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“I’m just curious.”
“Because I want to. Because I can. Because it makes me feel better about myself…” I don’t know why I give him that piece of information, but I do.
“I get that, wanting to reinvent yourself. If only life were that simple.”
“People do it all the time. You did it after all. You’re not Bling anymore, you’re Camden, right?”
“I’m still Bling. He’s still here,” he mutters, avoiding my gaze as I stare at his reflection. Is he? I wonder. Could that kid still be locked away inside just waiting for a chance to escape? Maybe.
“You want me to braid your hair?” he asks after a few minutes.
“You can braid hair?” I stop myself from laughing when I see the look on his face.
“Yeah, I can braid hair. Mum was great at it, but the last few years leading up to Sapphire’s death, she stopped doing it for her. Sapphire’s hair was as wild as she was. Sometimes it needed taming. I became the man for the job,” he explains, his voice a bittersweet mix of happy memories and heartache. The truth of his pain cuts me deep and I almost want to tell him to stop talking, to stop trusting me with his memories like this.
But I don’t.
Instead, I ask him why, then hold my breath. Feeling equally ashamed and pleased that he trusts me enough to open up. I daren’t look at him in the mirror for fear of giving myself away.
“Mum got involved with someone…” He stalls, one hand on my shoulder, the other placing the comb on the floor. “Someone she thought gave a shit about her, about us…”
“And that person didn’t?”
“In the beginning he was the perfect man. He took care of us all. He made promises and stuck to them. That’s the one rule he lived by, still lives by;never back out of a promise… or a threat.”
A threat?
He catches my gaze in the mirror, his eyes darkening with hate. I swallow hard, not daring to breathe unless he changes his mind and stops talking.
“Remember when I said that we’re all owned? Well it’s true, I wasn’t lying to you…”
I know that, but he needs to tell me, and he needs to trust me enough to do that.
“I’m not owned,” I reply.
“Yes, you are. Maybe not so obviously, but you are owned by your situation.”
“So, who owns you then, Camden?” I ask softly.
He scrapes a hand over his face, and I can see the internal battle going on inside. He catches my gaze in the mirror, then lifts his hands as though placing a crown on his head. “The King. I’m owned by the fucking King. My mum is too and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
I can see the helplessness written across his face. The absolute belief that heistrapped, and it makes me feel sick. So damn sick. When he moves to stand, to leave, I press my palm on his thigh. “Stay, braid my hair, Camden,” I say.
It’s all I can give him in the moment. I’m not good with words of comfort. Actions are the currency I live by. Words can betray and pretty up lies as though they’re truths. I know that better than anyone.
He doesn’t thank me or say another word. Instead, he shuffles back slightly and the warmth I felt a moment ago disperses. I shiver, partly from the cold and partly from the tension filling the air. When he begins to section off the top of my hair, that tension rises making my heart beat faster and my throat constrict with confessions that I suddenly want to spill like dirty money and crooked deals.
“You cold?” he asks.
“I’ll live.”
I watch him in the mirror, watch the concentration on his face as he starts to braid my hair. He takes his time, crossing over the strands with care, treating me with gentle hands. At one point I have to stifle a sigh, this kind of care and attention so foreign to me that when I get it, I react without thinking.
“This okay?” Camden asks.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You said earlier you don’t like being touched…” His fingers still, as though saying that out loud reminded him of the fact.
