Pieces of Camden (Hole-Hearted #1)

by Yessi Smith

  What I’m not ready for is the bruise beneath his left eye. No matter how angry his parents get, they never mark him somewhere others can see. Never. It’s like some unspoken law between them.

  Brushing the covers to the side, I swing my legs over the bed. With two long steps, I’m by my window, lightly touching Camden’s face, while he looks at anything but me. My thumb runs over the blue bruise that can no longer hide the hurt. The filthy stain of his parents’ hatred runs across his face.

  Camden stands there, motionless, aside from the rise and fall of his chest.

  I’ve never kissed him before, but he looks so lost, so sad, so alone. With my heart thundering in my ears, I place my lips on his cheek, and I’m surprised when he puts his arms around me. I hug him back, wanting to take away the hurt and the fear, but he winces when I hold on to him too tightly.

  “I’m okay,” he reassures me.

  But I know better. He’ll never be okay as long as he lives with his mom and dad.

  “What did he do?” I ask, referring to his dad.

  His mom’s just as awful as his dad, but it’s usually his dad who delivers the beatings while his mom watches with a glass of wine in her hand.

  “Can we just lie down?” Camden looks at my bed with longing, his eyes unblinking, as he shrinks away from his reality.

  I already know I could never say no to him. No matter what he wants, my answer will always be yes.

  Take his hand in mine, I lead us to my bed where I climb in first and then scoot to the other side so that Camden has room to lie down. With slow movements, Camden gets into bed with me and lowers himself, hissing in pain as he lies flat on his back. My hand reaches for his again, and our fingers lock onto one another. My chest aches as I listen to Camden’s silent pleas, calling me, pulling me to him.

  “Tonight, can we play pretend?” he asks me.

  I nod even though I want to ask him about what hurt when I hugged him and again when he lay down.

  “What are we pretending?”

  “Tonight, I want to be a white knight in shining armor.”

  Sadness hits me. My amazing Camden—who’s already my white knight, braver than any other knight out there because he fights dragons every day—has no idea who he is.

  Playing along with him, I ask, “What’s your horse’s name?”

  His body shifts slightly, and pain temporarily crosses his face as he tries to readjust himself into a more comfortable position.

  “All knights have horses,” I explain. “So, what’s your horse’s name?”

  He thinks about it for a long time, and when he comes up with a name, a beautiful big smile spreads across his face, his eyes lighting with joy.

  “Stark,” he replies.

  I roll my eyes. “You can’t name your horse after Tony Stark.”

  “I just did.”

  “Whatever.” My eyes roll back again, but I lean my body closer to his so that my breath lands on his bruised cheek. “Do you and Stark save princesses?”

  “No.” He shakes his head once, disgust crossing his face before he faces me. “Saving people is stupid.”

  “What kind of knight doesn’t save people?” My brows furrow in question.

  Camden sighs and turns his attention to my ceiling. “Yan, in the real world, the knight doesn’t become a knight to save anyone but himself. No one cares about him or sees him until he becomes a knight.”

  Emotion crosses over his face, pain darkening his eyes. My face drains as I take in and absorb his words.

  “That’s not true, Cam.” I give his fingers, still interlaced with mine, a quick squeeze to make sure I have his attention. “I see him. I care.”

  Camden squeezes my fingers in return and then turns his whole body so that he’s lying on his side. His chest heaves from the pain and exertion, but the only way Camden can fall asleep is on his side. Our faces are close enough to each other that our noses touch, and our breaths unite us.

  When Camden closes his eyes, I reach over to him, and my fingers comb through his medium-length hair.

  “I care, Cam,” I repeat to him. “Don’t you ever forget it.”

  He opens his eyes and stares at me for a long time before he shuts them again. On a whisper, he says, “I care, too, Yan.”

  THREE

  CAMDEN

  Walls and smoke surround me. The smoke has hands that lash out and grip me, throw me, hit me. Rather than choke me, they beat me, blaming me for living. The smoke then turns into them, and his hatred consumes me while her screams make me cower.

  I am nothing.

  Nothing but a worthless burden.

  A scream echoes in the distance, and I hear a boy crying into the night, begging for help. His pain, his loneliness, and fear are mine so I follow it through the thickening cloud of smoke until I’m kneeling in front of a little boy. Dark curls cover his bruised cheek while tear-filled, bloodshot eyes look up at me.

  “You’re not alone,” I tell him. “You still have her.”

  You’re not alone yet. You still have her. But, one day, you won’t. Only then will you truly know what loneliness feels like.

  Although I keep those words to myself, the boy hears them anyway. It’s too much for him to carry, and he cups his hands over his ears and screams while the smoke strikes at both of us, whipping us, leaving marks on our backs and chests.

  I pick him up and run, but I can’t save us. Men and boys like us can’t be saved.

  “I’m not here to save you.”

  A light reaches toward us, and when it morphs into delicate long fingers and touches my cheek, I lean into it, needing her. Shivers ripple down my spine as my heart focuses on her.

  “I just want to make it hurt less.”

  The boy climbs out of my arms and into hers, and she carries him away, leaving me alone, the same way I once left her. My heart rips from my chest and crashes onto the floor into a million pieces of agony.

  With too much clarity, the veil lifts from my dream, and I repel against it, desperate to go back to Yanelys, wanting her to lessen the hurt the way she always did.

  But my subconscious fights back until I’m lying on my back on a soft surface, staring at a white ceiling.

  I blink several times and take a quick survey of my surroundings as I try to orient myself, but I can’t make out where I am—until I move my hands to sit up and find them bandaged with an IV sticking out of one arm.

  Disbelief washes over me.

  It wasn’t a dream. At least not all of it.

  I cough to test my lungs and immediately wince in pain.

  “Finally awake,” a man says. He stands from his chair on the other side of the room. When he crosses to my side, his wide frame looms over my bed, his familiar eyes brimming with the same love he unconditionally gave me as a child.

  My eyes narrow in speculation, and when his pensive eyes meet mine, I drop my gaze as shame washes over me.

  After a strangled moment, I say his name, “Santiago.” My voice is slightly above a strained whisper, so I cough again to clear my throat.

  “Stop coughing,” he instructs. “You’re only making it worse.”

  “I was in a fire?” I ask.

  He nods.

  “And now?” Tension eases into my shoulders, my heart slamming a thunderous beat in my chest.

  Santiago smirks and lays a gentle hand on my left shoulder. His hand stays there, barely touching the fabric of my hospital gown that hides even more bandages.

  “You’re in the hospital, Cam.” His grim eyes meet mine. “You’re not dead—at least, not yet. When Yan sees you, she might fix that for you.”

  His words fill me with panic, but the bastard just winks at me.

  “Yan can’t see me. Santiago, please,” I plead with him, rubbing my bandaged hands over my face. Even with the dressing on my hands, I can feel more bandages on my face.

  The fire, the flames that licked and taunted me, was bad. I should feel pain. The blissful numbness will eventually subside,
and I know I’ll feel more than the emotional pain that grips my chest whenever I think of Yanelys. Agitated, I hit the button to my morphine drip, desperate to evade the unwanted agony.

  It won’t be enough. It never is.

  “That girl has worried about you every day since the day you disappeared. We all have,” he emphasizes and I shy away from him and his disappointed face. “If she knew I had seen you and didn’t say anything…” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t do that to her. Yan is my number one concern, Camden. There was a time when you topped that list too, but…”

  “But now?” I ask, needing him to finish although fear of his oncoming words makes me quake.

  “You left us,” he says simply. “You’re back now, not because you want to be but because fate brought you back to us. I still love you.” His jaw ticks as his brown eyes bore into me. “That’ll never change. Neither will the part where you turned away and never once called or reached out to us.”

  “Santiago,” I start but don’t bother finishing. There are a thousand excuses I can give him, a million reasons, but right now they all seem insufficient. I clear my throat before I say, “Yan’s coming then?” My eyes dance around the room and I try to come up with a plan to escape.

  “Not yet. I left her a voice mail to call me, but she hasn’t called me back. I told Carmen, though. I imagine they’re both on their way.” His strong fingers grip around my wrist and squeeze hard enough to get my attention. “Stop trying to get away, Cam. You’re not going anywhere.”

  Hoping it’ll lighten the intensity in the room, I mutter, “Ballbuster,” under my breath.

  Loud and unrestrained, his laughter radiates off the walls and crashes into me, the sadness in my soul growing with the sound.

  “That would imply you had balls to bust, boy.” He laughs harder until his laughter turns into the small wheezes I’ve missed since I left. “Pretty sure you lost those when you walked out on your family and the girl who’s loved you since you two were just kids. She hasn’t stopped, ya know.”

  In spite of myself, I find myself grinning at Santiago’s admission. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father figure. There was a time when I didn’t just wish he were my dad, but I also secretly referred to him as that.

  I take him in, fully assessing him for seven years’ worth of changes. The wrinkles on his face have deepened, and the gray hairs have become more pronounced, but he’s still Santiago. Physically fit, mentally aware, and with a smile spread across his face, as if he was always only seconds away from cracking his favorite joke.

  It’s not until I see black residue beneath his normally clean fingernails that I finally ask him what he’s doing here.

  “I was one of the guys called to the building you were in when it caught fire.”

  “And you went in?” I want to yell at him, but my voice is still too hoarse to carry any strength. “By the time I woke up, it was an inferno. You can’t go into fires like that, Santiago. You have a family. Think about Yan and Carmen. What would they do if something happened to you?” My chest heaves while the words bleed out of my mouth in a frenzy of guilt and fear.

  My heart slams against my ribs, and I press the button to release more morphine into my system, but nothing happens. Desperate, I press it again. When nothing drips down, Santiago takes the button away from me and gives me two Tylenols from the front pocket of his jeans.

  They won’t help.

  But I take them anyway.

  “It’s my job, Cam,” he says, repeating the same words he once told me when I was a teenager, warning him not to go into burning houses.

  I didn’t understand it back then, but after what I’ve experienced these past few years, I get it.

  Santiago was born to make a difference. It doesn’t matter that he comes from a wealthy family or that he doesn’t have to work. It’s in his blood, the core of who he is—a good man with strong morals and a desire to help.

  “I get that; I do.” With careful motion, my body leans forward and tries to sit up, but when I see the bed’s remote, I use it to prop me up. “But there was a lot of smoke. It would’ve been too dangerous. You swore, you never went into buildings that were too dangerous.”

  Santiago rubs his hands over his face—a gesture I picked up from him and use often—and sits on my bed, resting his hand on my left foot.

  “I don’t.” He squeezes my foot and looks at me before he shakes his head. “The fire was huge. It was out of our control. None of us were gonna go in until it’d died down, but, hell, Cam, I heard my baby girl scream.” His lips turn into a scowl, and he rubs his hands over his face once again. “I heard Yan screaming, and I didn’t have a choice.”

  My eyes widen at his declaration, and fear burns into my lungs until I can’t breathe.

  “Yan?” I whisper.

  “She’s fine,” he reassures me, squeezing my foot again. “She left me a voice mail, telling me good night, while I was in the building, looking for her.”

  “It wasn’t her then.” I breathe out a sigh of relief.

  “It was her all right.” Creases spread at the corners of Santiago’s mouth, and he laughs.

  Confused, I wait for him to continue.

  “Yan wasn’t in the building with you, but you tell me, has she ever really left you?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  He shrugs, a simple lift and drop of his shoulders. “Somehow, she knew you were in there. Her spirit called to me because she wanted to make sure you got out safe.”

  FOUR

  YANELYS

  ELEVEN YEARS OLD

  “My mom would kill me if she knew we were eating this,” Camden whispers into my ear. He motions toward the pizza and soda my parents bought us.

  “Then, we’ll make sure she doesn’t find out,” I whisper back.

  A beautiful smile stretches across his face, his eyes dancing with anticipation.

  My mom groans and leans back into her chair, rubbing her full stomach. “I think maybe we should have eaten after racing.”

  My stomach lurches in response, but I don’t say anything. There’s no way I’d let a full or upset stomach stop me from going on the karts. It’s all Camden’s been talking about since my parents mentioned taking us kart racing for his birthday.

  I wish that were all we were doing for his birthday. After I told my mom I wanted to make his birthday special because his parents usually forgot about it, she called his mom, Maureen, and planned a surprise party for him. With my help, she called his friends from school, bought burgers and hot dogs for his parents to barbeque, and ordered his cake. We picked up his cake this morning, and while I distracted Camden, my mom brought it into his house where Maureen hid it somewhere in the kitchen.

  For Camden, I hope his parents won’t mess up his birthday. Just this once. My mom did so much to prepare for it, and I want him to have one birthday with nothing but good memories.

  We’re off to a good start.

  While we wait for my parents to throw away our trash, Camden picks out the kart he wants to drive—a black one that he says reminds him of the Death Star. I pick a blue one because it reminds me of Camden’s eyes.

  “You’re obsessed with that color,” he jokes, pushing me to the side with his shoulder.

  “It’s a good color.” I beam at his smiling face, not wanting the happiness of the day to ever leave him.

  “All right, kids”—my dad rests one hand on my shoulder and the other on Camden’s—“who’s ready?”

  My stomach tightens in both fear and excitement. I mean, I’ve never driven before, and now, I’m going to race. And the karts go really fast.

  But my fear immediately vanishes, as if it never existed, when Camden shouts, “I am!”

  “Cam wants the black kart, Dad.”

  “Then, we’ll make sure he gets the black kart.” My dad winks at me and then ushers us forward with minimal pressure on our shoulders.

  “Don’t be nervous.” Camden separates the hands I’ve sub
consciously been wringing together and squeezes my fingers with his while we wait for our turn.

  “I’m not nervous,” The lie falls easily from my lips and Camden narrows his eyes at me.

  “Liar,” he says. “I’ll make sure you’re buckled in good, Yan. You’ll be okay.”

  “It’s okay to be nervous,” my dad tells us. “Just never let it stop you from trying new things.”

  “I’m not nervous,” I counter again.

  My dad laughs. “Why would you be? You have Cam to take care of you.”

  Camden’s eyes, blue and brilliant, level on me, and he puffs his chest out just a bit. I lean into him and rest my head on his shoulder, happy we’re the same height so that the motion isn’t awkward.

  Ever since the night I kissed Camden’s cheek in my bedroom, we’ve been more affectionate with each other. When we were younger, it was always in secret. But then it was obvious his parents never showed him what it meant to be loved, so I started holding his hand in front of my parents one day. My mom suspiciously looked at me, and I knew she didn’t like it, but I held on to him tighter while his eyes nervously skated over the floor. My dad’s laughter broke the silence, and when he winked at us, I knew he’d talk to my mom. Like me, he saw Camden’s sadness, and he knew Camden needed someone to hold on to him, to ground him.

  “We take care of each other,” I whisper.

  He hugs me closer to his side.

  As we wait our turn, Camden and I watch the karts drive by. My dad pretends to watch them as well, but he keeps glancing at us with a small smile on his face. My mom calls him an old romantic, and I know he’s picturing us walking down an aisle one day. I’m pretty sure he knows I dream about the same thing.

  When we reach the front of the line, we give the attendant our tickets, and he points at a red kart for Camden to drive, but with a soft hand on his shoulder, my dad stops Camden from moving to it.

  “It’s my boy’s birthday today,” my dad announces to the attendant.

  Camden visibly stiffens at my dad’s words, but when I look at his face, all I see is surprise and wonder.