Another Life: Another Life Series #1

by Jasmine Denton

  ***

  Locked inside her room, Cameron stretched on her tip-toes to reach the small box she’d stashed on the closet shelf. Pulling it down, she turned and sat on the floor of the closet. Opening the box in front of her, she took a careful breath as she prepared herself for a trip down memory lane.

  Unlike Chad’s box, hers wasn’t filled with love letters and happy memories. In this patterned storage compartment, she hid all of her most painful memories. Everything she was afraid to tell people was right underneath this lid.

  She pulled out a sonogram picture first. As she flipped through them and watched a bean morph into a baby, she pressed a hand against her stomach.

  He was her son no matter how bad of a mother Anne insisted Cameron would be. Just two years ago, when Brady was born, Anne demanded that she, and not Cameron, would raise the baby. After all, Cameron was a just drunken slut, and there was no telling whom the father really was, and how could Cameron raise a baby while living that sinful lifestyle? It was better if Brady never knew the truth about his parentage, Anne had said, he’d be better off thinking of Cameron as only an older cousin. God would want it that way.

  She could still hear the conversation playing out in her mind, highlighting the scornful and disapproving tones. At just sixteen years old, she’d succumbed to Anne’s demands, buying into the opinion Anne held of her. The decision haunted her ever since.

  Next she took out the hospital bracelet from the day he was born. It was just a slip of paper covered in yellow rubber that smelled like baby powder, but it made her think of him.

  Underneath the hospital bracelet was an orange wristband to Julian’s favorite club. This was where she spent her time when she could no longer stand to watch another woman—one who hated her—raise her child. As she twirled it between her fingertips, she could see the dimly lit bar. The sweep of tables cluttered with drained bottles of beer and empty shot glasses, the sticky dance floor illuminated in lights that flamed in spurts of red, green and blue. The mixture of smells; booze, smoke and sex filled her senses. She could see the people, a mass of tangled limbs that looked like one complete organism, their bodies rubbing together in a fluid, erotic movement to the beat of the music.

  Julian and Cameron swayed in the center of it all. Sometimes they danced together and sometimes they competed against each other using unwitting strangers. Often, they did both in the same night, between rounds of whatever alcohol they could snatch with their greedy little hands.

  Was it any wonder she’d wanted to leave that life behind? No matter how many times she tried to get away, he always found a way to get her to go back to him. Sometimes he’d use force; sometimes he’d tempt her with a drink, others he would use money. And sometimes, her feelings for him drove her straight into his cold arms.

  It would be an understatement to say their relationship had been destructive. She’d been dangerously attracted to him, to those charming and tough-as-steel eyes, to that black hair that held the charge of electricity when she touched it, to those strong arms that could be shielding and vicious all at once.

  She didn’t like to think about him. Because of her erratic feelings for him, it was easier to pretend he didn’t exist. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to shake him. As much as she hated to admit it, she still was, and believed she always would be, connected to him.

  ***

  “Cameron?” Shane called from the front of the store.

  “Over here,” she shouted back, waving her hand to show him which aisle she was on.

  “Whew,” he said with exaggerated relief when he found her stocking the junk food shelves. “For a second, I thought you might have decided to close the store down again.”

  She chuckled lightly to hide that sting of regret she always felt when she was reminded of a mistake, especially the drunken ones. “Nope. I’m actually working this time.”

  “I know,” he said with a grin. “I really just wanted to check in on you. Last night looked pretty brutal.”

  “Right,” she said, pushing a couple bags of chips into their spot. “Last night.”

  Shane eyed her for a second before he responded. “Chad’s pretty hard on you, isn’t he?”

  “He’s the older brother I never wanted,” she said, laughing it off.

  He nodded, resting his arm on top of the shelf. “He has this way of…growing on you. And trust me; I’ve been on the receiving end of quite a few fights just like the one last night. I think you handled it pretty well, all things considered.”

  “Yeah, I heard.” Shoving a couple packages of cookies into their place, she added, “I meant about your past. A little, anyway.”

  “Really?” He scratched behind his ear, a habit she’d come to realize he did out of nervousness. “What’d you hear?”

  “Let’s just say, it sounds like you give Sam hope for me, and that I should thank you for.” There was a ton of things she should thank him for, she realized. “And…also…I noticed you didn’t tell Chad about the other night. Something tells me that me getting drunk on the clock is something he’d have plenty to say about, but he hasn’t said anything. I assume you’re responsible for that?”

  His shoulders moved in a modest shrug. “I didn’t think he needed to know.”

  Looking over at him, she smiled. “You really are surprising.”

  “So are you.”

  Their gazes met, and unlike usual, she didn’t glance away. She let her eyes linger on his, enjoying the peaceful, serene feeling those cool blue irises always caused.

  The bell above the door rang, preventing Cameron from staying in that calm feeling.

  He was looking away, too, scratching his ear again and letting her know that he’d felt it—whatever that had been—too.

  “I…um,” she motioned to the door, but for some reason couldn’t seem to spit the words out. “I’m just going to…”

  “Right, yeah.” Clearing his throat, he stepped aside so she could get past him. As she walked down the aisle, she glanced over her shoulder at him, surprised to catch his gaze again. And somehow, she just instinctively knew that he was her ticket. He had the strength she needed, the inspiration. If only she could let him in.

  ***

  A storm blew in from the South, bringing thick, dark clouds and hot, tropical rain with it. Cameron was in the middle of driving home after her shift when she’d decided to make another run to the ABC store. While she was debating choices, the worst of the rain hit. In minutes, it went from a light drizzle to a torrential downpour. By the time she was heading home, the road was flooded.

  Though her wipers were on full blast, she could still barely see the pavement through the water-streaked windshield. Thunder roared above and flashes of lightening illuminated the dark country road.

  She slowed down, turned her high-beams on and tried to see the yellow lines that separated lanes. Suddenly, she felt the car lift a little as she drove through flowing water and the wheels hydroplaned. She fought to keep control of the steering, but the car still went straight off the road. Screaming, she closed her eyes and waited for the sounds of crunching metal and broken glass. But the car landed safely in a muddy ditch.

  After taking a moment to calm herself, she put the gearstick in reverse and tried to back out onto the road. But the wheels only spun deeper and deeper into the soggy dirt. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she exclaimed, slapping the steering wheel in frustration.

  Getting out of the car, she braved the rain and carefully made her way to the front. Placing her hands on the bumper, she pushed and shoved with all her weight, but the car didn’t budge. She gave it one last effort, but her hand slipped right off the metal and she landed in the mud, barely catching herself before she did a full-on face-plant.

  “Ew, ew, gross!” she complained as she picked herself up off the squishy ground. She wiped the mud off the best she could and then hurried back into her car, shutting herself in its shelter.

  Even though they both had access
to tow-trucks, she opted for calling Shane instead of Chad, for all the obvious reasons. He came to her rescue right away, arriving about ten minutes after her phone call.

  When she stepped out to greet him, he took one look at her mud-covered outfit and started laughing. “What happened to you? Get into a fight with the ground or something?”

  “Oh shut up,” she said, shoving his shoulder. “I was just trying to push my car out of here.”

  “Did you put it in neutral first?”

  Slowly, she brought her eyes to meet his, feeling like a complete ditz. “Was I supposed to?”

  This only made him laugh harder. “Go ahead and get in the truck. I’ll fix it.”

  “Why am I getting in your truck?”

  “Because I’m afraid if you keep driving in this mess, you won’t make it back home in one piece,” he said as he began hooking her car up to his truck.

  Looking around at the storm, she decided he was right. Before she abandoned her car, she ducked back down into it and grabbed the paper bag out of the passenger seat. Then she hopped into his truck and waited.

  Once they were out on the road, Shane said, “Where were you going in this mess, anyway?”

  Sheepishly, she held up the bagged bottle of Jack Daniels. When he nodded knowingly, she felt defensive. “It’s not like I could show my face at the Tavern after the way Chad acted the other day,” she said. “And you know, so I like to drink. What’s the big deal?”

  “I didn’t say anything,” he said, giving her an adorable smirk.

  “Whatever, you had a look.”

  “There was no look.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m just preparing the speech for when Sam or Chad busts me. They seem to do that every time I turn around. It’s like nothing’s private.”

  “I noticed they’ve been kind of…bossy,” he said, choosing the word carefully. “And you don’t strike me as the type that likes rules.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “But that doesn’t stop either one of them from acting like I’m some kind of… child.”

  “You sound like you could use some space.” He said it casually, like it was just an observation, but Cameron considered herself an expert at reading guys and picked up on the subtext immediately. As anticipated, the next step in hitting on her came shortly after. “You could come over to my place if you want.”

  She shifted in her seat a little to look at him. Taking in his profile, she realized—not for the first time—just how handsome he was. It made her remember the way he’d kissed her the first time they met, and man, he really knew how to work those lips.

  Maybe it was the loneliness, or the stress or all of the pent-up hormones, but she found herself aching to say yes. But not without a little game, first. “Back to your place? For what?”

  He shrugged. “Just to hang out. Why go back and be around your brothers if you’re just going to be miserable? You need to have some fun.”

  He made good points, she noted. “Sure. Why not?”

  Shane’s apartment complex was located just a few miles from the store. It was a cute red-brick building with an in-ground swimming pool and a landscaped yard. He led them up a set of cement stairs around the side of the building, to a little corner on the second floor.

  He opened the door to a spacious flat. A couch separated a TV watching area from a workout room. To the left, a set of double doors were open to reveal the bedroom. Behind the couch, she saw a punching bag hanging from the ceiling. On the furthest side of the room, by a set of patio doors that led to a small balcony, there was a pool table with the balls set up inside the triangle.

  “Quite the bachelor pad,” she said, giving an admiring look around the room.

  “Thanks,” he said. As he dropped his keys onto a table by the door, he gave her rain-soaked clothes a second look. “How about I get you something to wear and you can throw those in the washer?”

  “That’d be great,” she said, slipping out of her shoes and setting them behind the door.

  He went into the bedroom and began looking through the dresser. She followed him inside, glancing casually around. It was decorated simply, with a matching dresser and full-sized bed covered with a dark blue quilt. One thing she noticed was that there weren’t any pictures anywhere. None of family or friends, no trophies or anything that might’ve looked like a memento. Looking around the room, it seemed like Shane had no past, no personal life. She wondered what that was all about.

  Turning to her, he offered her a pair of long gym-shorts and a t-shirt.

  “No ex-girlfriend pile?” she asked as she took the clothes.

  “Nah,” he said, chuckling. “Hopefully those will fit, though.” He headed over to the doors and shut them behind him.

  As she started to change her clothes, she wondered what his ulterior motives were. Obviously he had some—people weren’t so generous for no reason. When she left his room, she saw he’d set a shot glass down on the coffee table for her.

  “Just one?” she asked, taking a seat on the couch. “You’re not joining me?”

  “Nope. But please, enjoy if that’s what you want to do.”

  “Uh-oh,” she said as she poured herself a drink. “Don’t tell me you brought me back here just so you could ‘keep an eye on me’ or something.”

  He looked at her innocently, but he was busted.

  Cameron downed the shot, and then poured another. “I don’t need a baby-sitter.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Call me crazy, but considering the way Chad acted when he found out about that party...I don’t think he’d be too fond of the idea of you and I hanging out here.”

  “He’s my best friend,” he said with a shrug. “He’ll get over it.”

  “Touché.”

  He motioned to the pool table. “You play?”

  “A little,” she replied. “I’ve never been any good, though.”

  “Come on.” He stood, heading over to the pool table. “I’ll give you some pointers.”

  Making sure to take her shot glass and trusty bottle of booze along with her, Cameron followed Shane over and took another drink as he prepped the game. She picked up a pool stick and turned to face him. “So, here’s the deal. I make a shot, and you answer a question. You make a shot...and you get to pick the question I ask you.”

  “You don’t have to give any answers?” he asked, raising a blond brow in question.

  “Nope. It’s this rule I have.”

  “I see.” He stepped aside and motioned for her to go first. “Well...I’m an open book. Go for it.”

  ***

  The storm made Chad feel even more gloomy and reflective than usual. As he drove slowly through the puddles of rain, he was reminded of another stormy night just like this. It was raining the night he’d had his heart broken.

  It was the day she left the hospital after the Carver attacked her for the second time. He’d thought that since the serial killer finally died, he and Amy were home free and they could move on with their lives. He’d help her recover from what she’d been through; he would’ve done anything to make sure she felt safe. Safety was such a precious thing to her now.

  Then he got the phone call. And even after Amy started speaking, he didn’t understand what she was trying to say.

  “I’m sorry it had to happen this way…” she blurted out when he answered the phone. He remembered thinking that she sounded like she’d been crying, which immediately concerned him. “But I knew if I said goodbye in person, I’d never be able to leave.”

  Leave? Say Goodbye? Blindsided, it took him a moment to form words. “Amy, what are you talking about? What are you doing?”

  “What I have to do.” Her voice shook as if the very idea of it broke her heart. He believed her when she said, “It’s not you, Chad. It’s this town, this place. I can’t live here anymore.”

  Still, he’d kept his cool. He knew she’d been through a lot, and understood if she needed time. “Look, you’re going
to get better, okay? I’ll wait for you. As long as it takes.”

  “Chad, I don’t want you to do that.”

  Taking a deep breath, he fought the tears stinging his eyes. Somehow he knew he was on the brink of the biggest heartache of his life. It felt like he was standing at the edge of a cliff, surrounded by nothing but darkness in every direction, while the brightest part of his life slipped further and further out of focus. Even today, he remembered in vivid detail how hard it had been to speak. His voice had been shaky, broken up and barely audible. “Amy, I love you.” Softer, he made one last desperate plea. “I’m in love with you.”

  He heard her give a shaky sigh, or it could’ve been a sob. Over the phone he couldn’t be sure. “I love you, too,” she said. “That’s why I’m letting you go.”

  With a click, the other end of the line went utterly, heartbreakingly silent. He just stood in the middle of the living room, holding the phone to his ear, frozen in that moment. Listening to that silence, Chad felt a tear slip down his cheek. After a minute, the busy signal started beeping through the cordless phone, but he didn’t bother to shut it off.

  Suddenly, the front door opened and Sadie rushed in. Her cheeks were red and she was breathing heavy like she was flustered. Before she even saw him in the living room, she was saying, “Chad! I need to—”

  Seeing him, her footsteps halted. She looked him up and down, realizing the shape he was in. “Oh God…I’m too late,” she whispered.

  He was too in shock to worry about hiding the pain andtoo stunned to do anything but hold a phone with a blaring busy signal.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sadie said, moving forward a couple steps. “I tried to stop her. I tried to get here before she…”

  Again, her words trailed off. Seeing the devastation left behind in her cousin’s wake and knowing no words could comfort him, she finally gave up and hurried toward him, her arms outstretched. She pulled his tensed body close to hers in a sympathetic, platonic embrace meant to comfort him. But on that rainy summer night all those years ago, her embrace spurred a precious friendship that eventually grew into much, much more.