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My heart wants to mend and heal. It wants to be there for him, but I won’t do that at the cost of myself and my wellbeing.
This time I’ll be wiser, and I’ll avoid investing my heart and wasting my love on someone who doesn’t want it.
What I’m going to do, if he’ll allow me, is help him stand on his own two feet, and then walk away. I hope this will allow me to move on and be ready for a new story, a new love, and finally build the family I’d always thought Gael and I would have together.
Movement from the bed, and a soft groan has me jumping up to check on Gael. I don’t think about what I’m doing until my hand is lightly caressing his hair, and he settles down quickly. Only then do I laugh joylessly at myself and at the dream of having a family with someone else.
Even if I clear the air with him, it’ll take more than that to get over my feelings for Gael. Way longer than I want to admit right now.
I take my hand away from his head, walk back to the chair, and sit down. I place my tingling hand in my lap, then rest back on the chair while I look at him. A surge of feeling overwhelms me, but I push it away to analyse what’s there in Gael that draws me in. Analyse what’s making me stupid and making me want to be with him. Even the rage and the pain are not enough to keep me away.
Am I ready to let him in and suffer again once he’s well enough to leave?
He sent you away. Why would you stay?
The rational part of me, that always works with everything else, has never worked with Gael and my feelings for him. My heart, breaking into pieces again, tells me I can’t possibly want to give him another chance to do what he did before. Hope, on the other hand, is hard to squash.
I need to be strong, and I need to let the past go and look forward to a future where Gael is not part of it.
I look at him once more, then I stand, pick the chair up, and place it in its usual spot. I move away, but stop. Another glance, and then with a resolution I’ve never had before, I leave the room and close the door softly behind me.
This is goodbye.
Chapter Six
Gael
Cammy hasn’t come yet.
Is he really going to follow my orders and leave me alone?
A mix of relief and sadness fills my lungs, and I push the air out to try removing the weight I have on my chest. Unsuccessfully.
I keep glancing at the door, hoping for him to appear so I can have a look at the man he’s become. I was sixteen when I left ten years ago, and he was just shy of it. He was always smaller than me, and had a frailty that showed only in his body, but not in his mind. I’ve never met someone as courageous and open as Cammy. He never wavered in his conviction and his need to be the person he felt he was inside.
I was so fucking proud of him. I am proud of him.
I loved his longish hair. It used to dance on his shoulders and around his face. I loved the way he pushed those strands away with both hands until they were tamed, tucked behind his ears. I remember the sound of his bracelets banging together when he did that, his shy smile aimed at me, as if he’d doubted I could accept him just as he was. But I couldn’t do anything more than fall more in love with him every single time I’d laid eyes on him.
His big, aquamarine eyes, with long blond eyelashes that I’d kissed more than once, because they were just that cute and impossible for me to resist.
What I loved most was the eclectic way he dressed. Depending on the day, he’d wear black leather trousers, and long black T-shirts with cute representations of animals. Or short, see-through T-shirts. In some cases, he’d even wear a skirt over his trousers. The last outfit was mostly for when we were going out on dates—if you can call meeting up in a park to kiss and touch each other dates.
My father was a bastard who took pleasure in controlling people. Breaking his rules meant you were in trouble—big trouble. And I’ve been in trouble more times than I can count. He would never have accepted me and Cameron being together. He would have made us suffer until I’d have lost Cammy anyway.
My idiotic plan was for the two of us to run away as soon as we graduated, and build a life for ourselves away from my family.
Everything changed the last day I was in town.
“Mr Sullivan, how are you feeling today?”
So focused on my past, I’d missed the doctor coming in.
“Better,” I reply.
“I’d be surprised if that’s the truth,” he says, raising one of his brows at me.
I have the decency to blush, but in some ways I am feeling better. I’ve slept and eaten more in the past two days than the entire month before ending up here, so I am feeling better. Especially if I ignore my broken body, the rape I was subjected to, and the fact that my ex is the person who saved my ass.
