Page 6 of What Should Have Been Ours

Because the second I see her, it’s like I’m sixteen again. I’m right back there like no time has passed at all.

My sweet Gabrielle.

She is even more beautiful than I remember, and she’s always been the standard for beauty to me.

No one I’ve met has ever been able to top her looks.

Gabrielle…the girl I never stopped thinking about, the girl I’ve loved since I was seven, the girl whose heart I broke when I was forced to move away at sixteen. When I forced myself not to contact her again and let her go.

I feel it instantly—the years, the distance, the ache of everything that should have been ours all crashing into me at once.

For a second, I can’t move, I can’t speak.

It’s like I’m seeing a ghost.

No, it’s like I’m seeing an angel.

“Gabrielle.” I barely get her name out as my smile grows so wide it hurts.

I can’t help myself. I pull her in for a hug and just hold her there for a moment, like if I let her go, she’ll disappear again.

I can feel her tense up at first and then she relaxes in my arms, like she’s always belonged there.

Because she always has.

“Cam. It’s really you?” she asks, like maybe she’s seeing things.

“Yeah, Gab, it’s really me.”

I let her go, not wanting her to think I was a complete weirdo after not seeing each other for twelve years. Even though it’s the last thing I want to do right now.

3

Gabrielle

As soon as he releases me from the best hug of my life, I instantly want him to pull me back in.

The way he smelled so intoxicating, the way he felt like a beautiful memory, the way his body molded against mine like it was made to be there.

It was all too much to take in.

I haven’t seen Cam in…twelve years? Twelve…very…long…years.

When he first told me his parents were moving him across the country, I was devastated. Sixteen-year-old Gabrielle was completely heartbroken. The boy she had loved for almost ten years was suddenly leaving her for good.

I was always terrified by the possibility of losing him to cancer, I never even considered that there would be any other obstacles in the way that would take him from me.

Cancer was as bad as it got, right? At least, that’s what my naive heart told me.

I convinced myself that if we could deal with literal death knocking at our door, nothing else would be able to keep us apart.

Until his dad took a promotion, and he told me it was the only way they would be able to affording the new trial he was on.

I had never felt emptier than I did in that moment.

With all the revolving people in and out of our lives at the hospital, he was the only one who kept me grounded. I knew I could always count on him.

When the panic would hit, when the depression would take over, when I was scared on surgery days, Cam was always there, always putting his emotions on the back burner to make sure I got out of those dark places in my mind. And the times when he couldn’t drag me out of my thoughts, he would come sit with me in the darkness. He would allow me to feel everything while he made sure I knew I was never feeling it alone.