Page 99 of My Sweetest Agony

By the time he rests back on his heels and examines the painting, my eyes are drooping, the emotional and physical events of the evening taking their toll.

I don’t even know when he finishes, just that I feel the bed dip and his body align to mine. He drapes his arm across me and tugs me against him, fluttering his lips to my cheek and then my ear.

“Fucking stunning, Ivy. A true masterpiece.”

It’s the last thing I hear before the world starts to darken at the edges, and I finally allow myself to drift off, blissful in the arms of the man whose warning I undoubtedly should have heeded.

25

IVY

I push my breakfast around with my fork—bacon, eggs, and toast that should smell delicious but instead makes acid climb my throat. And I barely even see the food on the plate.

My eyes won’t focus.

My mind only able to concentrate on one thing.

And it sure as hell isn’t eating.

The same questions I somehow managed to lock away last night, long enough to give in to my merciless attraction to Cam, are screaming in my head now. An incessant spiral of guilt, shame, and disbelief over everything that has happened—that I’ve allowed to happen—has left me dizzy and unsettled.

My stomach roils violently, and my eyes burn with tears I’ve been fighting all morning. Since I woke in Cam’s arms and fell back into him so easily and completely, let him take command of my body again, and again, and again, until we finally came up for air—and breakfast.

Which he insisted I needed.

Given the…exertion of the last twelve hours, he’s probably right.

Every muscle is sore in the best way possible. The aches remind me of how utterly Camden consumed me—enough that I was able to forget. Or at least, pretend to for a glorious period of time that eventually had to come to an end.

And it did end.

The moment we stepped out of his building and he lit up that cigarette.

Watching him take that long drag and blow out the smoke was like flipping a switch in my head, reminding me of that first time he warned me away and all the reasons he was right that I was not privy to.

All the deception.

Not just on his part, either.

And that’s what hurts the most.

Drew’s lies—the ones I built our life together on…

“Ivy?” Cam’s voice draws me out of the haze of disbelief, anger, and self-loathing, and I glance up at him across from me in the booth at the diner down the street from his studio. As he watches me, his eyes still hold that same edge of uncertainty that they did when we climbed onto his bike this morning, but they also swim with steely determination. “You need to stop.”

I clear the lump from my throat. “Stop what?”

He raises a dark brow at me, his hand tightening around his mug of shitty coffee sitting next to his empty plate. Because apparently he had absolutely no problem eating this morning, but I can’t seem to bring myself to take more than a few bites, my stomach churning, acid billowing up, along with all the emotions that want to choke me.

And somehow, Cam seems to see all of it through the wall of forced smiles, nods, and idle chit-chat I’ve tried to maintain.

This man knows me, while so much of him is such a mystery that he doesn’t seem inclined to want to share with me.

But he clearly has something to say now as he shifts forward slightly, resting his elbows on the Formica tabletop. “You need to stop second-guessing your entire relationship with Drew.”

I recoil slightly at being so blatantly called out when I haven’t said a word about Drew or anything Cam revealed since we ruined that canvas last night. “That’s not what I’m doing…”

That brow of his stays up in accusation and disbelief. “Isn’t it?”