Chapter 70 Alec
SEVENTY
ALEC
Ten minutes later, Cameron pulls up outside the farmhouse. For a moment, we just sit in silence. Through the falling rain, I can make out the blurred shape of the ruined lambing shed. Fraser and I haven’t had any time to fix it yet, and the damaged roof yawns like a jagged open mouth.
I clear my throat. “How’s the new job?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” he says, grip tight on the steering wheel.
Right.
I expect Cameron to kick me out and drive off, but he pulls his key out of the ignition and steps out of the car. Hope lurches in my stomach as I join him. We walk in silence up to the farmhouse.
He gives me a sidelong look as he shoves his key in the front door. “Still have stuff to collect,” he mutters. “May as well do it now.”
The hope dies. “Right,” I say, following him inside the house.
It’s dark and shadowy inside. With Summer gone, Fraser and I haven’t been bothering to light a fire. There’s crap everywhere—misprinted posters, half-eaten plates of food, empty mugs. Cameron surveys it all with a cold eye.
“Fraser here?”
“I don’t know,” I say. He avoids me whenever we’re both at home.
He’s furious with me. I understand it. I’d hate me too, if I were him.
Cameron heads to his room. A few minutes later, he comes back with two bags full of clothes thrown over his shoulders. I get a sudden flash of memory from eighteen years ago.
I’m seventeen, working in the lambing barn. It’s been three months since my dad took me out of school. He spent all morning having me euthanise sick sheep to “toughen me up,” and now he’s having me reclean the lambing shed. I’m so tired and sad I want to stop existing.
There’s a crunch in the hay behind me. Cameron’s lanky teenage frame appears. He looks over his shoulder to check no one saw him sneak in, then he pulls a sandwich out of his bag and hands it over.
“Here,” he says without preamble, following it up with a stack of library books. “And I brought you books. Hide them. Fraser and I are going to ask your dad if we can work here after school and on the weekends.”
I’m horrified. “What? No—”
“It’ll help,” Cameron insists. “He’s off his head. But he won’t treat you like this in front of us. He knows we’d tell someone. And he’s too greedy to turn down the under-eighteen minimum wage rate, I’d bet. Or we’ll ask to do an unpaid apprenticeship. There’s no way he’ll say no to that.”
I look down at the sandwich in my shaking hands. “Just forget about me. You need to study.”
His eyes are hard. “We’re not going to forget about you. Get over yourself.”
Cameron was right. It did help. With them on the farm, my dad mellowed out, and things went back to how they were before I was pulled out of school. God knows what would have happened if they hadn’t done it. They could have just given up on me.
In the present, Cameron’s face is stony. I wonder if he’s remembering the same thing. Decades of friendship seem to unspool and hang in the air between us.
“Well,” he says eventually. “That’s me away. Bye.”
He pushes forwards. I step back to let him past, and that’s when I notice the poster that’s fallen off the kitchen table and onto the hardwood floor.
I open my mouth to warn Cameron, but it’s too late.
He steps on it and skids, stumbling back onto his weak leg.
I watch, horrified, as the knee crumples beneath his weight, and he collapses onto the floor.
“Shit.” I run to his side. “Shit, are you okay—”
He waves me off, turning his face away from me. “Move,” he manages to force out, his teeth gritted. “Don’t touch me.”
I grab his arm to help him up, and his whole body tenses. He plants a hand in the middle of my chest and shoves me away so hard that I stagger back. I stare at him, shocked.
“I said don’t touch me!” he snarls up at me, his face red. “Get away from me!”
I shift back, giving him space. He closes his eyes, breathing hard. For a long time, he doesn’t move, sprawled across the floor.
“Cameron—” I start.
“Shut. Up.”
His face is twisted in pain. He’s struggling to breathe through it. My ribcage feels like it’s being pried open.
My fault. This is all my fault.
I clamp my mouth shut, watching as he slowly levers himself upright and grabs the edge of the kitchen table for support. His cheeks are red.
“You make it so much more embarrassing than it needs to be,” he spits out. He tests some weight on his leg, and pain flickers over his face. I feel like I’m going to fall apart.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “This is all my fault. I’m so sorry.”
He looks up at me, eyes flashing. “What,” he says coldly, “are you apologising for? How you treated Summer? Or my leg?” My eyes fall to his knee, and he groans out loud, wiping a hand over his face.
“God. I could honestly kill you, Alec. I could kill you. This is all because of me, isn’t it?
You let Summer go home because of me. Because you feel guilty. ”
I swallow thickly. “I hurt everyone. I hurt you without meaning to. How am I meant to keep her here? She could have died. I already ruined your life—”
Before I know what’s happening. Cameron grabs me by the front of my shirt and slams me against the wall so hard all the air is knocked out of me.
“You did not ruin my life,” he growls, getting up in my face. “The idea that I’m so pathetic that someone else could ruin my life is insulting.”
My throat feels like it’s closing. “You’re in pain, all the time,” I manage. “You probably will be for the rest of your life.”
“Right,” Cameron snarls. “So I guess I may as well just die, right? Never mind that I was happy. I had a job I liked. I had her. I had everything I wanted. But none of that matters to you, does it? You look at me, and you think I’m just some…
some tragedy.” He shakes his head, lips thinning.
“I know you don’t want to talk about that night, but we’re going to. We need to get some things straight.”
It feels like a door slams shut inside me. “No,” I say.
He ignores me. “The night your dad died, I told you to leave the farm and go out drinking. Me. Wasn’t even your idea.”
What is he doing? “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“We shouldn’t have even been working that day,” he continues. “The weather was too bad, but because your dad was a shitty, abusive person, he didn’t give us the day off. His fault.”
Ice trickles down my back like rain. “Stop it.”
He just tightens his grip on me. “It was your father who insisted on trying to move a forty-thousand-pound piece of equipment when the wind was at eighty knots. Because he was a mean, stubborn git. Him. His choice. His fault.”
My heart is pounding. I look down at his hand where it’s still planted on my chest. I don’t want to be here. I have to leave. “Let go of me.”
“No. I’m the one who chose to go and help your dad. I knew I could get injured, maybe even killed. But I chose to do it.” He’s up in my face. “My choice. My fault. Not your fault.”
I can’t talk. With every word, he’s prying the lid off the box of memories. The feeling rising up in me is overwhelming.
“And you know what else?” Cameron asks. “I’m glad you weren’t here.
Because if you had been, you’d be dead or injured too.
And as much as I want to kill you, I don’t actually want you dead.
” He shakes his head in disgust. “You dare to use my leg as the reason why Summer can’t stay here?
I’m not your tragic backstory, Alec. I’m not going to be the excuse for why you’re a shitty person. ”
His voice fades away. He’s talking, but I can’t concentrate. My ears are full of static. I try to inhale, but my lungs don’t respond. I put my hand on the wall. I feel like I’m about to pass out.
“Alec.” Cameron’s voice changes. “Are you okay?”
I open my mouth, but I can’t speak. It feels like something is about to climb out of my chest. Everything is tinging grey. The wall dissolves under my hand. My legs cut out from under me, and suddenly I’m on my knees on the farmhouse floor, heaving for breath.
Cameron is silent for a second.
“Jesus Christ,” he says eventually. “You’re totally messed up, aren’t you?”
I can’t answer. Cameron lowers himself onto the floor by my side.
He grabs my face and forces me to look at him.
“You’re not okay,” he says. It’s not a question.
“Of course you’re not okay. Because you were a kid trying to pull a forage harvester off his dead dad.
I’ve been dense. This isn’t just about me. ”
“I’m so sorry,” I manage. Jesus, I feel like I’m about to have a stroke. I feel like my organs are shutting down. “Cam, I’m so sorry I couldn’t do it. I tried so hard. I tried…”
His eyes shut. “Don’t be. For God’s sake. You can’t keep blaming yourself for this. You’re going to kill yourself.” His hands grip my shoulders hard, steadying me like anchors. “It’s been years, Alec. Your dad is gone. I am fine. Let it go. Move on.”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“But I just told you—”
“If I let it go,” I say, “it could happen again. If Summer had been hit—” My thoughts are stuttering, stumbling over each other.
“I wouldn’t have been able to— It would have ended everything.
” I’m shaking and sweating like I’m about to throw up.
I jam a hand in my hair. “Jesus,” I pant. “What is wrong with me?”
Cameron tilts his head, watching me. “You love her,” he says.
The words hit me like a cannon to the chest.
He’s right.
I do.
Which is bad. Very, very bad.
“And what does that mean for her?” I manage to spit out. I don’t know how to love. All I know how to do is work, and I’m not even good at that. Dimly, I hear the squeak of the front door behind us.
“You didn’t hurt Summer,” Cameron says slowly. “You saved her life.” His hand tightens on me. “Let it go. For all our sakes. Let it go.”
I shake my head. I can’t. I can’t. It’s too dangerous. Something wet touches my face. I wipe it off and stare at the tears on my fingertips.
I’m crying. I look at the wet shine in total disbelief.