“It was only talk at first, Sloane. Nothing more. But there was a connection. And we kept going back to it.” He hesitated. “Then one day... she asked me to come home with her.”
A pause. His voice fell quieter.
“And I went.”
My chest tightened, a slow and crushing ache that settled low and deep, and even though he didn’t say it outright, I already understood what he meant without needing the details spelled out.
Still, it surprised me how it happened, how their story began. I had always assumed it was something quick, careless, something that didn’t mean anything and just started in a moment of weakness, even if he chose to keep it going afterward. That version would have been easier to make sense of.
But it wasn’t. He said there was a connection. He said they kept coming back to it. And then one day, he followed her home.
It meant that it wasn’t just physical. He had to feel something first. And I knew that about him. Cameron wasn’t the type tosleep with someone unless he cared. He had always been that way, even before us.
And that was what made it so hard to accept. Not just the act itself, but knowing that he let himself care about someone else. And the worst part was realizing that somewhere in that space between us, he had been looking for something I wasn’t giving, and he found it with her.
“I couldn’t look you in the eye after that. The guilt—” He swallowed hard. “And the constant fighting, the way we kept cutting each other open...” He let out a shaky breath. “That’s why a few days later, I moved out.”
“Then you got your studio apartment,” I said quietly, more to myself than to him.
“Yeah,” he murmured. His voice was barely there.
I looked away, just for a second, trying to gather the strength to ask what I already knew would hurt. When I looked back, he was already watching me, his expression tight with torment.
“You cared for her?”
He didn’t answer right away. But the silence said enough. I saw it in his face—the hesitation, the guilt, the ache of something he didn’t want to admit but wouldn’t lie about.
“At the time,” he said finally, “yes.”
I swallowed hard, trying to push past the lump in my throat.
“Do you love her?”
He shook his head. “No.”
When I didn’t say anything, just waited without looking away, he added softly, “I came to realize I couldn’t love anyone but you.”
“Did you hope that you would?”
He nodded. “Yes. For a while, I hoped I could love her.”
There was pressure behind my ribs, like something folding in too tight, but I didn’t move. I just looked at him. Not because I was holding back tears, but because everything inside me had gone quiet.
He had hoped he could love her.
And I just let that sit. Let the silence stretch long enough for both of us to feel the weight of it.
“Why her?” I asked. “Why did you feel a connection with her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because she was there. And maybe...” He paused, the words catching in his throat. “Maybe it was the quiet that made everything feel easy. Just smiles. No arguments. No tension. Perhaps because, after all those years, I was simply tired. And I wanted peace.”
Every truth he spoke cut deeper than the last, but I forced myself to stay strong. I needed to hear it, no matter how much it hurt.
Then I asked the hardest question of all. “Was it that bad? Being with me?”
“Sloane...” He let out a slow breath, his voice low and rough. His eyes were glassy, rimmed with red. Regret shaped every part of his face.
“Just tell me, Cam.”
