Chapter 32 Cam
Chapter thirty-two
Cam
The TV is on, but it’s just light and noise.
Some highlight reel loops across the screen. Slow-motion catches. Analysts talking over each other. A world where everything is clear—wins, losses, stats, blame.
My brain isn’t in it.
I’m on my couch in my apartment, still in sweats, still pretending I’m fine, waiting for the ache in my chest to dull.
It doesn’t.
My phone lights up on the coffee table.
ERS — Legal Division.
For a second, I consider letting it ring.
I can’t stomach another conversation about dissolution terms. Dates. Procedures. The clean, clinical dismantling of the only thing that ever made me feel… steady.
But something in my gut tightens.
A warning.
Or hope.
I swipe to answer.
“Camden Drake?” a voice asks.
Noah.
“Yeah.”
He takes a breath like he’s about to deliver bad news. “I wanted to notify you directly: Lila has requested one of the restrictions in your marriage contract be dissolved.”
I sit up.
My pulse kicks hard once. Then again.
“Are you telling me the marriage is being dissolved?”
There’s a pause. The kind that feels deliberate. Weighted.
Then Noah says, “No. The intimacy clause.”
“Can you repeat that?” I manage.
“The intimacy clause,” Noah repeats, quieter now. “She started the process yesterday, pending your approval.”
My heart thuds too hard, too fast, like it’s trying to escape my ribs.
“She—” My voice breaks. I swallow and try again. “She requested that?”
“Yes,” Noah says. “She did.”
I stare at the blank wall above the sink, unable to process how something that sounds like paperwork can feel like a door unlocking.
Hope is supposed to be soft.
This is sharp. Startling. Terrifying.
Noah keeps talking, voice professional but not unkind. “She didn’t say much. Only that she wanted the clause removed—and that we should make sure you were notified immediately.”
I close my eyes.
The balcony flashes behind my lids. Her breath hitching. Her fingers twisting into my shirt. The way she looked at me like she was deciding something and praying I wouldn’t hurt her.
She’s reaching out. Not with a message. Not with a speech. With action.
My throat tightens.
She doesn’t want out.
And suddenly the one thing I thought was gone—gone because I ran, because I panicked, because I couldn’t stand the idea of being left—
is standing right in front of me again.
Waiting.
After the call ends, I stay where I am.
The apartment is still. Quiet in a way that presses in.
My heart keeps beating too fast, like it hasn’t figured out the danger is over.
Or maybe it hasn’t.
The memory comes without warning.
The players’ lot.
Cameras everywhere. Voices stacked on top of each other. Accusations hurled like they were entitled to answers. I remember standing there, jaw locked, shoulders squared, letting it wash over me the way I always do.
Then she stepped into it.
Lila. Sunglasses too big. No entourage. No hesitation. Just her, moving straight through the chaos until she was beside me.
I’d looked at her afterward and said, low and sharp, “You didn’t have to jump in that fast.”
She’d paused. Thought about it.
Then she’d said, quietly, almost like she was surprised by her own honesty, “It wasn’t fast. You looked alone.”
I hadn’t known what to do with that.
I remember brushing it off. Letting the moment pass. Telling myself it didn’t mean anything. That she was just doing her part. That it was all situational.
Safer that way.
But standing here now, the words hit differently.
She hadn’t known me then. Not really. She didn’t owe me anything.
She just saw someone isolated in noise and stood beside him.
My chest tightens.
Because somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing that for what it was.
I stopped seeing her.
I brace both palms against the counter and bow my head, breath leaving me in a rough exhale.
I’ve spent so long protecting myself from being used.
I didn’t notice when that fear made me blind to the way she showed up—quietly, steadily, without asking for anything in return.
And worse.
I didn’t notice when I became the one who walked away first.
I sit down, my head in my hands. Thinking of how stupid I am.
My phone lights up with her name attached to clips, headlines, thumbnails frozen at the worst possible second. I try to set it down. My thumb betrays me.
Play.
She’s sitting forward in the chair, hands folded too tightly in her lap. Shoulders drawn in. The makeup is perfect. The posture is not. I know the difference now.
The interviewer asks about the tour first. About the pressure. About how she’s holding up.
Lila smiles. Polite. Professional. The smile she uses when she’s rationing herself.
I scroll forward.
The interviewer asks, “Are you and Cam still together?” and Lila freezes.
Just for a second.
Her breath catches. Barely visible. Barely anything.
“I…” she starts.
Then stops.
“I don’t know.”
That’s it.
No drama. No explanation. Just the truth, sitting there naked and unguarded.
My chest caves in.
I thought I was giving her space. I thought I was protecting her from my mess. From me.
Instead, I handed her uncertainty and called it restraint.
The clip ends. My phone goes dark.
I drag a hand down my face and exhale, rough and unsteady.
She stood beside me when the world was loud and cruel.
And now she is standing there alone because I disappeared.
Something settles in my chest then. Not panic.
Clarity.
I won’t let her carry this alone. Not again. Not ever.
Not when the only reason she’s unsure is because I taught her to be.
The apartment feels charged now. Awake.
I don’t give myself time to think.
I grab my jacket from the back of the chair and move fast. Afraid that if I slow down, fear will win again.
The hallway blurs as I jog toward the elevator. The doors feel too slow. I jab the button harder than necessary, chest tight with urgency and something that feels a lot like terror dressed up as hope.
The doors finally slide open.
I step inside. Hit the garage button.
As the elevator descends, the silence presses in.
Just me and the truth I stopped running from.
I whisper it into the empty metal box, like the building itself might carry it to her.
“Hold on, Lila.”
The doors open.
I stride into the garage, the concrete echoing my steps. My truck waits at the far end, familiar and solid and suddenly not enough to slow the pounding in my chest.
I climb in. Slam the door.
For a split second, I sit there gripping the steering wheel, breath shallow, heart trying to punch its way out of my ribs.
Then I turn the key.
The engine roars to life.
And with it, something in me finally locks into place.
I pull out of the garage, tires squealing just a little as I hit the ramp.
“I’m coming for you,” I say aloud, voice rough, certain.
“And this time?”
I press the accelerator.
“I’m not walking away.”