“Mm-hmm.”
Blake glanced around, running a hand back through her hair as a shiver ran down her back. “I’ve had enough of hospitals. They’re so sad,” she said, voice soft. “I’m sure Graham is glad you could come.” She paused. “I know I’ve been so happy that I have you to come home to after everything going on with my dad.”
I blew out a breath, opening one arm for her to hug me. She leaned in, nuzzling her cheek against my chest.
“I know. You’ve been through a lot lately. Are you sure you want to be here?”
She nodded. “Yes, it’s nice to get away from my own thoughts for a while.” Her breath was hot on my neck as she peered up at me. “I’m just so thankful for you being here for me, Reese — for everything. Just like how I was there for you when… when everything happened. I just, I’ll never be able to thank you enough. I know you understand more than anyone.”
My throat was tight then, and suddenly the hospital room was too small to take an adequate breath.
She was still staring at me when Graham joined us, and I let out a breath of relief as low as I could, releasing her from my grip.
“Hey, you ready to go?” Graham asked me.
“Yep,” I answered, looking back at Blake. “We’re going to go out to the old park for a while, shoot basketball and catch up. You going to be okay here?”
Blake didn’t look happy at our conversation being cut short, but she nodded. “Of course. I’m sure there’s something I can help with around here.”
“Okay. I’ll be back soon.”
I kissed her temple before zipping out of the room like it was on fire, and Graham followed. He chuckled when he caught up with me, glancing back over his shoulder before meeting me with a raised brow.
“Blake is… something.”
I smirked. “That she is.”
“Her and Charlie have beef?”
I stopped short when we reached the set of double doors that led out to the elevators. “What?”
“Charlie was looking at her weird, like an enemy. And my sister doesn’t have any of those. Do they not like each other?”
I feigned nonchalance, opening the door for us and pushing the elevator button once we were through. “They’ve only met once before. I think Charlie was just tired.”
“Yeah,” Graham said, watching me closely. “Could be. Were you with her the other night?”
A flush ran over my face before I could cool it, and I couldn’t even answer. I just avoided Graham’s stare as we stepped onto the elevator.
“At the school event,” he clarified once the doors closed behind us. “She said she had a meeting. Were you there, too?”
I cleared my throat. “Uh, yeah. It was for the end-of-the-year gala thing. We’re both up for awards.”
“Nice,” Graham said, but I still felt him watching me. “It ran late.”
“That’s Westchester,” I said, trying to laugh. “You remember how intense they are about school functions, don’t you?”
At that, Graham seemed to lighten up a bit. “God, do I. I wanted so badly to go to a normal school like you and Mallory.”
He chuckled, but all the color drained from me at the sound of my sister’s name.
“Shit, I’m sorry, Reese.”
“No, no, don’t be,” I assured him as we stepped off the elevator. “It’s not like I can’t talk about her.”
That should have been a true statement, but it was a bold-face lie — one I was too ashamed to admit to anyone out loud.
“Has your game gotten any better since you left Pennsylvania or am I about to run circles around you like usual?” I teased when we pushed through the doors to the parking lot, trying to change the subject.
“Please,” he said with a scoff. “We both know you were better with the girls and your stupid piano, I was better with everything else.”
We continued talking shit the rest of the way to the car, and it seemed all questions about Charlie and my family had been left behind us — at least, for now.
For the next few hours, we played basketball and caught up, and just like I’d felt with Charlie, a little piece of home clicked back into place having Graham back in Mount Lebanon.
But in the back of my mind, his sister was all I could think about.
I knew that across town she was stewing over me showing up at the hospital with Blake. I had to explain what happened, and I couldn’t talk to her until I saw her back at school — and that was a full weekend away.
Ever since I moved to Pennsylvania, weekends were my worst enemy. They were days away from Charlie — days she spent with him. And right now, I knew she felt betrayed. She was pissed, and she had every right to be.
But I’d make it right when I saw her. I had to.
All I could do was tick down the minutes until Monday.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
* * *
Charlie
Late that night, I sat in the aviary with Scarlett and Rhett, feeling as numb as a hand without circulation.
I sipped on hot chamomile tea, watching the birds sleep, hoping the combination would somehow lull me into a sleep that night, too. My thoughts were loud, and none of them made any sense. It was a constant cycle of absolute nonsense, twirling and twirling, taking me down in a heartbreaking wind tunnel of truth.
Somewhere on the ride home, with the windows down, the warm May air whipping through my hair, I realized that it wasn’t that I was mad at Reese.
It was that I was jealous of Blake.
That realization had sucker punched me, the truth of it stealing my breath away. I was jealous of a woman I barely knew, because she got to go home to Reese every night. He swore to me they weren’t doing anything, that he was being strictly a friend to her now, but the fact was that she was still in his bed every night.
And I wasn’t stupid enough to think they didn’t touch.
That made my stomach roll, the thought of it, and I imagined it was only a muted form of what Reese must have felt every night I left school to go home to Cameron.
Cameron. My husband. The man who had shown me more than ever this past week that he loved me truly, whole-heartedly, in a way far different than Reese. It was different in the sense that it was comfortable and dependent, steadfast like a river with a never-ending source.
I was with him all week, and yet I’d also thought of Reese that entire time.
When did I become this person?
Even when I was quiet and reserved, when I didn’t have many true friends, I was always proud of who I was. I was a daughter, a friend, a teacher, a wife. I was honest and true, sweet and kind, always thinking of others before myself.
But this year had changed me.
The new year had snapped me from one person to another, from old Charlie to new, and they sat on opposite sides of the spectrum. Where I used to place others before me, I now only thought of myself. I wanted things — truly wanted them — and I took them instead of waiting or asking. I acted first, thought later. I hurt those around me without realizing it, or maybe I did realize it, and I just didn’t care.
It was like staring in the mirror and seeing a completely different person, like a bad dream I couldn’t wake from.
I couldn’t go back to the woman I was before. I didn’t even know who she was anymore.
I also didn’t know what — or who — was the catalyst that sent me from old Charlie to new.
Was it Reese? Did he wake me up, change me, ignite an old burning flame when he came back into town?
Was it Cameron? Did we hit our breaking point, one coming all along? Was it his lack of care, his years of apathy, that somehow transitioned me from one point to another?
Or was it me?
Was it a quiet giant within my soul, one that had been sleeping, waiting, hoping it wouldn’t have to emerge? Was it the real me, the one who’d always been there, only just freed from her chains?
The answers never came, not with the chamomile and not as the minutes ticked by, tak
ing me later into Friday night.
“I brought you more hot water,” Cameron said, shaking me from my thoughts as he entered the aviary.
He held his hand out for my cup, pouring it full with steaming water from the tea pot in his hand before he sat it on the table beside me.
I was seated in the hammock, folded into it like it was a chair instead of lying down flat, and I swung back and forth lightly, pushing off the ground with my bare toes.
Cameron dunked my old tea bag in the new hot water, handing me the cup before grabbing one of the small stools from the corner. He sat it down right in front of where I was on the hammock, folding his hands between his legs with his elbows balanced on his knees as I steeped the tea.
“I have wondered about the thoughts inside that beautiful mind of yours for the last few months,” Cameron said, his eyes bouncing between mine. “It’s maddening, knowing there is so much that troubles you, and yet not knowing what.” He paused. “This must be how you have felt with me our entire relationship.”
I traced the lip of my tea cup with my finger. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t even know what’s going on up here,” I said, tapping my temple.
Cameron reached forward, taking my tea cup from my hands and sitting it on the table next to the pot. He wrapped my hands in his then, covering my cold knuckles with his warm palms.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Not tonight, okay? It’s been a long day, and I—”
“No, I have to say it tonight,” Cameron insisted, squeezing my hands. “This has waited long enough.”
There was an urgency in his voice, mirrored in his soft caramel eyes, and that tone had my heart accelerating before I even knew the subject on his mind.
“What is it?”
Cameron swallowed, his eyes dropping to where his hands held mine before they resurfaced. “We need to talk about Natalia.”
And with just the sound of her name off his lips, my stomach dropped, landing somewhere below the hammock.
“Cameron, please,” I tried, shaking my head. She was the absolute last thing I wanted to talk about in that moment.
But he squeezed my hands, smoothing his thumbs over my knuckles.
“I know it hurts,” he said. “Trust me, I know. But, we never talked about her, about what happened — what really happened — and with everything…” His voice trailed off, and he swallowed hard, his eyes on mine. “I just have to tell you this, okay? You need to know the truth.”
“I know the truth,” I told him, pulling my hands from his. I crossed my arms over my middle, sitting farther back in the hammock. “I saw the truth, remember?”
A flash of red struck behind my eyes — her red nails, red lips, red bottom of her heels. I could still see Natalia straddling my husband like it was happening right here and now in the aviary.
“You saw only part of it, and the part you saw told the wrong story.”
I cocked one brow, honestly curious. It was the first time Cameron had talked about what happened, other than the night he simply apologized and asked me to forgive him. He hadn’t stuck up for himself, hadn’t offered any excuses or lies.
Why now?
Cameron took a long breath, scrubbing his hands back through his hair before he clasped them together between his knees again. His eyes were on those hands as he began to speak.
“Natalia and I have worked together for a long time… for years.”
“I know,” I deadpanned.
Cameron’s lips pressed together, a frustrated breath sounding through his nose, but he continued.
“I respect her. She’s intelligent, driven, and she always balanced me out well. When we worked on projects, I was the numbers guy, and she was the presentation. She was the closer.”
Another flash of her in his lap, her long blonde hair, her skirt around her hips.
“Everything between us was strictly professional, Charlie. I need you to understand and believe that. There were never any lines crossed, not even so much as an innocent flirt between us. Not until the boys died.”
My emotions were too sensitive, like an exposed nerve, and just that sentence leaving his mouth pricked my eyes. I sniffed, crossing my arms tighter and looking away.
“Something changed in her, then. It felt almost like I was her… her prey. She hunted me, looking for opportunities to get inside my head, to comfort me, to make me happy when I wasn’t. She tried to find a way in. And I’m ashamed to say that sometimes, on the weak days,” he said, his voice trailing. “I let her.”
I shook my head. “Yeah. I caught that.”
“I’m so sorry I did that,” Cameron said, reaching for my hands again. I let him peel them away from my middle, but they were limp in his grasp. “I’m sorry I let her comfort me, that I let her be the one I leaned on. I know I’ve told you before that I thought I was doing the right thing by giving you space, by letting you heal on your own time, but I was wrong. I see that now. I should have been there for you, and I should have opened up to you about how I was feeling, too. I failed you in that,” he admitted, voice breaking as he squeezed my hands tighter. “But I swear to you, on everything that I am, I did not sleep with her, Charlie. Not once.”
My heart leapt into my throat, the beat of it strong enough to block my next breath.
“You didn’t?”
He shook his head. “I never even kissed her.”
My mouth fell open, heart dropping back into my chest before it took off in a full gallop. I shook my head, searching his eyes for a sign of him lying, but I came up empty.
“No,” I said, still shaking my head. “No, I saw her. I saw her skirt… and she was straddling you, and…” I tried to remember if his hands were on her. Were they grabbing her hips? Were they in her hair? But I couldn’t remember.
Maybe they were on the chair. Maybe he wasn’t touching her at all.
“You saw her sitting on me,” he agreed. “She had come into my office right before you, and she straddled me like that before I could even register what she was doing. It was late, we were the only ones there, and I guess she thought it was the right time to pounce. She told me she was looking for trouble,” Cameron said, shrugging. “And I told her to get off me. But it was too late, because before she could even argue with me, you walked in.”
Suddenly, his hands were too warm, the aviary too small, and I ripped away from his grasp before jumping up to stand. Cameron remained seated as I paced, waking Scarlett and Rhett with my quick movements.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “Why didn’t you tell me this? Why wouldn’t you say anything until now?”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“You didn’t think it mattered?” I repeated. “You didn’t think it was worth it to mention to me that what I’ve thought for the past four years was completely wrong? That you never cheated on me like I thought you did?”
“But I did,” he said. “In a way, in the only way that matters. Sex is just that — sex. To me, that was never true intimacy. At least, not until I met you. Sex has only been more with you. So, no, I didn’t have sex with her.” Cameron swallowed. “But what I did do was worse. I leaned on her. I let her in, I gave her access to my thoughts and feelings. So when I chased you down that night to plead my case, and I saw your tears, I knew there was nothing I could say that could make you feel any better. I couldn’t defend my actions, because I’d hurt you. I’d betrayed you. You looked at me like a piece of shit that night, Charlie, and I was.”
“But that was because I thought you slept with her!”
“I know,” Cameron said, finally standing, too. “I see that now. Talking to Patrick, he helped me see that even if I still feel guilty for what I’ve done, even if I feel like there is no difference in what I did and what you thought, that I still owed you the truth.” Cameron shook his head. “He said you needed to have all the facts, and that it was your dec
ision whether it was the same or not.”
Black invaded my vision, the same nauseous feeling from Wednesday’s food poisoning stint creeping up on me. I moved back to the hammock, flopping down in it as I tried to steady my breaths.
“I can’t believe this,” I whispered, shaking my head. “You never slept with her.”
Cameron dropped to his knees in front of me, taking my hand in his. He pressed a kiss to my knuckle before holding my gaze.
“Charlie, you are the only woman I have ever loved, and I would never dream of touching another woman the way I touch you. You are my wife,” he reminded me, and my heart cracked with the word. “I made vows to you, and though I may have broken some of those along the way, I would never break the most sacred one. I am yours and only yours,” he promised. “And I’m sorry I ever made you doubt that.”
I couldn’t cry, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but sit there in his grasp and stare at the man I thought I knew. Shame seeped through me like dark ink, tattooing me with the truth.
Cameron had never cheated on me.
He stared at me, lifting my fingers to his lips every now and then, and all I could do was stare back. The guilt I’d felt over Reese before was nothing compared to the kind I felt now. Because before, at least a little bit anyway, I felt justified. An eye for an eye, a heart for a heart. I wasn’t doing anything to Cameron that he hadn’t done to me.
But I had been wrong.
My husband had never betrayed me, not the way I had him, and now that the truth was laid out in front of me, I felt more lost than I ever had before.
“We should try to get some sleep,” Cameron said after a while. “I know this is a lot to process. Just… let me hold you tonight, okay? And if you have any questions for me in the morning, I’ll answer them. No matter what they are.”
His words were muffled, like we were on an airplane or like I was half asleep. I think I nodded, though I couldn’t be sure, and the next thing I knew, we were climbing the stairs together.
We both crawled into bed, and Cameron leaned over to turn out the light before he pulled me into his chest. He ran his fingers through my hair, his other hand resting easily on my hip, and I could already sense how much lighter he felt now that he’d gotten everything off his chest.
Best Kept Secrets: The Complete Series Page 42
