Page 167 of Corrupting Camille

For the first time in years, I feel my own heartbeat. Real. True.

“I’ve been pretending since I was a little girl,” I whisper fiercely, voice breaking, hands trembling in my lap, but I don’t stop. I can’t. “I’ve smiled when I wanted to scream. I’ve said I slipped when someone shoved me. I’ve said I lied when I was telling the truth.”

My mother’s face pales, eyes darting anxiously around the table, voice tight and pleading. “Camille, please…”

“Did you know Douglas Everheart molested me, Mom?”

The silence detonates, a brutal, devastating blast that shatters every careful facade around the table. My words hang there, sharp and ugly, slicing through polished smiles and meaningless pleasantries.

My mother flinches, her perfectly painted lips parting softly, confusion bleeding into shock, but for once I don’t feel guilty for shattering her careful facade. My father’s jaw tightens, eyes darkening with a familiar, suffocating disappointment he’s wielded like a weapon all my life.

They stare at me like I’m speaking a language they don’t understand. And maybe I am because honesty has never been allowed at this table.

“Camille,” my father’s voice warns quietly, ice wrapped in silk, but even he can’t hide the faint tremble beneath the surface. “This is neither the time nor the place.”

“It never is.” My voice is quiet, broken, heavy with the weight of a thousand silences. “But somehow, it’s always your time, isn’t it? Your terms. Your comfort. Your goddamn image. Always the fucking image.”

My mother reaches for her wine glass, her hand shaking violently, liquid trembling dangerously close to the rim. “Camille, please,” she whispers, eyes begging, but still refusing to truly see me. “We’re in public. Let’s discuss…”

“Discuss?” A sad, bitter laugh escapes me. “Like we discussed it when I was ten years old? When Douglas Everheart put his hands on me, and you told me to smile through it? When I begged you to hear me, and instead you dressed me up and told me silence was easier?”

She pales, her hand falling away from her glass, lips trembling with something dangerously close to shame.

“You failed me.” The words come softly, trembling from the depths of my chest. They’re not angry, they’re hollowed out, aching with betrayal, bleeding with every scar I’ve hidden beneath designer dresses and forced smiles. “You should’ve protected me. You should’ve believed me. Instead, you buried me alive under your perfect lies.”

Tears blur my vision, hot and relentless, burning a silent trail down my cheeks. “I’ve spent my entire life giving you everything you ever wanted,” I whisper hoarsely, my voice shaking, splitting open beneath the raw truth spilling free. “I swallowed my pain, my trauma, my voice. I smiled through your carefully orchestrated charade, dying every time you made me lie about who I was.”

My father looks away, unable, or unwilling, to meet my eyes. My mother sits frozen, hands trembling, her careful poise shattered, her perfect world splintering at my feet. Clara’s hand covers her mouth, her eyes glassy, horror seeping in as understanding hits her fully for the first time. She didn’t know. She’d never known.

My chest heaves painfully, years of buried agony finally cracking open, spilling out, staining everything around me. Ifeel every heartbeat, every trembling breath like glass slicing through my lungs.

I turn slowly, deliberately, to Preston. I turn slowly, deliberately, to Preston, meeting his cold, detached gaze head-on.

“One day,” I whisper, my voice steady despite the tears streaming silently down my face, “you’re going to hit me.”

He stiffens, shock flickering behind that carefully practiced mask, but I don’t stop. I take a step closer, refusing to blink, my voice raw, prophetic.

“Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But someday, you’re going to raise your hand, and this perfect mask you’ve built will shatter. And when you do, when your knuckles bruise my skin, they’ll still choose you.” I gesture toward my parents, my chest aching bitterly. “They’ll make excuses for you. They’ll blame me. Because protecting you is easier than admitting they let me suffer.”

He doesn’t deny it, doesn’t argue. He just watches me, eyes darkening dangerously, fury twisting beneath his skin like a shadow fighting to break free. My heartbeat pounds in my ears, the truth a living, breathing thing between us.

Without another word, I pull the diamond ring from my finger, placing it gently, final and irrevocable, on the pristine tablecloth. It gleams cruelly in the candlelight, mocking every lie we ever told ourselves.

I rise to my feet, legs trembling, heart raw, exposed, bleeding out in front of everyone who’s never truly seen me. The chair scrapes harshly against the polished floor, the sound deafening in the painful silence.

And finally, for the first time in my life, I don’t ask for permission.

I just walk away, away from the lies, the expectations, the suffocating charade of perfection, leaving behind the wreckageof who they wanted me to be, and stepping into the terrifying freedom of who I might become.

***

The sky splits open the second I step outside.

Rain pours down in sheets, heavy droplets slamming against my skin, drenching my hair, my dress, my broken pride. I don’t shield myself. I don’t run. I just stand there on the sidewalk, head tilted back, staring blindly into the black sky, eyes open wide as water streams down my cheeks, soaking through my carefully constructed armor.

Lightning cracks violently, followed immediately by thunder, deep, rumbling, echoing through my bones like judgment. Or freedom. Or both.

I stand there until everything blurs.