“So you took her face in your hands, looked her right in the eyes, and said, ‘Cameron, I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you forever. I. Love. You.’?”
“It was implied,” I growl.
“Sweet Christ, you’re an idiot. Have you learned nothing over the last few weeks? Hell, over the last thirty-three years?” he criticizes.
“I thought the whole show, don’t tell thing was what women liked. Romantic gestures, and all that shit,” I mumble.
“Not in this case. Tell me, how did you feel when Cameron actually said the words to you?”
I sigh, dropping the bottle of glue, resting my hands on top of the table, and letting my head drop as I take a minute to think about what he’s asking.
“Relief,” I finally whisper.
“And why is that?”
“Because no matter what was happening between us, I don’t think I actually believed it until she said the words.”
Son of a bitch.
“Bingo! And we have a winner!” Jason proclaims.
Why the hell didn’t I just say the words? Why did I think my actions would speak for themselves? More than anything else in the world, I wanted to look her in the eyes and tell her I loved her, but I was scared. I’d never said those words to another person in my life. I felt them for Cameron, deep down in my soul I felt them, but they just wouldn’t come out of my mouth when she needed to hear them. I spent so much time pretending like I hadn’t been in love with her all those years I spent away from her, that having everything I ever wished for right within my grasp scared the hell out of me. Saying something out loud makes it real. And when it’s real, it can be taken away from you. I didn’t want to lose her again, but I knew if I didn’t tell her what I should have the other morning, she’d slip right out of my grasp and no amount of apologizing would bring her back this time.
“This is probably a really stupid idea now, isn’t it?” I ask my brother, setting my creation into a glass frame and reattaching the wooden edges.
Jason stands up from his chair next to me and looks down, smacking me on the back.
“It’s pretty girly and shit, but I think she’ll like it. Are you taking it over there now?”
My phone dings with an incoming text message, and I quickly pull it out of my back pocket, my hope falling when I see it’s not from Cameron.
“Shit. Fucking hell,” I mutter, sending off a quick reply before putting my phone back in my pocket.
“You’re going out to the camp now, right?” I ask Jason, walking over to the kitchen counter and grabbing the keys to the truck.
“Yeah. Amelia is running some errands and she’s gonna meet me there for lunch.”
Grabbing the huge frame from the table, I hand it to him.
“Good, take this with you and give it to Cameron. I need to go meet up with someone really quick. And honestly, it might be better if someone else gives this to her and butters her up before I get there,” I tell him.
“Who are you meeting with?” Jason calls after me as I rush toward the front door.
“Just a friend from rehab. He’s having a bad day. I shouldn’t be too long.”
Chapter 37
Cameron
You can’t ignore the man forever. Jason told me he’s going crazy,” Amelia tells me as we lean against the fence around the pasture and watch some of the new campers get their first lesson on riding horses.
I’d like to say that having the camp open for the summer session, and having kids here twenty-four/seven has kept my mind off of Everett, but that would be a lie. He’s all I think about. He’s all I worry about. And it’s all I can do not to return his text messages and voice mails, telling him I’m sorry and I was an idiot.
Each message has been the same, and each one has made me want to get in my car and drive to his house as fast as possible.
Please talk to me.
I want to talk to him, but I don’t know what to say. I know I was an idiot and I know I shouldn’t have ignored him the last three days, but I needed something from him and he didn’t give it to me. What if I go to him now, and he says those three magic words that I need so badly? How will I know if he really means them, or he’s just saying them to get me to come back?
I’m saved from having to answer Amelia when we hear a vehicle pull into the driveway. We both turn around and watch Jason get out of his truck, carrying what looks like a huge picture frame in his hands as he walks over to us.
“Did you bring me a present?” Amelia asks him when he gets to us and leans down to kiss her cheek.
“Not this time, Milly girl.”
Amelia makes an annoyed sound and Jason laughs.
“Sorry, I can’t help it. You should never have told me that was your nickname.”
“It was a nickname my ex gave me. It’s weird you think it’s cute,” she argues with a roll of her eyes.
“I am comfortable enough in my manhood to not be threatened by another man, thank you very much.”
I stand to the side, watching the two of them go back and forth, and it’s so damn sweet and cute that my heart physically aches inside of my chest. I miss Everett. I miss him so much and I know Amelia is right. I can’t ignore him forever. I have to talk to him. I have to stop being so afraid. I have everything I’ve ever wanted, and I’m ruining it on a stupid technicality.
“This is for you,” Jason says, pulling me out of my thoughts as he hands the large frame over to me.
I look at him in confusion as I take it from his hands and glance down at it.
My head slowly shakes with disbelief when I see what’s under the glass of the frame.
I choke back a sob and my chin quivers as my eyes fill with tears over what I’m looking at. What Everett has done. What Everett has given me.
“Is that…wow. Holy shit…He was doing the same thing as you, all these years,” Amelia mutters, looking over my shoulder and down at the frame.
My heart cracks wide open and I have to clutch one hand to my stomach, trying to stop myself from falling completely apart as the tears fall fast and hard down my face.
Glued to the cardboard backing of the frame under the glass, neatly spaced out across the entire thing, is every single one of my star wishes from the year I turned twelve, including the most recent four wishes I made the night before the charity dinner when I went up to the treehouse by myself. All of them written in my curly handwriting with the date I made the wish, each one of them saying the exact same thing: I wish Everett would love me back.
Seeing these stars brings back so many memories and feelings, remembering exactly how I felt each year when I made that same wish, worried and terrified that I’d go my whole life never finding the courage to tell him how I felt.
But it’s not seeing my star wishes that completely ruins me. It’s seeing all the ones Everett has glued right next to mine. All of his wishes over the years from the time he was seventeen, until the last four he did after he first came home and he asked me to meet him up in the treehouse. They sit neatly next to each one of mine, like an answer to the wishes I made. His small, messy handwriting on each star says the exact same thing, just like mine do, just worded differently: I wish I was good enough for Cameron to love me back.
I run my palm over the glass, my fingers tracing over each one of his stars as I sob.
“I think that’s Everett’s way of saying he loves you. And that he’s always loved you,” Amelia whispers next to me.
I hear her sniffle and look up to find her crying just as hard as I am.
“Seriously? You’re both crying? God help me,” Jason mutters.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and walks away. I look away from him and back down at the frame, staring at it in awe for a few minutes before handing it over to Amelia.
“Can you take this into the main house and put it in the office for now? I’ve got a man to see and some groveling to do.”
We both swipe away our tears and laugh as she takes the frame fr
om my hands and starts walking back to the house. I watch her walk away, smiling to myself when I see her cradling the frame to her chest, holding on to it like it’s the most precious thing she’s ever held.
Chapter 38
Everett
I pull into Bobby’s apartment and park right in front of his unit, getting out of the truck and pocketing my keys as I walk up to his door.
The cryptic message I got from him just said that he couldn’t do it anymore. That he was getting his family back today one way or another. I told him to stay put until I got here and could talk him down from whatever ledge he was currently standing on.
After our last two meetings, he seemed to be doing so much better. As soon as I sat down with him, his hatred would come pouring out, but after an hour or two of conversation, he’d calm down and be okay. Even though he teetered back and forth between sobriety and not giving a shit about anything, I really believed he was on the road to recovery since he had a lot more good days than bad ones recently.
Lifting my hand, I knock on his door. and as soon as my fist connects with the wood, I hear a click and the door slowly creaks open. Pushing it open wider, I take a tentative step into the small living room of his one-bedroom apartment.
“Bobby? You in here?” I call out.
When he doesn’t answer, I move the rest of the way inside, closing the door behind me.
The room is dark and smells like old, rotting food. Covering my nose with my hand, I feel against the wall and flip on the switch, cringing when I see the mess of his living room.
I had just been here talking to him a few weeks ago and it looked nothing like this. It was a small room, but he kept it neat and orderly, everything in its place, just like your typical career military man.
Fast-food containers and bags litter every available surface, stacks of dirty plates with moldy food are piled all over the coffee table and end tables, and I kick aside empty beer bottles that are scattered all around the floor, tipped on their sides.
“Son of a bitch, Bobby,” I mutter with a shake of my head as I move farther into the room.
I feel the vibration of my phone in my back pocket and pull it out, checking the display to see that Jason is calling as I bring it up to my ear, and continue making my way through the mess of the living room until I get to the hallway.
“Well, your plan worked,” Jason says into my ear.
I move slowly down the dark hallway and come to a stop outside of the closed bedroom door, scared to death of what I’m going to find on the other side. Plenty of men, ones stronger than Bobby, have made the decision to end their lives when they couldn’t cope after coming home from a deployment. I can’t lose someone else in my life. Not someone I tried to help.
Please, God, don’t let me find him on the other side of this door.
“Did you hear me? I said your plan worked,” Jason says again.
I’m barely listening to my brother rambling in my ear, telling me about how he gave Cameron the gift I made her and she loved it, going into great detail about what she said and what she did when she saw it.
“Uh-huh,” I reply distractedly, my hand shaking as I reach for the handle of the door.
“It was crazy. You even made Milly cry,” Jason laughs.
My body jerks and my hand stills on the handle of the bedroom door, a hundred memories and conversations flying through my head, scrambling around in my brain.
“What did you call her?” I whisper, turning the handle and pushing open the door to the bedroom, my feet not making any sound as I walk slowly over the carpet.
“What? Oh, I meant Amelia. Milly. It’s a nickname, but she hates it. I like to use it just to piss her off sometimes, and because it’s kind of cute.”
All I hear is a buzzing in my ear and the rapid pounding of my heart against my chest when some of the things Bobby has said to me during our last few conversations come rushing back to me.
“I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get my Milly back.”
“That bitch is going to pay for taking my family away.”
“She will regret ruining my life.”
“Jason, what was Amelia’s husband’s name?” I ask, reaching for a framed photo that sits on the nightstand next to the bed.
“Uh, Rob? Or Robert, I guess. But I think they called him Bobby in the military, why?”
My blood runs cold as soon as I turn the frame around.
The 8-by-10 glossy photo is a picture of Amelia in a wedding dress, smiling and happy, looking up at the man in a tuxedo next to her. Looking up at her husband, Rob/Robert/Bobby.
I think about all those letters someone sent to Cameron out at the camp. After our fight, I snuck into the office, found the file, and looked through all of them. At the time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something seemed familiar about them. I even wasted time calling around about Aiden’s fiancée, Michelle. I had a buddy run a background check on her and even follow her around for a few days. All this time, I was looking at the wrong person.
All this time, the person threatening Cameron was one of my own fucking friends. Someone I helped and someone I thought had been getting better.
“Have Seth and whatever workers you can find get all the campers locked inside the main house, then put Cameron and Amelia in your truck and get them the fuck away from camp, right now!” I shout into the phone, racing out of the bedroom and down the hall.
I fling open the front door so hard it slams against the opposite wall, not even bothering to close it behind me as I run to the truck.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jason asks as I hop inside the vehicle.
“JUST DO IT!” I scream into the phone as I put the truck in reverse and peel out of the parking lot as fast as I can.
“Okay, okay, Jesus,” Jason mutters as I ignore the blare of car horns and the slamming of breaks when I pull out of the apartment complex and onto the main road.
“Oh, shit. Oh fuck,” I hear on the other end of the line when I cut someone else off in traffic.
“Jason, what’s going on?”
I hear nothing but a rustling sound coming from his end, followed quickly by shouting, and then the unmistakable sounds of women screaming.
“JASON!” I shout into the phone as I press harder on the gas.
The screams are quickly cut off when the line goes dead. I throw my phone across the cab of the truck until it smashes into the passenger side window, cursing at the top of my lungs as I slam my fist down on the steering wheel.
Chapter 39
Cameron
I hear a group of workers on the other side of the fence behind me, and I turn around to let them know I need to leave the camp for a little while and I ask them to keep an eye on things until I get back.
“Who’s that? He’s driving like an asshole,” one of the women says.
I look back over my shoulder to where she’s pointing and see a small black car come flying down the driveway, veering off at the fork in it and heading right this way.
“I have no idea,” I mutter, turning fully around and walking in that direction.
We don’t have any scheduled deliveries today, and there are signs all along the main driveway that tell visitors to pull up to the turnaround at the main house so they can check in and get a visitor badge. There are also signs along this driveway that say it’s for camp workers only. This driveway leads right to the stables, and there’s no reason for any visitors to be on it.
The car kicks up even more dust than before when it slams to a stop and I cross my arms in front of me, watching a man get out from behind the wheel. He looks familiar, but something about him doesn’t seem right.
He doesn’t bother closing the car door behind him, and he stumbles a little as he walks in my direction, not noticing me standing here as his eyes search the grounds to his left. He’s wearing a white T-shirt with stains all over the front of it, and a pair of dirty jeans that have seen better days. His short, dark blond hair is sticking up i
n all directions on top of his head, and his face looks like it hasn’t seen a razor in weeks.
The closer he gets, the more nervous I start to become. Glancing quickly around, I find Jason standing a few hundred yards away, still talking on his phone with his back to me.
“Sir, can I help you?” I finally call out loudly, taking a few steps forward.
He doesn’t answer me as he continues walking in my direction, but my voice causes his head to come up and he looks right at me. Even from this far away I can see anger written all over his face.
“Get the kids off the horses and lock everyone inside the stables—now,” I say softly over my shoulder to the handful of workers who are still standing behind me on the other side of the fence. “Radio out to everyone in the middle of activities and tell them Code 10.”
We have several secret codes in place for security at the camp, and Code 10 is the most important one. It means there is a threat at the camp and everyone should get to safety and stay put until further notice.
Maybe I’m making a big deal about nothing, and this is just some guy who’s lost and needs direction, but I won’t take any chances with my workers or these kids.
All of a sudden, the man still walking toward me lifts his arm, and a few of the workers who haven’t left yet and are talking on their radios start to scream.
My stomach flops when I see the gun in his hand, pointed right at my chest as he continues stalking toward me and then suddenly comes to a stop about twenty yards away.
His eyes are cold, hard, and bloodshot, and they’re locked right on mine. I try not to show fear, I try to remain as calm as possible, but my heart is beating so fast I’m afraid he might hear it. My hands are shaking so badly as I lift them in the air in a sign of peace that I know he sees it.
“Are you Cameron James?” he asks in a low, angry voice, his upper lip curling with disgust when he says my name.
“Sir, please put the gun down. We have children here. If you can just—”