Chapter Twenty-Three Sloane
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sloane
Cameron looked caught off guard by my question.
I saw the flicker of hesitation in his eyes, like he hadn’t expected me to ask.
Maybe it wasn’t easy for him to talk about.
Maybe it never would be. But the truth was, he had already made his decision.
He walked away. He chose her, not me. That much was clear.
Still, I needed to understand.
Why?
Why, after ten years of marriage, did he finally let go?
Why did he stay for so long, only to walk away? Why hold on through all the hard years, only to break everything in the end?
She would always be there now, a shadow in the background of our lives. No matter how much I tried to forget, she would linger between us. And if I ever tried to go back, that doubt would still live in me. I would always wonder. I would never feel completely safe in his promises again.
However, I was also not blind to my own mistakes.
I hadn’t always been good to him. I’d hurt him, pushed him away, built walls I thought would protect me, not realizing they were keeping him out. Therapy made me face that. It made me reflect on how deeply I’d wounded him, even if I didn’t mean to.
I needed to hear it from him. I needed to know what had gone through his mind when he gave up on us, when he let someone else into the space that used to belong to me. I wasn’t looking to start a fight. I just needed to understand how we ended up in this situation.
We looked at each other for a long moment. Neither of us spoke, our thoughts spiraling in different directions. For a second, I thought Cameron might back out, that he’d change his mind and shut down.
But then his expression softened, growing quiet. His shoulders dropped slightly, the look in his eyes turning resigned.
“Ask me anything you want to know,” he said. “I’ll answer.”
I stared at him, surprised by how steady he sounded. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Yes. As long as you’re sure you can handle it, Sloane. What I’m more worried about is you.”
“I’m ready to hear it now, Cam. I don’t want to keep brushing it aside and pretending everything’s fine. We need to talk about this.”
His eyes flicked upstairs, and I could tell what he was thinking. If Harper woke up, we might not hear her. The silence between us stretched, and yet it felt heavier than anything we’d said so far. We were standing at the edge of a conversation we had both spent too long avoiding.
Then, without a word, he reached for my hand and led me to the stairs. We walked up in silence, each step slow and careful; both of us were carrying something delicate between us.
He sat on the floor just outside the bedroom door and gave a light tap on the hardwood beside him. I lowered myself down next to him, our shoulders nearly touching.
Cameron turned his head to look at me. He was waiting, giving me space, but I could feel the weight of his anticipation.
I sat with it for a moment, trying to steady my breath, trying to keep my thoughts from unraveling. I wasn’t sure how to start, or if I even should, but the question had been circling my mind for too long.
So I started at the beginning.
“How did you meet her?” I asked quietly. “Tell me everything. From the start.”
He let out a long breath, his shoulders sinking. His eyes searched mine, like he was bracing for a crack in me, something that might tip me over the edge. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t.
I was stronger now. He could see that, even if it didn’t stop him from worrying.
“After I dropped you and Harper off at home, I just drove. Sometimes for hours, all through the night. Trying to clear my head. Trying not to feel like I was drowning.”
He paused, silent for a beat, probably weighing his words, probably making sure they wouldn’t cut deeper than they had to.
“One night, I ended up at that bar near the pier. It was packed, too loud, and I needed quiet. So I took my beer and walked down to the pier. Sat on one of the benches. She was on the other.”
I stayed quiet, waiting for him to go on.
“We talked,” he said softly, eyes shifting to the front. “About nothing, mostly. Random things. It was nice, though. Not having to think too hard. Not having to feel too much. Just talking.”
He paused.
“But sitting there, both of us alone, holding a beer and staring out at nothing—we were the same. Two people looking for an escape. Just needing a moment of peace.”
He paused again, swallowing.
“The next day, you and I had that big fight. You were screaming at me. You even threw things at me.”
He turned to look at me.
“It was the fight about counseling. I brought it up again, and you lost it. It got so bad that I had to leave. So I went back to the pier. And she was there.”
I remembered that. Shame and guilt washed over me again as I thought about how stubborn I had been, how selfish.
He glanced down, then looked back at me.
“The next day, and the next after that—I went again. She was always already there.”
There was something in the way he looked at me now. The kind of look that made my stomach twist, that warned me whatever was coming would hurt. I braced myself, even though I knew it wouldn’t be enough.
“It was only talk at first, Sloane. Nothing more. But there was a connection. And we kept going back to it.” He hesitated. “Then one day... she asked me to come home with her.”
A pause. His voice fell quieter.
“And I went.”
My chest tightened, a slow and crushing ache that settled low and deep, and even though he didn’t say it outright, I already understood what he meant without needing the details spelled out.
Still, it surprised me how it happened, how their story began. I had always assumed it was something quick, careless, something that didn’t mean anything and just started in a moment of weakness, even if he chose to keep it going afterward. That version would have been easier to make sense of.
But it wasn’t. He said there was a connection. He said they kept coming back to it. And then one day, he followed her home.
It meant that it wasn’t just physical. He had to feel something first. And I knew that about him. Cameron wasn’t the type to sleep with someone unless he cared. He had always been that way, even before us.
And that was what made it so hard to accept. Not just the act itself, but knowing that he let himself care about someone else. And the worst part was realizing that somewhere in that space between us, he had been looking for something I wasn’t giving, and he found it with her.
“I couldn’t look you in the eye after that. The guilt—” He swallowed hard. “And the constant fighting, the way we kept cutting each other open...” He let out a shaky breath. “That’s why a few days later, I moved out.”
“Then you got your studio apartment,” I said quietly, more to myself than to him.
“Yeah,” he murmured. His voice was barely there.
I looked away, just for a second, trying to gather the strength to ask what I already knew would hurt. When I looked back, he was already watching me, his expression tight with torment.
“You cared for her?”
He didn’t answer right away. But the silence said enough. I saw it in his face—the hesitation, the guilt, the ache of something he didn’t want to admit but wouldn’t lie about.
“At the time,” he said finally, “yes.”
I swallowed hard, trying to push past the lump in my throat.
“Do you love her?”
He shook his head. “No.”
When I didn’t say anything, just waited without looking away, he added softly, “I came to realize I couldn’t love anyone but you.”
“Did you hope that you would?”
He nodded. “Yes. For a while, I hoped I could love her.”
There was pressure behind my ribs, like something folding in too tight, but I didn’t move. I just looked at him. Not because I was holding back tears, but because everything inside me had gone quiet.
He had hoped he could love her.
And I just let that sit. Let the silence stretch long enough for both of us to feel the weight of it.
“Why her?” I asked. “Why did you feel a connection with her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because she was there. And maybe...” He paused, the words catching in his throat. “Maybe it was the quiet that made everything feel easy. Just smiles. No arguments. No tension. Perhaps because, after all those years, I was simply tired. And I wanted peace.”
Every truth he spoke cut deeper than the last, but I forced myself to stay strong. I needed to hear it, no matter how much it hurt.
Then I asked the hardest question of all. “Was it that bad? Being with me?”
“Sloane...” He let out a slow breath, his voice low and rough. His eyes were glassy, rimmed with red. Regret shaped every part of his face.
“Just tell me, Cam.”
It took him a moment before he said, “Yes,” his voice faltering quietly. A tear slid down his cheek. “It hurt.”
Oh God. I pressed a hand to my chest because the pain felt like it was tearing through me.
I had spent so much time in therapy trying to understand myself, trying to face the ways I could be difficult—the sharpness of my words, the way I kept pushing him away even when I wanted him close.
I knew it couldn’t have been easy to love me.
But still, hearing that I gave him pain while she gave him smiles. .. that hurt so much.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, more tears sliding down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
My eyes were burning, and I couldn’t stop the tears either.
I used to hide them, never wanting anyone, including Cameron, to see me cry.
Even now, the old instinct clawed its way back, urging me to lash out, to protect myself by hurting him first so no one could see how broken I felt.
But I had learned better. I had learned that I no longer had to do that.
That it was okay to let it show. That it was human to feel, and I didn’t have to be ashamed or afraid of it.