Chapter 6 Secrets & Confessions #2
He backs up and runs a hand through his hair, and for the first time since I've known him, Cameron Wilder looks uncertain and vulnerable.
"The memory thing," he starts. "It's not just names or faces. Sometimes I lose whole conversations. Moments. Things that should matter."
I nod, not sure where he's going with this.
"But you," he continues, stepping closer, "you make me want to remember. Every detail. The way you smell like vanilla and something only you. The sound you made when I kissed your neck. How your hands felt tangled in my hair."
My breath catches.
"I've been writing it down," he admits. "Everything about you. So I don't lose it again."
He walks back to the living room, picks up his phone and brings it back to show me. On the screen—a note titled simply "Tara." Below it, a list that makes my heart stutter:
Blue eyes like summer storms.
Laugh sneaks out when she’s not guarding it.
Sarcastic but soft underneath.
Awkward in a way that makes me want to back her against a wall.
Coffee saboteur.
Smells like vanilla and sin.
Kicks like a linebacker.
Bites her lip when she’s holding back smart remarks… kissable when she moans.
Makes me want her in ways I don’t even have names for.
Checks the locks three times—like she doesn’t know she’s safe with me.
"Cam," I whisper, but I don't know what else to say.
His hands are still framing my face, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones with feather-light touches. His jaw is a hard line, but his gaze softens, focusing on me with an intensity that feels like it’s peeling back every layer I’ve ever used to hide.
“I need you to hear this, Tara,” he says, his voice a low, urgent rumble that vibrates through his palms into my skin. “Look at me.”
I do, and the world narrows to his beautiful face.
“This thing between us… what’s happening right now… it’s not me being a nice guy. It’s not a distraction from my screwed-up brain or because I’m bored out of my skull.”
He takes a breath, like he’s gathering every honest piece of himself to lay at my feet. “For weeks, my world has been a fog. Moments, names, whole days just… gone. It’s like living in a ghost story where I’m the one fading. But you…” His thumb brushes my lower lip, and a shiver races down my spine.
“You’re the one thing I don’t want to lose.”
His words tug at me. They’re exactly what I’ve always wanted but I never allowed myself to wish for—never in a million years.
Someone who sees me.
Hope. It’s a terrifying, beautiful thing.
And the irony? The man who struggles to remember is the one who says it to me.
“Tara, this broken piece of junk in my skull still fights to keep you,” he says, eyes burning like he’s inside my head. “Two days, and you’re already carved in. That has to mean something.”
“Stop! Don’t say another word. I’m not who you think I am.” The truth bursts out before I can swallow it back down. I won’t let him stake his heart on a lie.
He tilts his head, eyes narrowing just slightly. "What do you mean?"
This is it. The moment where I tell him the truth and watch him walk away. Where I explain that Tara Haynes is a carefully constructed lie, and the real me comes with more baggage than he can possibly imagine.
"My name," I start, then stop. Take a breath. Try again. "My real name isn't Tara Haynes."
His expression doesn't change. He just waits, quiet intensity radiating from him.
"It's Taralyn," I continue, each word feeling like stepping off a cliff. "Taralyn Delacroix."
Recognition flickers in his eyes—not of me, but of the name. Of course he'd know it. Anyone who reads financial news or gossip magazines would.
"The Delacroix family," he says slowly. "As in Delacroix Industries."
I nod miserably. "As in billions of dollars and more dysfunction than a reality TV show."
"You're—"
"Rich. Yes. Stupidly, ridiculously rich." The words taste bitter. "I have access to accounts with more zeros than most people see in a lifetime."
He's quiet for a long moment, processing. When he speaks, his voice is careful. "But you're working as a waitress."
"Because I ran away." The admission comes out in a rush. "Right after I graduated from college three years ago, I packed a bag and disappear from my family. New name, new life, new me. I've been moving from town to town ever since, staying one step ahead of my father's investigators."
"Why?"
The simple question unlocks something in me. All the fear, all the anger, all the desperate longing for a life that's actually mine.
"Because my father doesn't see me as a daughter," I say, surprised by the steadiness of my own voice. "He sees me as an asset. A business tool. And I hate it.”
I pause, searching for the right words. “The first secret is my name and wealth. But the bigger one?”
I draw a breath and watch Cam.
“I don’t just have a good memory. I have eidetic memory. Perfect recall. He’s been grooming me since childhood to use it for the family business.”
Cam's eyes widen slightly, but he doesn't interrupt.
"Every board meeting I attended, every document I read, every conversation I overheard—he expected me to remember it all.
To be his living, breathing recording device.
" My hands clench into fists. "He had my entire life planned out.
Who I'd marry, what role I'd play in the company, how my children would fit into his empire. "
"That’s insane," Cam breathes.
"Cedar Falls was supposed to be another temporary stop," I continue, the words flowing like water through a broken dam.
"But then I got here, and for the first time in my life, I felt.
.. normal. People liked me for who I am, not for my last name, not for what I could do for them.
I thought I could stay. I thought I was safe. I could breathe."
"The man in the alley," Cam says, pieces clicking together.
I nod. "He called me Taralyn. He said my father wants me home." I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the morning warmth. "I'm not just being followed by some random creep, Cam. I'm being hunted by one of the most powerful families in the country."
The silence stretches between us, heavy with the weight of my confession. I watch his face, waiting for the moment when he realizes what he's gotten himself into. When he understands that protecting me means going up against people who could destroy his career, his life, everything he's worked for.
But instead of backing away, he steps closer.
“There’s more,” Cam says, voice low. Not a question.
I shift, uneasy. “It’s just… different this time. Normally my father’s people don’t grab. They watch. They report. Maybe they make my life inconvenient enough that I pack up and move on. But alley ambushes? That’s new.”
Cam leans back against the counter, still bare-chested, still too close, studying me like he’s reading between my words. “So what would make it different?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe that guy just got overzealous?”
“Or,” he says carefully, “maybe it wasn’t your father’s guys at all. What if he only wanted you to think that? Is there someone else who’d benefit from you being scared—or gone?”
The question lodges under my skin. My mouth opens, closes. “I… I don’t know.”
But the truth is, I do. The thought is there, pulsing like a bruise I’ve been pressing on for years. I’ve just never said it out loud.
A chill crawls up my spine, and a name surfaces, the one I keep buried. “My cousin. Lucien.” The syllables taste like rust. “It would explain why the game changed.”
Cam doesn’t interrupt. His gaze sharpens, steady and unreadable, giving me space to keep talking.
And I do. For me as much as for him.
“My father’s men, like I told you, they’re watchers.
They trail me. Just visible enough that I get irritated, maybe rattled, until I eventually pack up and leave.
Sometimes they even… protect. That’s the pattern.
” The words sound clearer spoken than they ever did in my head.
I swallow hard. “They don’t grab. They don’t chase me into alleys. That isn’t their style.”
And the words keep tumbling out. “But Lucien? He’s different. Always has been. He doesn’t watch, he acts. He doesn’t get satisfaction from control, he gets it from the moment he makes someone flinch.”
“When I was seven, he shoved me down a staircase because I beat him at a game. Fifteen years old, stronger, bigger, and he smiled while I screamed. And then he lied—looked my father in the eye and swore I tripped, even pretended he tried to save me. Everyone believed him.”
I close my eyes, and the images keep rolling, like it’s happening right in front of me. I recall his smug expression when the adults clapped his shoulder. The way he leaned close to my hospital bed later, whispering “Better keep your mouth shut.”
My stomach turns. “Lucien’s always been like that. Calculated, but impulsive in the worst ways. He’s careful when it serves him, but when his temper breaks? He lashes out, then covers it with a story so neat even the adults buy it. He’s lived his whole life that way—rage first, lies second.”
When I open my eyes again, Cam is still silent, still watching me with that sharp intensity. His bare chest rises and falls slowly, like he’s the only thing holding the room steady while I unravel.
“He hurt you,” Cam says, and his voice carries a promise of violence that should terrify me but somehow doesn’t.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “He’s hurt plenty of people. That’s kind of his thing. I just… I don’t know why he’d suddenly come after me. It doesn’t make sense. My father’s men annoy me, yes. Lucien? He’s never cared enough to chase me.”
I let out a shaky laugh.
“Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe I’m just paranoid.”
Cam’s eyes narrow, unamused.
I fumble for logic, but my voice sounds thin even to me. “I mean, sure, I remember everything. Every lie, every cover-up, every ugly deal. If Lucien thought that mattered, maybe it would explain things, but…I’ve made a conscious effort to stay clear of him.”