Page 47 of Best Laid Plans (Rock Harbor #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CAM

C am still went down to Pierce’s to work his shift, neither Wyatt or Mr. Pierce coming into the restaurant at any point. Elle also hadn’t come down, which he was torn about equally in both directions.

Sometimes, he’d thought that he could hear her above him, wearing holes in the carpet from how she was probably pacing. What he should have done was walk back upstairs and drop to his knees, begging for forgiveness.

But for as many times as the thought flitted through his mind, he couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t do that to Elle.

Because Elle was right. He was a coward. And she didn’t deserve a man like that in her life. Reynolds Consulting had offered her the job, just like he knew they would, and she was one step closer to her old life.

Today had been his last shift at the restaurant anyway, so he’d focused on trying to enjoy it. Because after everything, it may be the last time he was in the Pierce’s Lobster Co. kitchen, period.

But he couldn’t. His day had been shit. Everything he’d cooked had been slightly under or slightly over.

He was cutting vegetables like he was using a plastic knife.

He was a fucking joke. And every time his mind tried to go into its flow state as he was chopping or boiling or sauteing, he saw the disappointment in Elle’s face.

That he’d finally proven to her he wasn’t the man she thought he was.

That’s what he’d wanted, right?

Now she knew, and she couldn’t hide from who he truly was, either.

When he locked up the restaurant at closing, his fingers traced the pattern around the key’s rough edges. He let the metal dig into his finger, pressing harder. He liked the pain. He liked feeling something instead of the emptiness that had expanded inside of him like he was a black hole.

He should go back to Boston. Figure things out.

But when he started to drive away from Rock Harbor, he couldn’t do it.

He made it as far as one of the scenic overlooks, the choppy waves reflecting off the moon.

Sitting in his car, he watched as the waves crested again and again, hypnotic and lulling him into the first semblance of peace he’d had since Wyatt’s voice had broken through the moment of perfect synchronization that he and Elle had been sharing.

Maybe, if he was really honest with himself, since the first night he’d seen Elle again, when she’d come at him with the baseball bat in Wyatt’s apartment. Because after that moment, everything had been different.

He reclined his seat back and looked through his sunroof at the stars.

Rubbing his hands across his tired eyes, the day replayed in his mind.

Letting Elle take the heat while he’d stood by–or sat by, more accurately–and done nothing.

The way Elle had looked at him after, like she was seeing the worst parts of him for the first time.

But when Wyatt had started yelling, his whole body had shut down.

All the years in the kitchen, being screamed at by chefs, was nothing compared to the anger of someone whose opinion he cared about looking at him like that.

Yelling at him like that. It was like he’d been a kid again, the ire of both of his parents directed toward him, nothing to do except to try to breathe through it, to not escalate things further.

Because what was the alternative? Standing up and leveling his own height back at Wyatt–admitting that he loved Elle. He hadn’t even told her that yet!

Fuck. He laughed hoarsely in the empty car. He loved Elle. She’d barged into his life and made him better for it, working her way into his heart before he’d even realized it was happening. He’d thought he could control it. That he could walk a line without either of them getting hurt.

No surprise he’d been wrong about his internal fortitude. He’d been wrong about a lot of things lately. Especially where Elle was concerned.

He didn’t know what he was going to do, didn’t know how he was going to fix things. Hell, he didn’t even know if things could be fixed.

All he knew as he finally passed out in the early hours of the morning was that he’d have given anything to be able to go back and do things differently.

Cam pushed into an apartment he hadn’t slept in for almost a month, beer bottles littering the hardwood floor in the third story triple-decker that he shared with three other guys who also worked in the service industry.

He slept in the smallest bedroom, which was mostly an over-glorified closet.

But given that he was usually working or sleeping, it hadn’t much mattered to him.

Had it always smelled like this? He sniffed, the smell of stale beer and sweaty men permeating the space. It was nothing like Wyatt’s pristine apartment. Or the soft scent of Elle when they woke up together in the mornings.

As he walked across the living room, his boot hit a bottle and sent it skittering into the wall, shattering into pieces. Benny, who was sleeping on the sofa, lifted his head, looking at Cam through bleary eyes.

“Cam, is that you dude? We thought that Michael had you six-feet-under or something.” The restaurant industry was both massive and microscopic, and it was unsurprising that news of his departure from Gossamer had gotten around, even if he hadn’t told anyone.

Cam cocked his head toward the small galley kitchen situated off the living room that was used for very little except storing beer and making ramen. “I left a note on the fridge that I was heading out of town.”

Benny wiped at his face but made no move to sit up. His dark, unruly curls were stuck to his head, like he’d gone a few too many days without a shower. “Yeah, like a month ago. Rent’s due in a few days, and we wondered if we’d have to lease your room out. My cousin, Hector, is looking for a place.”

Cam looked down at the lump of a man who’d spent his life in kitchens, just like Cam. They were an opportunistic bunch. He sighed. “Benny… is Hector already sleeping in my bed?”

Benny shrugged, flashing him a white smile that disappeared under his beard. “Who’s to say? I figured Captain America would appreciate me helping out those less fortunate.”

Cam glowered. He hated that nickname. And what he hated even more was what a smack in the face coming back to his life was, how hard it was to accept that he’d willingly been living like this for close to fifteen years.

Maybe as a kid in his early twenties, sure.

But at thirty-one? It was like he lived in a frat house, except none of them had college degrees and they all worked seventy hours a week for all pain and very little gain .

“Hector,” Benny boomed from the sofa, as Cam continued to stare at him. He did not have time for this shit today. “Get your ass up. Cam’s home.”

Cam made a gruff sound and waited for Hector to emerge from the bedroom. As if this place qualified as a home. He could see the doorway to his room from where he stood, as Hector slowly walked out in a pair of boxers. He walked directly into Benny’s room and shut the door without a word.

“Are Pete and Joe here?” Cam asked Benny, looking at two of the other doors on the opposite side of the living room.

Benny shrugged. “It was a late night. I’m not really sure who was coming or going.”

“Good to know,” Cam said as he walked toward his bedroom, which would require a deep cleaning of epic proportions along with a trip to the laundromat before he could even think about sitting on his mattress.

Cam felt the persistent, hollow ache in his chest that had now been settled there for the last day.

He missed Rock Harbor. He missed breakfast at Wyatt’s kitchen island and dinners at the Pierces’ home.

He missed lazy mornings with Elle and competitive runs with Wyatt.

In a month, the life he’d built in his hometown had started to feel more real to him than anything he’d managed to cobble together since he’d moved to Boston.

He dropped his duffel bag and started stripping the bed, refusing to look too closely at the sheets. It was a more-than-appropriate penance, though, so he sucked it up and breathed through his mouth.

He’d fucked up. Badly. And he’d strip a thousand disgusting beds if it meant that it would bring him closer to making things right.

If he could find his way back to Elle. Back to when she looked at him like he was the man of her dreams instead of a broken down, scared little kid who’d never grown up and taken control of his own life.

He balled up the bedding and put it in a garbage bag, tying it off. So his dad was an asshole. His mom, too, for that matter. Lots of kids had shitty childhoods. And unlike them, he’d had the chance to spend time with the Pierces, to see what a real home with love and support could look like.

But he’d always felt like he was on the outside, playing at something that would never really be his. And he realized, like someone had taken a branding iron to his chest, that he was the one who’d always made it that way.

“Fuck,” he said into the empty room. How could he have been such an idiot?

He’d pushed Elle away. Elle, who was perfect. In general, but also for him. A confidence in herself that she could do anything. That she somehow extended to Cam, as if he could do anything, too. Stubborn. Fearless. Gorgeous.

And somehow, in a miracle of all miracles, she’d seen something in Cam. Which meant that he’d found a way to destroy it.

With one more disgusted sigh, he looked around his bedroom.

It was devoid of anything personal except for a photo of Wyatt and him, when they’d been teenagers.

He’d never realized it, but he was wearing the exact shirt that had come to belong to Elle, with the Rock Harbor Lobsters logo emblazoned across it, streaks of blue already stained on it.

The picture had been taken the day they’d painted the dining room walls, during a summer vacation where he’d practically lived at the Pierces’ house.

He thought of Elle. Of Wyatt. Of Mr. and Mrs. Pierce.

They were his family. And they’d been showing him that every step of the way–only he’d been too stubborn to accept it.

If he always came into any situation believing that at a base level, he was unlovable, it was easier to never be disappointed.

Why get close when he knew how it would end anyway?

Only now, he was already close. In deep. In love.

He needed to make things right–he didn’t want this to be his story anymore. Only, as he walked down the flights of stairs to walk the couple of blocks to the laundromat, he didn’t have a single clue on how to go about changing it.

But Elle had believed in him, even when he hadn’t believed in himself. That alone was more than he’d ever expected to have in this life, and he wasn’t about to give up on it.