Best Kept Secrets: The Complete Series

by Kandi Steiner

  Jeremiah stared out the window the entire time, his eyes as heavy as my heart.

  He’d lost everything, and now I might lose him, too.

  What if he couldn’t come back to Westchester in the fall?

  It started slow at first, my heartbeat picking up speed, but by the time I’d reached my classroom, it was a race car with two flat tires, beating haphazardly against my rib cage. I couldn’t calm my breaths, my hands shaking terribly as I pulled on my coat and scrambled for my phone.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Cameron answered.

  “I need you to come home. Please. I’m leaving now, and I need you to…” I forced a few breaths, my chest aching. I didn’t know if I could even drive, but I had to. I had to get home. I had to get to Cameron. “Something happened and I need… I need…”

  “Charlie, it’s okay. I’m already home. I got off early. I’m here. Can you drive?”

  No.

  I slipped on hardened snow as I crossed the parking lot too fast toward my car, catching my balance with another strained breath. “Yes, I can drive. I’m on my way. Just please don’t leave.”

  “Are you okay? Are you sure you don’t want me to come get you?”

  I pushed the start button on my SUV and threw it into drive. “I’m on my way. I’m on my way. Please don’t leave, Cam.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  And though hearing him say that should have comforted me, it only made me cry harder.

  ***

  “Cameron?”

  I dropped my bag by the door, not even stripping out of my coat before I was flying up the stairs. The panic attack that had been slowly creeping in as I left school had assaulted me more and more with every mile, and I couldn’t catch a steady breath as I searched for Cameron.

  He wasn’t in the bedroom or the library. I called his name again, heading for the study.

  Nothing.

  Panic flared like a wild flame and I screamed his name again, running my hands back through my hair. Darkness invaded my vision from the edges, creeping inward like a poisonous ink until I had to lean against the banister not to fall to the floor.

  “Charlie?”

  He emerged from the bedroom with a towel around his waist. I hadn’t even checked our bathroom, and I didn’t care as I ran with what little vision I had left down the hall toward him. He caught me in his arms easily, whispering into my hair as he moved me to our bed and sat us both down. My chest burned with the need for oxygen, but I couldn’t get a big enough breath. I couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything other than let Cameron rock me in his arms.

  He’d lost everything. My poor, sweet boy. He’d lost it all.

  It wasn’t fair. Jeremiah was too young to have his innocence ripped away from him like that. And on his birthday? The truth of it all weighed on me like a heated bag of bricks, crushing my chest with the force. I couldn’t wrap my mind around any of it.

  And I couldn’t do anything about it, either.

  It wasn’t fair.

  “Talk to me,” Cameron said after a while, once my breaths were a little more steady. He peeled my coat off, tossing it to the floor before wrapping me in his arms again. “What happened?”

  “Jeremiah,” I choked out, and Cameron immediately stiffened.

  I hadn’t told Cameron about this Jeremiah, and I didn’t realize that fact until he reacted the way he did.

  “This boy in my class,” I clarified, squeezing him tighter. I needed him to rock me again. “He just… he reminds me so much of our Jeremiah, and I’ve really connected with him this year. He’s so smart, Cam. And so sweet. And he…”

  My heart ripped open with the burn of reality again.

  “He lost his home to a fire this week. And his mom said insurance isn’t covering it, and they don’t know how they’re going to afford a new home, let alone his tuition. And he just, he deserves to be there, Cameron. At Westchester. He doesn’t deserve to know this kind of pain. Not yet.” I shook my head, more tears pouring from my eyes onto Cameron’s bare chest. “He was a completely different boy today. He was so miserable. I have to do something, but I don’t know what.”

  “Shhh,” Cameron soothed into my hair, rocking me again. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” I cried harder, and he kissed my hair, holding me tighter. “There has to be something, I just don’t know what.”

  “They’ll handle it,” Cameron said. “Their insurance will come around, and Jer—” He cleared his throat. “He’ll be okay once some time has passed. We all go through tough stuff when we’re kids, and he’ll be stronger for it in the long run.”

  I pulled away from him just enough so I could look in his eyes. Cameron had been through more in his childhood than I had in my entire life, so I understood why he saw it that way. But this was just a child, not even six years old yet. This wouldn’t make him stronger.

  It would break him.

  “This isn’t a childhood pet dying or falling off a bike, Cameron. He lost his entire home to a fire. All of his toys, all of their family photos, every memory he’s ever had — gone. And now, he might not even be able to come back to the only school he’s known.”

  “It’s only kindergarten. If he does have to transfer schools, he probably won’t even notice the difference after a few days.”

  My hands froze at his side.

  “Only kindergarten. What is that supposed to mean? Are you saying what I do doesn’t matter?”

  Cameron’s eyes grew to the size of silver dollars. “What? No, of course not. I’m just saying that this… kid, he will be okay.”

  “Jeremiah. His name is Jeremiah.”

  Cameron swallowed. “Yes, I know. And I understand why his name might make you feel closer to him, but this isn’t your mess to solve, babe. They’re a family, and they’ll get through it. But you’re his teacher. Your job is to help him stay focused in school through all this, you know?”

  A foreign feeling rolled through me as he talked, one I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before. It was like the final thread holding my life in place was being stretched taut, as if one end of it were being singed slowly by a cool fire. Words weren’t Cameron’s thing, and now that he was using them, they were only making things worse.

  I stared at him like I didn’t know him at all.

  And that’s when I realized that I didn’t. Not anymore.

  “Wow. Thanks for telling me my job responsibilities. I’m not sure how I would have ever known that without you saying it out loud.” I stood from the bed, swiping at the tears on my face as I moved toward the bathroom. “I’m going to take a bath.”

  “Wait,” Cameron said, jumping up to grab my wrist. “What’s wrong? I’m just trying to help.”

  “Well you’re doing a shit job!”

  My hands slapped over my mouth in unison, and I shook my head, eyes flooding with tears.

  “I’m sorry. I just… I feel like you don’t understand.”

  “But I do. I get it. He’s the same age… and has the same name. I can’t imagine how hard that must be some days, and how confusing it can get.” Cameron pulled me into him again, framing my face with his hands. “But he’s not our Jeremiah, Charlie.” His voice broke a little when he said the name, but he pushed through it. “He’s not our son.”

  “I know that, but—”

  “Do you?” Cameron searched my eyes, like he was trying to find a woman who hadn’t existed for five years. “If this would have happened to any other kid in your class, would you have felt the same way? Would you have called me like a mad woman and sped home and cried and felt a need to fix it?”

  “Mad woman?”

  “He’s got the same name, sweetheart, but he’s not the same boy.”

  My mouth popped open, heart picking up speed like it had before. “I can’t believe you would say that to me. I know he’s not the same boy. But I care about him and I’m concerned and hurt. Why are you making it out like I’m crazy for f
eeling that way?”

  “You’re not crazy,” he said, his voice softer. He pulled me into him again, soothing a hand over my back.

  For a long while he just held me there, and the anger I’d felt started to fade. It was like when he had his arms around me like that, I could feel the part of him he never showed me, the part he never said out loud. I thought I felt his heart break under his chest just like mine had.

  He let out a shaky breath, holding me tighter, and in that embrace I knew he had to feel it, too.

  Cameron had always been quiet. He’d always been reserved. He showed me he loved me with his hands, with his eyes, more than he ever showed me with his words.

  But I needed to hear them in that moment. I needed him to tell me what to do.

  I needed him to understand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said into his chest. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  I waited, hoping he was searching for the right words to say. He held me tighter, lips pressed against my forehead, and then he pulled back to look into my eyes.

  “Listen. Why don’t I run you a hot bath and bring you some wine. Take your time, just relax and try to process, okay? And when you get out, I know exactly how to fix this.”

  “You do?”

  He smiled, sweeping a fallen strand of hair behind my ear. “Let’s go get you another bird.”

  I blinked.

  In that moment, I swore I heard the façade we’d built for years crack in half.

  “What?”

  “I know you’ve been hurting since Edward passed, and with me forgetting our anniversary… I’m still trying to make up for that. So, after your bath, let’s go get Jane a friend.”

  I stepped back from him, crossing my arms over my middle, eyes on the floor. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Cameron didn’t answer me, and a powerful silence fell over the room, like a vacuum had stolen every other sound apart from our breathing.

  I lifted my eyes to his, nose flaring. “A bird? You think going to get another bird is going to make everything better?”

  “I… I just know you loved Edward, and Jane has been sad. I thought it would make you happy.”

  “You thought it would make me happy,” I repeated, laughing at the ridiculousness of it.

  And that was it.

  The final thread of that string anchoring me to the ground snapped in two, and everything I’d tried to hold together on my own for years went up in flames with the last of it.

  I stormed across the room, tugging hard on the window handle until it unlatched and swung open. Then, I grabbed the door of Jane’s cage, ripping it open just the same. For a moment she just stood there on her swing, her feathers fluttering out like she wanted to fly but then she thought better of it.

  “You think she wants another bird?” I screamed, rage blending with my tears as I stared through them at Cameron. “That I want another bird? That’s your solution to all this?” I put my hand in the cage, letting Jane hop onto my first finger, and then I held her outside the window.

  In a flash, she was gone.

  “Charlie!” Cameron rushed toward me, but it was too late. Jane was already halfway across our yard, and I was already completely unglued.

  “This isn’t something a bird can fix, Cameron. Or a garden, or a library, or whatever else you think you need to buy or build for me. Is this really how little you know me? Is this really how far we’ve grown apart?”

  “I know you better than anyone,” he tried, grabbing for my hands, but I ripped them away.

  “YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ME!”

  My chest heaved as I watched him hold up his hands. I’d surprised him, maybe even scared him, and I was glad.

  Maybe now he’d wake up.

  “Please,” he said, taking a tentative step toward me again. “You said before that I don’t understand, but I’m trying to. You have to help me, Charlie. Help me understand.”

  “But that’s just it, isn’t it?” I challenged, stepping right into him. I met his chest with my own, burning his eyes with a gaze so strong I felt it in every nerve of my body. “You don’t want to understand. You want to forget.”

  Cameron’s jaw clenched, his nose flaring. “I’m trying.”

  “You’re trying?!” I laughed the words as another tear fell down my cheek. “Hiding the baby stuff, that’s trying? Huh? Never saying their names, that’s trying, too? Going right back to work, right back to our normal routine, never asking me if I was okay or if I needed you or if I needed anything at all — that was all trying to you?”

  I trembled as emotion surged through me like a tidal wave, pummeling every rational thought out of my head.

  “Let me guess — cheating on me? Finding comfort in another woman while your wife had night terrors in the bed you shared with her, was that trying, too?”

  Cameron broke at that, tears welling in his eyes as he reached for my hand, but I tore it away, storming to the bed for my coat.

  “Charlie, I never—”

  “Don’t!” I warned, spinning on my heel. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence, not when you know it’s a lie.”

  He clamped his mouth shut again, and I saw the flash of helplessness in his eyes.

  Good. Now he knew how it felt.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  He lunged for me, wrapping his hand around my wrist and whipping me back around to face him. His eyes searched mine, his jaw set.

  “Please, don’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t go to him.”

  He pinned me with his pleading gaze, and a cold flood of guilt soaked me to the bones.

  I tried to find my husband in the man who stood before me, in the eyes glossed over with unshed tears, in the hand wrapped around my wrist. I tried to find the boy who had shook the first time he took me to bed, who had danced with me in the rain the night he asked me to marry him, who had held my hand through every beautiful, agonizing minute of the birth of our children.

  But I couldn’t see him.

  I only saw a stranger, one I didn’t want to pretend with any longer.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  And with those two words, we both knew it was over.

  I pulled until he let my hand go free, along with the tears he’d been holding back.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  * * *

  Reese

  I needed to get out of the house.

  That thought had been on repeat ever since I’d walked in the door after school.

  Through every cigarette, every beer, and every timeless minute that ticked by, I had that thought in the back of my mind.

  But I still had her in the front.

  Between the snow days and my slow burn of longing for Charlie, the last thing I needed to be doing was sitting by myself, alone with my thoughts, a twelve-pack, and two packs of cigarettes. I’d been destroying my body for almost two weeks now, ever since she walked out my front door. Blake was the only one who’d thought to check on me, and I’d ignored the call, opting for misery, instead.

  I played cold around Charlie.

  It was the only way I knew how to guard what was left of my heart. I’d always worn that fucker like a peeling patch on my sleeve, had always been more in touch with my feelings than any other man I’d ever known or called a friend. I wished, in a way, that I had the gene that made me shut down and close off.

  But I didn’t.

  I could fake it around her, could pretend like I didn’t die a little every time I saw her, every time she looked at me and asked me to be her friend, but it was all a lie.

  The truth was that she went home to Cameron every night, and that would never change.

  I needed to get out of the house.

  Snuffing the end of my cigarette in the ashtray on the box by my feet, I finally stood sometime around eight o’cl
ock. I sucked down the rest of my beer, and though I probably shouldn’t have even considered driving, I swiped my keys off the kitchen counter, anyway. I didn’t know where to go to get my mind off her, off him, but I knew I had to get out of the place that I’d last touched her in.

  My eyes caught on the fort still set up in my living room as I shrugged on my coat. I’d fixed the edges of it torn down in her haste to leave that night, and when I really wanted to torture myself, I’d lay in there with a beer and look up at the same sloping sheets we’d watched together.

  I’d close my eyes and remember the feel of her under my hands, the softness of her lips against mine, the sweetness of her voice as she whispered my name.

  Fucking masochist. That’s what I was.

  I ran a hand over my face, shaking off the memory as I opened my front door. But as soon as I did, I was face to face with the ghost that had haunted me for weeks.

  And for the first full minute, I thought she wasn’t real.

  It had to be the beer. It had to be my imagination playing tricks on me, casting Charlie in a soft glow there on my front porch. She was wrapped in a light pink pea coat and a white scarf, her hair in a messy bun, her eyes wide like she was just as shocked as I was that she was on my porch.

  I pushed through the screen door still between us, my fingers numb on the cold metal, and when we were standing toe to toe, when the steam from her breath touched my neck — that’s when I knew she was real.

  She stood there with her eyes on mine, gaze as steady and sure as a river, though she looked like she might float away in the current of it. In those eyes, I saw the girl who used to read late at night in my kitchen, the girl who used to cry when fictional characters broke each others’ hearts. I saw the woman she’d become in my absence, the woman who wore her scars like a dainty necklace beneath her blouse, the woman who cared for every child as if they were her own.