15. Gabrielle #2
After the credits start to play, Cam pushes off the couch, stretching and giving me a perfect glimpse of his toned stomach under his shirt. I quickly look away, cheeks flaming.
He reaches his hand out for me to take, and I just stare in confusion for a beat.
“Come on, this night isn’t over yet. I have one more thing for us to do before you go running off and ghost me for good after today,” he says, chuckling.
I take his hand and melt into the firm grip he has as he pulls me up off the couch.
I tilt my head. “One more thing, huh?”
His smirk is slow and dangerous. “Yeah. Come on, Voss.”
* * *
I buckle in as he pulls out of his parking garage and into the thick of traffic and the chaos of the city surrounding us. We head uptown, past street vendors shouting over honking horns, past the brick buildings and sharp glass towers.
My curiosity only deepens as we turn onto Madison, the last of the sunset catching the edge of Central Park just across the avenue.
Then we pull into the hospital parking lot.
I frown. “Cam…why are we at your job?”
He glances at me, his lips curling up a bit into a smile, but his expression still holds something serious in it.
“You know this place is more than just work for me, Gab.” He exhales, gripping the steering wheel.
“Everything it holds, everything it’s meant for me over the years…
it’s always been a place I’ve kept close to my heart. ”
I chew the inside of my lip, my chest tightening slightly at the memories. I know what he means. I know how much this hospital has shaped him, how much of himself he’s now pouring back into it.
“There’s something I haven’t done yet since being back,” he continues, turning off the car and unbuckling. “Something I want to do with you.”
I’m confused, but before I can ask, he’s already stepping out and coming around to my door. He opens it, and I get out, following him. The night air is crisp against my skin as I wrap my arms around myself.
Cam doesn’t speak as we step inside, maneuvering through the quiet hallways like it’s still his second home. We take an elevator up to one of the top floors.
The ride is silent, yet somehow it’s not uncomfortable. When the doors ding open, he leads me through another hallway before we stop at a door with restricted access.
He pulls out his badge, swipes it, and pushes the door open, holding it for me.
I step through—and suddenly, all I see is the city stretching out before me.
Our rooftop.
The skyline glows against the night sky, and the faint twinkle of stars is barely visible through the haze of city lights. A rush of nostalgia washes over me, memories of us sneaking up here as kids, laughing under the stars, spilling secrets and dreams as if we had the rest of our lives together.
I glance at Cam, my heart feeling so full in this moment.
He’s watching me, hands in his pockets, a small smile on his lips. “Figured it was time for us to come back up here. Only now, we don’t have to sneak and risk getting in trouble.”
I let out a soft laugh, stepping toward the edge, looking out at the city. “I can’t believe it all still looks and feels exactly the same.”
“Yeah,” Cam murmurs, stepping up beside me. “A lot has changed, but this…this still feels like ours.”
Something about the way he says it floods my brain and heart with too many memories. The thought of anything being ours still feels like something I want to desperately hold on to.
I swallow hard, my fingers gripping the side of the low wall as I stare out at the skyline.
I steal a glance at Cam, his profile’s sharp under the glow of the city lights.
He looks the same, but so different. Older.
Wiser. But still him, still the boy who used to sneak me up here, who used to make me laugh until my stomach hurt, who used to hold my hand like it was the one thing keeping him tethered to this world.
A lump forms in my throat.
I don’t know why it’s hitting me all at once like this. Maybe it’s this place. Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve spent so many years pretending I was fine without him, only to stand here now, realizing just how much I wasn’t.
While also still trying to cope with the anger and pain his absence left behind.
I inhale deeply, staring out at the skyline. And before I can overthink it, before I can talk myself out of it, I say the words I’ve been biting back since the day I saw him again.
“I missed you,” I admit softly.
The words hang between us, and they feel so fragile I almost want to take them back and protect them from breaking whatever is happening between us.
Cam goes still beside me, his head turning slightly like he’s waiting to make sure he heard me right.
My grip on the wall’s edge tightens. “I mean—I missed this. I missed us. I missed…” I let out a breath, shaking my head. “I don’t know. Just…you, I guess.”
The silence stretches, but again, silence with him never feels uncomfortable. It’s just full of a bunch of unspoken feelings.
“Gabrielle…” His voice is low and cautious, like he’s afraid of saying the wrong thing.
He shifts closer, his arm brushing mine, the warmth seeping into my skin.
“I hope you know I never stopped thinking about you. You made the darkest part of my life, the most beautiful because you were simply around, shining your light on it all.”
I force myself to look at him, to meet his gaze and not turn away.
His eyes are softer now, none of the teasing, none of the smirks—just raw honesty. And it’s overwhelming.
“I never wanted to leave,” he murmurs. “Not like that, not after everything we shared.”
I nod, my throat tight. “I know that, but it still hurt Cam. It hurt when you had to leave, and it hurt even more when you went silent on me, and I never heard from you again. I felt abandoned, I felt disposable, I felt like you might have even been glad to get away…it just piled onto the insecurities and trust issues I already had, and really messed me up for a while.”
His fingers twitch at his side, like he wants to reach for me but stops himself.
“Not even the worst chemo or radiation pain could have touched the ache in my heart the longer I was away from you. For a while after we moved away, things got a lot worse. I didn’t even think I would make it.
Nobody did. I saw it, I felt it, and at that time, I truly knew in my heart that the cancer would always be what killed me.
So even when I started to get better, and I would have been able to find you again and reach out…
I told myself not to. That, as many remissions and relapses I’d had at that point, it would never actually go away.
I felt like I was stuck in this cruel cycle of hope and devastation, and I didn’t want you stuck there with me.
I thought with the forced distance between us that you could move on from me, and it wouldn’t hurt as badly when the cancer finally took me for good. ”
My heart physically hurts hearing him talk like this, hearing how bad things got for him, knowing he had to do it all alone, knowing that he truly thought he wouldn’t make it. And even worse…if he didn’t, I wouldn’t have been there to even say goodbye because he pushed me away.
Even thinking about a world without Cam somewhere in it feels like a knife to my heart.
“I hate that you went through that alone, Cam. I wish you weren’t always trying to spare my feelings and protect me…I wish you had been selfish for a change and let me be there.”