
“That’s a major oversimplification, Weston,” I asserted.
“Sometimes these things are simple, Cam.” He shrugged. “Obviously, I don’t have the whole story from either of you, but, I don’t know, this feels like a hiccup, not a relationship altering or ending situation.
“Should he have told you about the house? Definitely. I think it would’ve been better for him to be up front when he agreed to let you rent it. But if he did tell you, would you have moved in?” I didn’t know the answer to that—probably not. I was so afraid of getting close to him then. Wes must’ve seen the look on my face because he kept talking.
“I get wanting to have something to call your own—I really do, Cam. And I know there’s a lot of other stuff wrapped up in that feeling—especially after what you went through. But I’ve also been the person who’s just trying to show the scared and fiercely independent woman how much he loves her. And sometimes”—he smiled—“it doesn’t go according to plan and you end up scaring her instead of winning her over.”
“I’m not scared,” I said. “I’m mad.”
“So you can tell me with one hundred percent certainty that the combination of Dusty buying that house because of you, then spending more time with him again, and the potential of a future where you’re together and happy doesn’t scare you even a little bit? It just makes you mad?”
“You’re taking a lot of liberties with this little advice column you’ve got going on, Wes,” I said with an eye roll.
“Cam.” His face was thoughtful, his voice earnest. “I love you. You’re like another sister to me. When everything happened on your wedding day, I was sad for you, but I also kind of felt…relieved. Like I didn’t have to pretend that I was okay with you settling for less than you deserved anymore.” I swallowed hard. “But the thought of you and Dusty finally finding your way back to each other after all this time and letting this get in the way of that breaks my heart intwo.
“I think you need to talk to Dusty about the house thing— tell him that secrets like that won’t fly in the future. Talk about what it means for your relationship right now and in the future, but I don’t think you need to use this as an excuse to leave him first.”
My head snapped toward him. “What did you say?”
“It’s easier to be the one that leaves than be the one that gets left. I think you and Ada think similarly that way, but both of you have the same problem: You wait for the other shoe to drop, even though that’s never going to happen. Dusty’s putting down roots. You have roots already, and now both of you finally have a chance to let those roots grow together, to get so fucking tangled up in each other that you can’t possibly part again, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
“It’s a scary thing,” I whispered.
“See? I told you that you were scared.”
“How did you know?” Wes held his phone up for me to see. It was the message exchange between him and Ada.
Wes: Cam is here. I think it’s about Dusty.
Ada: I’m on my way home. Don’t let her talk herself out of him because she’s scared.
The front door to their house opened then, and Ada stormed in. She was breathing heavily, and her hair was mussed. “Don’t you dare fucking give up on you and Dusty, Cam, I swear to god” were the first words out of her mouth.
“Wes did a good job at talking me down.” Ada smiled. She walked over to where Wes was sitting on the chair and kissed him on the temple.
“Good,” she said. “I knew I could count on him. He knows a thing or two about skittish women.”
Wes smiled up at Ada, and my heart ached.
“So what should I do?” I asked.
“I think you already know what you want to do. I think you just need to say it.”
“I want to be with Dusty,” I said.
“That’s our girl,” Ada said. “Now go get him.”