SALT (Summer Nights)

29. Everett

Chapter 29

Everett

I t's my own fault another man is standing on the other side of my girl asking her to dance. Admittedly, my public displays of affection have been lacking tonight, but not because she's not one hundred percent mine. It's because I haven't wanted to make a spectacle of myself or overshadow this event with the arm candy that's half my age. Sure, Connor gave me his blessing, but he even said that the way we started didn't look right to him in the beginning. He's my son, and even he had a seed of doubt, and that's all it takes. Cameron hasn't seen the ugly side of rumors, the ones that can villainize you, and I want to protect her from that. It's one of the reasons I've felt out of step since we got here. I haven't wanted the world to pop our bubble with their judgment.

The other reason is one I've only ever admitted to her: fear. Everything about Cameron Salt scares me. She's the one thing I don't want to fuck up. So when Nash Atsbury, a guy her age, asks her to dance, the trepidation I've never been able to shake momentarily casts doubt.

"So what do you say?" Nash nudges Cameron's arm in another attempt to pull her away from me, and it's that thought that has me pushing aside my fear; because the fear of losing her is greater than any other.

"I…" she starts, but I cut her off.

"She's with me," I answer for her.

Nash furrows his brow. "Oh, I'm sorry, Everett. Do you mind if I steal Cameron?"

Fucking hell, I internally cringe at the insinuation that he believes I want him to ask me for permission to spin her around the dance floor. The world will continue to see this until I give them something different. My arm circles her waist and pulls her close. The move catches her off guard, and I feel her body tense from my touch before she relaxes into me.

"No, I mean she's with me. If anyone's taking her out there, it's me."

His eyebrows rise and dart between mine and hers, clearly looking for confirmation that he understood me correctly, before he says, "Oh, my apologies." He raps his knuckles on the bar. "Catch you later, Salt."

"Everett, you didn't need to?—"

I spin her around. "Dance with me," I say as I intertwine our fingers. Her eyes lock onto mine, and I know she sees my ask for what it is. I'm ready to tell the world she's my girl in front of all our friends, family, and colleagues. I lead her out to the dance floor when she doesn't argue.

"Ev, you didn't have to do this. I'm happy. I know you care about me."

I clench my jaw, irritated that, with all the truths I've given her, she thinks I simply care.

"Cameron Salt, you make me happier than I ever dreamed possible. No one has ever made me feel the way you do. That's why I'm here with you now. I'm leaving no stone unturned as I collect this moment with you, where no man will ever make the mistake of asking my girl to dance again. Believe it or not, I enjoy being on this side of a jail cell."

She laughs out loud and my heart flutters with the timbre. "You wouldn't. Nash is harmless, and it's not that serious." I tighten my grip around her waist, eliminating any space between us, and she gasps, her eyes flicking around the room where I'm sure we've gained the prying eyes of curious guests, friends, and family.

"Ev, people are definitely looking now."

"Good, that means I'm doing this right."

"People are going to talk."

"Then let's give them something to talk about," I say as I lean my forehead to hers as we dance like no one is watching, eyes locked.

Her tongue slowly moistens her lips before her eyes close, and she says, "I love you, Everett Callahan. I loved you before I had any right to…" She opens her eyes, slowly finding mine once more. I'm not sure what she sees, but it has her suddenly trying to pull away. "I'm sorry."

I capture her hands in mine and place them over my heart. "Slow down, sunshine. You can't tell a man you love him and run away." I pause to pull in a breath of resolve as I let the years I've feared having her like this fall away. I was created to be hers, and that's scary, but now I know my fear was never really fear at all. It was love. Her eyes trail away, and I release her hand to cup her cheek. "Cameron, I need you to hear me. I've never felt love before, at least not the kind shared between lovers. I can't promise I will do it right, but I know there's no one else in the world I want to figure it out with. Never apologize for loving me because I'll never apologize for loving you."

Her bottom lip trembles, and I lean in to kiss away our shared fear of putting our hearts on the line, but before I can cover her perfect mouth with my own, a hand is on my shoulder.

"Everett, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think it's better to interrupt this moment than another. I need you to come with me," my brother Garrett says before adding, "Oh hey, Cam. I'll bring him back in a minute."

"One second, there's no way I'm walking away from the first girl I ever said I love you to without a kiss." I quickly press my mouth to hers. I may have spent half of my life married to another woman, but she wasn't the woman I chose because of love, I chose her to save her, and she chose me for protection. We've spoken of love, and if you ask me if I loved Moira, I'd say yes, she is the mother of my son, and we are friends, but never did we share the words I love you, not in the way I just said them now. "I'll be back," I say, before following after my brother.

"Someone better be dying. Otherwise, I might consider killing you as a justifiable cause for pulling me away from that moment."

"Lauren just showed up."

Connor joins us as we head out of the tent and into the gardens. "Did you get the records?"

"Yes, but, Dad, it doesn't add up. She had a baby girl... She didn't leave with one."

I stop in my tracks. "You're sure?" I'm rarely wrong. I was certain I knew precisely who Lauren Rhodes was and why she was back.

"He's sure," Lauren says, stepping around a hedge wall. "It's why I left town."

"Your story didn't end because you left that hospital empty-handed. We both know you walked out of it with secrets. It's why you're here now, prying, getting close, and asking about the past."

"Did I have secrets? Yes, but I'm not the bad guy here. I left with a broken heart, devastated and forever changed." Her voice cracks with the same hurt written all over her face.

But I don't believe her. I'd hoped to have the DNA evidence to prove what I still feel in my gut is true; however, it doesn't change the other two damning pieces of evidence. The first being Damon's dying words as his car sank to the bottom of the river, "You can't let HER take my girl." My conversation with my late friend has replayed on a loop in my mind since the day he died. Never forgotten. I just never knew who he meant by her. After I saw the initials carved into the tree, more pieces started falling into place, and that's when another lost memory resurfaced. The same month Cameron was born, he sold his family's estate in the Central West End. It was worth millions. We assumed it was to cover the cost of moving cross country and having a baby while attending a prestigious law school, but after everything that has come to light over the last few days, I did some digging, knowing right where to look now that I had a name, and I found it. Damon paid Lauren one million dollars. The question is, for what? Damon didn't trust her, which means I don't either.

"You're going to have to excuse me if I don't buy whatever sob story you're trying to sell. I know you had a relationship with Damon Salt. I saw the carving in the yellowwood tree, and if that's not enough, I know he paid you one million dollars, and the second that money hit your account, you left town. I don't for one second believe those two events are unrelated."

"What is it you believe Damon gave me one million dollars for exactly?" she says, with a renewed sense of moxie, before adding, "Because when I left town with one million dollars, it was to start over and never discuss the affair I had with a man I loved."

Are you kidding me right now? She's trying to say she loved him? I pinch the bridge of my nose. "You loved him?" I saw the tree. I know Camie is her, Lauren Camden Rhodes. It was what her friends called her back in school. We were not friends; therefore, it's not a name I've ever used. But things still aren't adding up. How could I not know they were a thing? "Explain it to me, Lauren, because the way I remember it, you and Damon never crossed paths aside from the night we were all at the Busch wedding."

She looks at something on her phone before shoving it in the back pocket of her jeans. "You have one part of that statement right. Damon and I weren't a thing. He hated me just like the rest of you, but one night during the summer before college, we were both drunk at the same party, and that dislike turned into hate sex." She shrugs and takes a seat on the ledge of the fountain. "After that night, we kept meeting up secretly at this lake in the middle of nowhere, knowing we wouldn't be caught. Believe it or not, I didn't like you guys either."

Garret holds up his hand. "You said the summer before college. Damon met Amelia that summer."

Lauren releases a heavy sigh. "I was getting there. It started out as hate fucking. Neither of us was in it for anything more. We were by no means monogamous." She shakes her head from side to side. "At least, not when it started. By the end, we wanted to be. That's why you found those initials in the yellowwood tree. The night he carved that into the tree, we talked about only dating each other and telling our friends, but literally the next day, I saw him and he told me it was over. That he had messed up in a big way, and he couldn't take it back."

"Amelia turned up pregnant," Garrett interjects as he rubs his chin, deep in thought.

"Bingo," she confirms. "Damon was a good man. When he found out she was pregnant, he did right by marrying her. We didn't sneak around behind her back. I had no interest in being the other woman. But fast forward four years to the summer of the Busch wedding, add in lots of alcohol, old feelings that never died, and a wife with a debt to settle…" She trails off before standing up. "We hooked up again, but unlike before, we didn't walk away unscathed."

She starts walking down one of the garden trails, and we follow. "What debt did Amelia have to settle?" I ask. I believe I know exactly what score she was settling for, but I want to hear it all the same.

"His son had a serious reaction to a mix of medicines he was taking after getting sick and became severely anemic. The quick solution was a blood transfusion. Of course, Damon was first to volunteer, and that's when he found out Kelce wasn't his. However, it was how he found out that had him ready to divorce Amelia. He didn't find out via blood test that Kelce wasn't his. Amelia told him point blank he wasn't his father. She had known all along. By the wedding, he wasn't thinking straight, and Amelia was in his ear, telling him to take his pass. She knew he and I had a thing before she turned up pregnant, and she was hoping he'd bite, and he did."

"She set him up, and then she fucking blackmailed him," Connor chimes in. "How could he have been so dumb?"

Lauren shakes her head. "That's one way to look at it, but the other was a man who was conflicted. Kelce may not have been his blood, but for the first few years of Kelce's life, Damon didn't know that. Finding out Kelce wasn't his blood didn't turn off his feelings for the kid he believed was his."

"Okay, that's his story. What's yours? Why did you screw a married man?" I ask curtly. Lauren has done a great job trying to paint Damon in a different light, but what about her? She's not innocent in all of this. She still screwed a married man.

"The list is endless." She holds her fingers up. "Young, dumb, na?ve, drunk," she ticks them off one by one. "I foolishly thought maybe he would leave her, maybe we could get our shot, the one she stole. I don't know. It was a long time ago. I made bad choices, and so did he. In the end, we both paid dearly for them."

Garrett is quiet, and I can tell he's assessing her words, tearing them apart the same way I am. The difference is that he's not as close to the facts as I am. He's able to take a more neutral approach. If we were in court, I'd have no choice but to recuse myself. I can't be impartial. Like now, I can't find it within me to feel sorry for her. She walked away, and for money, nonetheless.

"What was the money for?" Garrett asks.

"Before I was discharged from the hospital, money was transferred into my account, and a process server showed up to my room with an NDA to stay quiet about the affair and the subsequent pregnancy that resulted."

I scoff. "So you took the money and gave up your parental rights, and now, what? You want her back? It doesn't work that way. You don't just get to come back."

Her hand clenches in her shirt as her forehead pinches. "That's what you think happened? You think I took money and gave up my baby?"

"It's not what I think happened. It's what did happen," I say flatly.

"I wanted my baby girl. That baby was my everything, Everett. I loved her so damn much. I couldn't wait to hold her in my arms and give her the world, but I never got the chance…" Her voice cracks as a tear runs down her cheek. "I had a traumatic birth, and after my daughter was born, she was rushed to the NICU before I even got a chance to hold her. Three hours later, the nurses brought me a cold, lifeless little girl who didn't make it, and my world was forever changed. I was so fucking broken. I had to grieve the loss of my little girl alone because the father was a married man who had no idea she existed. The next day, when that man showed up in my room and the money was placed in my account, I wanted to scream. I wanted to burn the entire hospital to the ground. I couldn't believe Damon knew. I never said a word about the pregnancy to him. He didn't leave Amelia, and I never asked him to, but I thought he cared about me enough to show some kind of sympathy. Something more than a check and an NDA. I would have rather had a phone call, a card, anything would have been better in that moment than a check, but the longer I sat there with my pain and hate, the more I saw that money as a chance to start over. That money saved my life. It allowed me to get away from this place because there was no way I could have stayed here without her. Everywhere I turned were memories of feeling her kick inside of me, places I planned on taking her, and love I'd never get to have. So I left."

"You're lying," I spit as I start pacing. She has to be. That's fucking sick. There's no way Damon would do what she's insinuating.

"She's not lying," Stormy says, walking up the path with Cameron and Mackenzie in tow.

Cameron's eyes connect with mine, and she's immediately at my side, wrapping her arm around mine. "What's going on?" I close my eyes, wishing this were unfolding differently. The last time I spoke with Cameron about this, I asked for time, but that's once again being stolen from me. I don't have a smoking gun, but what I do have is damning.

"Remember when I said I lied?" Stormy asks Cameron, to which she nods. "Well, she was my reason. Lauren Rhodes is your biological mother."

"What?" Cameron gasps with a laugh. "You can't be serious." Her eyes flick around the group, and reality settles quickly as she sees the sober expressions on everyone's faces. Her hands tighten around my bicep before her eyes lock onto mine. "Did you know?"

"Cameron, it's not that simple," I try, unsure where to begin.

She unwraps herself as her hand rises to cover her mouth. "You did. You knew, and you never told me."

I shake my head. "It's not what you think." I run my fingers angrily through my hair. This is such a fucking mess. Did I know Amelia wasn't her mother? Yes. Did I know her mother was Lauren Rhodes? No. I'm just as stunned as she is. The story Lauren has spun has shaken me to my core and turned everything I thought I knew about my best friend on its head. He's not here to defend himself, but the evidence against him is strong. My eyes rise to hers, and I see nothing but hurt. Hurt that breaks me. "I didn't know," I say so softly I'm unsure it's audible because I know it's too little, too late. I knew enough, even if it wasn't this.

She turns to Connor and Garrett. "You guys too?"

"Cameron, none of this was black and white," Garrett tries.

"That's an excuse, and you know it."

"We don't have DNA evidence. We have stories. Her words against your father's." Connor steps in. "Cam, you have to remember. You lived with your parents on the East Coast until you were eight years old?—"

I raise my hand for him to stop. I know where he's going, and I can't stomach it. I hate feeling like I've aided my best friend in covering a lie, but I also can't stand by and watch his character get ripped apart with speculation instead of evidence. What Connor's implying isn't improbable. They didn't live here when Amelia would have been pregnant with Cameron. None of us saw her with or without a child. When Damon broke the news, it was with a picture of Cameron that read, "Surprise, we've been keeping a secret." He forgot to add it was a really fucking big secret.

That's when Stormy reaches into the bag she's carrying and pulls out a book. I know it is Damon's because it's from his collection—the same collection I keep in my office. I've stared at that spine countless times. "I have his words."

"Give me that." I demand, reaching her in two steps and snatching it out of her hand before she can react. Not only does she have something that belongs to me, she had to have stolen it from an office I always keep locked. "How did you even get this?"

"How I got it isn't as important as the truth it holds."

Before I can respond, Cameron takes the book out of my hands. "If anyone gets the book, it's me. He was my father, and this is my life. If these words belong to anyone, it's me."

I drop my head, place my hands on my hips, and step back. I've failed her again. "You're right. I don't even know what I'm protecting you from anymore. Not that I ever did." I slowly bring my eyes back up to hers. "You know everything I do now. I guess you have everything you're looking for right there," I say as I nod toward the book in her hands. "You can make your own choices."

I take another step away, giving her space. I've spent years defending something untenable, and what's more, that's not even the whole of it. I've been trying to uphold an oath, a promise I made to my dying friend, one whose death was my fault. I have no business being here.

"Why does it feel like you're leaving?"

I tell her she's more. I believe she's more, yet here I am, failing her. I've been so blinded by everything she makes me feel that I'm holding her back. History feels like it's repeating itself right before my eyes. I'm standing in a cornfield at seventeen, determined to save the girl. All this time, I saw Lauren's push to get close to me as something else. I missed signs that were always there. For years, I've been her protector: duty instead of love. She's no longer a fragile obligation. She's the woman I want at my side and one who can handle the truth.

"Because I am. You're a grown woman. You have things to figure out, and I can't be what you need. All this time, I only wanted to guard your heart, but all I was doing was poisoning it."

"That's not true. I'm upset. I'm hurt. I'm not poisoned. We'll figure this out together. You just said yourself you didn't know?—"

"But didn't I?" I throw my arms wide. "I knew enough, Cameron."

"You said you loved me, Everett. Was any of that true?"

"I meant every damn word. I love you so damn much. It's because I love you that I'm letting you go…" My eyes flick over to Lauren's. "So you can make room to love someone else. All I've done is turn that heart of gold into heartbreak."

"It's my heart, Everett. I get to decide how I want it, and I'd rather have broken pieces that include you than a whole one that doesn't."

Her words slowly dig out what remains of my own. I fucking hate knowing that I'm hurting her. If I were her, I'd hate me. I turn on my heel before she can argue anymore. Her hate is deserved. I'm not walking away because I want to. I'm walking away because she won't, and while she may want me, she deserves so much better than me.

"Ev, please don't do this," I hear her say, but my feet don't stop. I hoped our story would end with me being her destiny, but the sound of my footsteps as I walk away sounds like the deafening silence of me being part of her history. Good.

"Dad, this is messed up. You shouldn't be walking away right now. She needs you," Connor says, following me out of the gardens.

"You think I want to walk away from her? Connor, I love her with everything that I am. You're my son, but she's the other half of my soul."

"Then why are we walking away? We're her family."

"That's why I'm walking away. We're not her everything anymore, Con. I don't have the DNA tests, but I already know what it will say, Lauren Camden Rhodes is Cameron's mom." As if I needed another slap in the face. Damon named his daughter Cameron, no doubt an eponym for Lauren. The signs seem so utterly obvious now, which makes this all the more harsh. I should have realized sooner. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't be walking away now. Perhaps then I could have had the time to find my words, to tell her differently, or maybe it was always meant to be this way.

"You're supposed to be there for her when she's hurting."

"Not on this, Con. This is different. Her pain needs to be her strength." I run my hands through my hair, pulling hard as I do. I can't save the girl. I did that once and lost myself and the girl. This time, the girl has to save herself. When I reach the valet with Garrett and Connor hot on my heels, I look to Connor and say, "You guys are more than welcome to stay. I'm not asking you to take a side."

"The car is here," Garrett says as he opens the door. "I'll let Moira know you had to leave."

"Thanks," I say as I climb in.

Leaning in, Garrett says, "This isn't the cornfield, you're not seventeen, and that girl back there doesn't need you, she wants you. There's a difference, brother."

He shuts the door and hits the roof, signaling the driver to take off before I can respond. As the driver pulls out of the park, all I can think is I may have just made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.