Page 46 of My Sweetest Agony

He swallows uncomfortably and takes another drag off the cigarette, blowing the smoke away from me. “I’m sure he suspected.”

Drew would have noticed something like that. Even with Cam living in London and them not seeing each other frequently, Drew would have known. He would have picked up on the little things Cam wasn’t saying. Changes no one else might have picked up would have been glaringly obvious to his brother, especially with his medical training.

His warning that his brother was dangerous makes much more sense if he knew what was happening and understood that Cam was out of control.

And Drew wouldn’t have let it just go on.

It wasn’t in his nature to let someone struggle on their own.

He would have bent over backward to try to get through to Cam and get him help. And that certainly could have caused a massive rift if Cam wasn’t ready and willing to accept it.

“Is that what you fought about?”

Cam glances over at me again, his clenched jaw ticcing wildly. “You’re really not going to let this go, are you?”

I shake my head. “Should I? You were the most important people in each other’s lives, and that got broken somehow. I’m just trying to understand it. Understand him better. Understand you better.”

The hurricane spiraling in his eyes intensifies, the center focused squarely on me. “You don’t want to know me, Ivy. It’s better that you don’t.”

His warning hangs in the air between us, permeating it and making it somehow harder to breathe. The warm night breeze raises goosebumps on my skin that only seem to tingle more the longer he holds my gaze.

That’s three warnings I’ve received now. One from Drew before he died, and two from Cam in less than a week. Yet, the thought of letting him walk away without knowing more, without understanding this man sitting beside me, makes my gut twist violently.

But he’s still here, still sitting beside me.

“Did you come here for a reason, Cam?”

He nods gently, barely moving his head. “I’ve been here almost every day.”

“I know.”

“And every day I see that unopened box sitting on your mantle…”

My back stiffens, my breath catching.

He takes another drag of his cigarette that has almost reached his fingers. “I know what’s in there, Ivy. What I don’t understand is why you haven’t done anything with him yet.”

With him…

It’s impossible for me to think of it being Drew. To acknowledge that an entire person with such a big personality and beautiful heart can somehow be burned down to just one tiny little canister of ashes. But that’s the reality of it that I haven’t wanted to face, even though weeks have passed since I received that delivery and Cam came into my life with it.

Tears start to pool in my eyes, and I swallow against that sob that seems to want to crawl up my throat. “I’m not sure what to do with it, to be honest.”

His throat works, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulps in a way that suggests he’s struggling the same way I am with this topic. “Do you plan to keep him on your mantle forever?”

I shake my head. “No. That’s not what he wanted.”

Cam nods. “I know.”

“Do you?”

He bobs his head again. “He wanted the same thing I did. For the people we love and leave behind to celebrate our lives. Not make monuments to us or spend their days and nights obsessively staring at an empty vessel that isn’t us anymore.”

His words slice through me violently, like he’s taken a scalpel and flayed me open with it. Stripped me bare by saying almost exactly the same thing Drew once did.

The tear starts to trickle down my cheek.

More smoke curls from his lips. “I want you to come somewhere with me.”