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He paused, letting her take it all in.
“What?” she nearly whispered.
“I know I never found anyone to love after you left, and I’ll never find anyone to love like who you are now. Waiting isn’t a big deal, as long as you and Tyler let me be here, be part of your lives while you figure that out.”
He watched her take one more step back, knowing he’d said everything, every possible thing he could to lay his heart on the line.
“Cam, there’s nothing to figure out.” She took that final step back. “You weren’t there when I needed you. You left and then you weren’t there. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get past that.”
She blinked quickly like she was trying to hold back tears. “I can’t risk my heart again. Especially like this. With you.”
He froze. He thought she’d been coming around. That it was just a normal sense of fear exacerbated by the idea she didn’t want to risk Tyler being hurt too.
But this was deeper than that. His blood turned to ice. What if he couldn’t fix this? Maybe it just wasn’t something in his power.
“I know we were sixteen and I get that to you that feels young but…” She looked like she was going to cry, and he just wanted to do anything in that moment to make it better. “But while you were young… I’d just become an adult who was still a kid. I grew up the moment I realized you—thatanyone—wasn’t going to sweep in and save me. The moment I realized I was on my own. And that someone else was going to depend on me soon.”
Oh, this was so much worse than he’d allowed himself to imagine.
“And I know that’s not your fault. I get that. But you were all I had to hold on to and you weren’t there and… I don’t think I can get past that. Even after seeing the man you’ve become.”
She stopped, a hand raised to her mouth as if she could take all the words back or maybe just everything that had happened in the past.
“I need you to respect that.”
Then, before he could form a thought that might make any of it better, she turned and sprinted out of his workshop, leaving behind nothing but a silence he didn’t know if he could overcome.
17
Vivian
Vivian hurried through his workshop,blindly making her way outside, and then froze, unable to figure out what to do next.
She turned, knowing she couldn’t be here, not in their shared space, and just started walking. She hadn’t even known where she was going before ending up three streets over, in front of the house she’d grown up in.
She’d avoided the whole block since returning to town, but now she stood there, staring up at the house, and all she felt was thankful to have gotten out of it.
Even with years’ distance, she couldn’t pull up one decent memory to lean on and say, “See, it wasn’t all bad.”
Every positive memory had been outside that house.
“Hi there.” A woman came out on the porch and smiled at her. “Can I help you?”
Vi shook her head and tried to smile. “No, ma’am. It’s just… I grew up here and I haven’t been by it in years.”
The woman immediately looked uncomfortable.
“Oh, you must be Vivian Breck.”
Vi started at the fact the woman knew her name. She knew it was a small town, but this seemed a bit odd.
“Are you here to sue us?”
“Sue you?”
“Yes, the neighbors all say you should sue us to get your house back, but we bought it fair and square.”
Nothing with her mother had ever been fair and square, but that wasn’t this woman’s fault. And not only did she have zero interest in suing them, but after nearly two years, you’d think the woman would realize that.
