Page 42 of My Sweetest Agony

Camden barks out a laugh, bobbing his head. “Hard to imagine, right?”

I scan the bustling street beyond the massive windows to my right. “I literally can’t.”

Drew was always so cautious.

I think the doctor in him couldn’t overlook risks everywhere he looked. So, him as a small child sitting on a curb, eating on a busy corner in North Philly, definitely wasn’t anything I ever would have pictured.

A sad smile pulls at Cam’s lips. “He wasn’t always like that, you know?”

“Like what?”

“So cautious.”

His choice of words and willingness to talk about Drew creates a mix of longing and fear I’m not sure how to process. Longing for the man who is gone and never coming back, and fear that Cam might stop giving me these insights into him, and I’ll never learn all these things only he knows.

“What happened?”

Cam sighs, rubbing his jaw with his palm. “I mean, he was always the more responsible one. Always telling me we shouldn’t be doing this or that. Worried we would get in trouble, but when our mom got sick, a switch kind of flipped in him.”

“You were what? Fourteen?”

He nods slowly. “Freshman year. She got her diagnosis a few months into the school year.”

The photo of them that he showed me the other day flickers through my head—that drastic change in his appearance and the darkness clouding his eyes even then.

It changed him, too, whether he wants to admit it or not.

Cam’s throat works hard, the muscles straining with his thick swallow. “When she started chemo and radiation, Drew took on that meticulous caregiver role so naturally.” His lips pull into a sad smile. “I think that was the moment he decided to become a doctor.”

“He was a really good one.”

Emotion clogs my throat, and I have to clear it with a rough-sounding cough before I take another bite of the sandwich rather than fall into tears in front of Cam and somewhere so public.

I swallow, forcing down the food that is delicious, but I suddenly don’t want to eat.

He stares at me as if he can see right through my attempt to cover my almost breakdown. That crystal-blue gaze, possessing so many mysterious corners that hold so many secrets, locks on mine, saying so much before he even speaks another word. “He really loved you…”

His voice breaks along with my already shattered heart.

The sob I’ve been fighting slips out, and I slap my hand over my mouth to keep from completely losing it in the middle of the bar.

Squeezing my eyes closed against the onslaught of tears, I shake my head, trying to heave in a breath without releasing another strangled sound of anguish.

When I open my eyes again, Cam is still watching me, his brows drawn deep over the tempest swirling in his gaze.

He really believes that.

But he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t understand.

“I’m-I’m not so sure that’s true.”

Cam’s back stiffens, his shoulders tensing along with his jaw. “Why?”

“Because…”

The truth sits on the tip of my tongue. The accusation that’s rattled around my head but I’ve only ever voiced to Marlo. The weight that’s been crushing me since the night he died.