Chapter 30
THIRTY
CAMERON
Cameron’s Apartment
Brooklyn, New York
After a long night of unknowing restlessness, I am grateful to have gotten a small amount of sleep on the flight home.
But the last twelve hours or so are such a blur.
Excusing myself from the hospital, the flight to New York, the chaos of the city as I walked into my building, it all meshed together making my body feel heavy.
My suitcase thuds against the wall as I push the door shut behind me.
The apartment is empty, and it echoes in a hollow quiet.
The air smells faintly like one of Riley’s scented candles had just been extinguished, and I must have only just missed her.
I let myself plop onto the arm of the sofa and stare off at nothing.
When my eyes finally find something to focus on, it’s the disheveled reflection of someone I barely recognize.
I’m still wearing the dark navy suit that Gregg had bought me, but its wrinkles are as pronounced as canyons.
I look down and wring my hands. They still ache, and there’s a burn in my shoulders that sears deep, bruised after providing sustained compressions.
How long had I driven my weight into his chest before medical help arrived?
I pull out my phone to text Riley, only realizing that I had left it in airplane mode the entire journey home.
I toggle it off, and open my message thread to Riley.
CH: Home. We need to talk later… it’s over.
But before I can tap send, my screen floods with messages in a cacophony of chimes.
New Message — Gregg.
New Message — Gregg.
Missed Call — Gregg.
Gregg.
Gregg.
Gregg.
I count twelve missed calls and more messages than I can see in the preview. My stomach flips, and I taste the sourness of bile as I open them one by one.
GH: Where did you go?
GH: Did you leave to the airport?
GH: Please text me back…
GH: Latest news from the doctors. Cardiac arrest and a major heart attack.
GH: They say if you hadn’t started compressions immediately…
GH: Cam, they’re saying he wouldn’t have made it.
I swallow hard. The next is a long message, and I brace myself to open it.
GH: I don’t know how to thank you. I don’t even know where to begin.
After everything he said to you. To us. You still saved him.
And you were so calm. So sure of what to do.
I don’t think I've ever been more scared, more in awe in my entire life. I’m so so sorry.
For my dad. For my mum. For Celeste. For everything.
You didn’t deserve any of it. Please don’t let this be the end of us.
I love you. I meant what I said. I choose you. Please forgive me.
My chest tightens as I open the most recent voicemail from him. I hear faint shuffling, distant voices, and rhythmic clinical beeping. I think that maybe Gregg had pocket dialed me, but then a door swings open and I hear Gregg shakily exhale.
“Cam… hey, babe, it’s me.” There’s a pause, the beeping grows louder for a moment then muffled, like he was trying to find some place quiet.
“They’re… erm, they’re taking him into surgery now. It’s… it’s bad. If you hadn’t—” I hear him swallow hard.
“If you hadn’t started compressions when you did, the doctor said he wouldn’t have made it to the ambulance.” He lets out a long exhale, and fabric rustles as if he’s pacing.
“Anyway, I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know how to hold all this at once.”
Gregg’s voice lowers. “Please pick up. Or text me. A smoke signal,” he huffs an uncomfortable laugh as he sniffs. “Anything. Just, please don’t disappear on me like this. I know what he said. I know what Celeste—I am so sorry that you had to stand there and take that.”
His breath catches and he tries to steady it. “But you still saved him. After everything. You saved my dad.”
There’s a beat of silence, then his voice cracks. “I don’t deserve that kind of grace from you, but I don’t think I deserve this silence either. Cam, please. Please don’t let this be how it ends. I meant what I said. I choose you. I don’t care about anything else if it costs me you.”
Gregg inhales sharply, trying not to cry, as a faint announcement echoes in the background.
“I’m scared, and I don’t have anyone I want to talk to about this except you…
I love you.” His voice broke. “I love you, and I should have said it earlier.
Loudly. In front of everyone if that's what it took.”
A beat.
“Just, please call me back. I love you.”
I set my phone down like it’s on fire, fall back onto the couch, and stare at the ceiling as tears run down my face.
I can still hear the contempt in Harrison’s voice.
The word he spat like it tasted foul. I could still feel the weight of the terrace closing in when Celeste raised that glass of champagne. The way eyes shifted and assessed.
You will never be enough for this world.
Men like you.
Reducing yourself.
I pick up my phone, and my thumbs hover over the screen for a long while before I start trying.
CH: I’m glad he’s alive. No one deserves to die like that.
Three dots appear almost instantly, but I keep typing before I can lose my nerve.
CH: But you don’t get to thank me like that and pretend the rest didn't happen.
I pause. My throat burns. I know that I’m about to lose something, someone, but I can’t see a way forward. Maybe deep down I know it was all a fantasy? After all, I did this to myself. I knowingly pursued someone I couldn’t have.
CH: Your dad didn't just insult me. He saw me as something beneath him. Something opportunistic. Disposable.
I delete the last word. Disposable. Then I type it again and hit send.
My phone begins to ring and vibrate within my hands, the screen illuminates with Gregg’s name.
I take a deep breath and contemplate letting it ring.
Letting it go to voicemail. Ignoring it.
Instead, I accept the call and press my phone to my ear.
Gregg must hear my breathing because he immediately begins to speak.
“Cam, babe, hi…” he stutters from three-thousand miles away. He’s surprised I’ve answered the call, and his voice is thick with exhaustion. “I know what happened and I can’t imagine how that made you feel, but I promise that I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to undo it if I have to.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, the stinging of tears eases only momentarily as happy memories flash across my memory.
Dancing in San Francisco as fog swirled around us.
Laughing, and trying to hide it when Gregg took chunks of grass from the green on his first swing.
Being in his arms, feeling his chest rise in the solace of Lochaven.
“Gregg,” I breathe, “I loved what we had. Everything that we shared, and I will forever be grateful for you.”
“Cameron please—”
“You opened my heart and let me love again. I loved you, and I still do. But that alone can’t undo or make society disappear.”
“Cameron,” Gregg pleads, his voice raw. “We’ll figure it out together. I mean that. Unequivocally together.”
I exhale slowly, and press the heel of my palm into my sternum trying to hold myself in place. “That’s the thing though. I don’t think the word together looks the same in your world as it does in mine.”
“What do you mean?” Gregg asks. I hear him sniff on the other end of the line. “Of course together means the same to me as it does to you.”
“Celeste was cruel to you, but she also wasn’t wrong in what she said to me. She wasn’t wrong because I’ll never belong by your side without having to be explained.”
Silence echoes across the line. All I can hear is his breathing, which sounds ragged and full of hurt. And I hate that I’m hurting him.
“You belong anywhere you stand.” Gregg finally utters.
A tear slides down my cheek, and I wipe it away as I speak one more time. “I don’t want to spend my life proving to others that I deserve to be next to you.” I take a breath and sigh, “I love you, I’m sorry.”
I hang up. Between the physical and emotional exhaustion, I just can’t say anything else. My phone begins to ring again.
Gregg.
I let it ring as tears pour down my face. And when it stops, I turn off my phone and press it to my chest as I roll to the side, bringing my knees up. And then I feel it. I feel the love, the ache, and the possibility. I saved his dad, but I can’t save us.
I look at Drew’s messy desk in the corner through teary eyes.
In my life, I have loved two incredible men.
Each of them had loved me, but I was the reason they were both gone.
Me. The common denominator. I pull myself from the couch and drag my feet to my bedroom.
I remove the suit, which feels like a disguise and hang it nicely in the closet, then put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, but as I step past the mirror, I realize what I’m wearing.
Cambridge is sprawled across my chest in faded letters.
I need to get out of here.