Page 27 of Sunny Skies Ahead (Watford Sweethearts #2)

Chapter eighteen

Imogen

K ameron’s truck was exactly how I’d imagined it. A new-ish Toyota Tundra, recently vacuumed, with unscratched leather seats. If I opened the glove box, I was sure I’d find it meticulously organized.

If there was one thing I’d learned about Kameron in the last few weeks, it was that he could be a very organized person, when it came to certain things. He liked to think he was a chaotic, messy person, but he wasn’t really. He was prone to being overwhelmed just like the rest of us.

“How far is Laketon from here?”

“About an hour and a half,” Kameron said as we began rumbling down the gravel road.

“That’s not bad,” I said, settling into the comfortable seat. I reached behind me to dig my Kindle out of my bag, just in case I needed it. I didn’t want to read right away, which I almost always did on longer car trips where I wasn’t driving. I wanted to talk to Kam .

“It’s mostly back roads until we get closer to Laketon, so it’s scenic, too.”

“How often have you made the drive?”

Kameron’s jaw twitched, and I knew I’d asked the wrong question.

“Not as much as I should have,” Kameron murmured. I turned towards him, resting my head against the headrest and giving him my full attention.

“Tell me about her,” I asked gently. “I know you’re anxious about this, and if it would help, I’d like to know more about her.”

“What do you want to know?” Kameron asked, and I recognized the question for what it was. This was another thing I understood about Kameron Miller: open-ended questions were the opposite of helpful when he was struggling with his anxiety.

“What did she do for work?”

“Before she met my dad, she worked in nursing,” Kameron said.

“That’s how they met, actually. At the hospital.

My dad was a paramedic at the time and she was working in the emergency room.

It was always funny to ask them how they met, because depending on who you asked, you’d get a different story. ”

I giggled, thinking that was one of the cutest things I’d ever heard. I also remembered Kameron talking about how his parents had a love story for the ages.

“How would your Dad tell it?”

Kameron’s expression softened as he dove into the waves of memory.

“He would tell everyone he knew that the first time he’d dropped off a patient at that hospital, he was a brand new paramedic.

Had no idea what he was doing. When he rolled in the patient, my mom was working at the nurse’s station, and she immediately started asking him what the hell he was doing.

He could barely stutter out a reason for being there.

She rolled her eyes and took over the patient’s care, and he walked back out to the ambulance, completely besotted. ”

“And how does she tell it?” I asked, enraptured.

“Apparently, she has no memory of their first meeting, though she did admit it was possible they arrived during a rush and she simply wasn’t paying that close attention to who was arriving.

Several months went by, and my dad went back to school to continue his education and training.

He wanted to work his way through the ranks and try out new roles within the world of emergency medicine.

My mom continued working in the emergency room, and one night, they met again.

But this time, my dad had been hitting the gym, had more job experience, and was more confident in himself. ”

“Let me guess,” I said, my grin widening as I anticipated the ending. “She looked up from the nurse’s station, was struck by your father’s killer jawline, and immediately fell head over heels in love with him.”

“Something like that,” Kameron said, laughing. “He asked her out on a date that day, and the rest is pretty much history.”

“That’s a beautiful story,” I said wistfully. “I always love hearing first date stories from couples who have been together forever.”

“Yeah,” Kameron murmured. “I always thought they’d be together forever. ”

I pressed my lips together, letting the silence descend between us.

I stared at Kameron’s side profile, fascinated by the way the early morning sun filtered through the window and highlighted the contours of his face.

I wanted to reach out and stroke his cheek, but I didn’t want him to run us off the road from shock.

“I’ll never ask you directly,” I murmured, “but if you ever want to talk about your Dad, you can.”

“My Dad was the best person I knew,” Kameron said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

“He was the class clown, and always wanted to make people smile. He’d bend over backward and crack a hundred different jokes, spend hours researching and orchestrating the most elaborate pranks just to make us smile.

He helped me with my homework, even when he was half asleep and barely coherent after working a twelve hour night shift. ”

Kameron inhaled deeply.

“I never saw my parents fight. I’m sure they had their disagreements, but I only ever saw them look at each other with the purest love.

When they found out Lilliana was pregnant, she decided she wanted to be a stay at home mom, and my dad was overjoyed.

This was his dream. A loving marriage, a kid on the way, and a job he loved doing. They had it all.”

Kameron paused again, and I felt the weight of what he was about to reveal before the words formed fully.

“My dad spent his entire life working in emergency medicine.

Two decades of his life devoted to saving people, to healing others, to being the person people cling to on the worst day of their life.

And every day, when he came home, he opened his arms wide and hugged my mom and I.

He showed up for everyone, no matter how tired or worn down he was.

He buried his trauma and experiences so deeply they were embedded in his very bones.

He never let the cracks show. And it killed him.

“My dad took his own life, but I’ll never believe it was because he wanted to leave my mother and I.

She never let me read the note he left, but I know it was because of his demons.

Looking back, I can see my father’s evolution with a clarity I didn’t have at thirteen.

I can see the slump of his shoulders, the lines in his face, the ghosts in his eyes.

I can see how he gave so much of himself to everyone and didn’t reserve an ounce of that care for himself. ”

“And that’s why you created Winding Road,” I said, not surprised to feel tears welling in my eyes. “To show others how important it is to let those experiences out with people who understand what you’ve gone through.”

“Yes,” Kameron said, wiping a hand off on his jeans.

I reached for his hand without thinking, linking our fingers together.

Kameron let out a shuddering breath, and my chest tightened with how badly I wanted to hug him.

To pull him close to me and let him know how grateful I was that he shared this with me.

“I’m in awe of you,” I whispered. Kameron briefly glanced towards me, and his expression sent my heart tumbling.

It was only a second, maybe two, but the admiration and gratitude in his eyes had me ready to abandon every stupid rule I’d ever made about relationships away and claim this man as mine forever .

“You’re the first person I’ve ever told all of that to,” Kameron said, shrugging his shoulders as if it was no big deal. “Connor and Lucas know the basics, but I’ve tried to keep my past out of my friendships. I prefer it that way.”

“I get it,” I murmured. Because I did. Despite what plenty of people on the internet think, you didn’t have to reveal every part of your trauma to people, even the people you’re closest to.

Some things can remain unsaid or unexplained.

It doesn’t make you a liar, or a bad person—it makes you someone who has experienced life-altering trauma, and everyone has their own ways of dealing with things.

“Even Lucas doesn’t know the full story with Jacob,” I said, turning my attention from Kameron and back to the highway before us. “He knows the general idea of what happened, but he’s my friend. And I wasn’t ready to share that with him. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to, to be honest.”

“And it would be fine if you never did,” Kameron said softly. “For the record, I’m not entirely sure why I told you. It just felt right to do it.”

My chest filled with an emotion I dared not name. “I feel the same,” I said, though the words sounded strangled.

What lay between Kameron and I was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.

We had explored the romantic side of things, without labeling what we had, and without revealing said situation to our closest friends.

It felt deceptive and like the right thing to do all at the same time.

It was confusing and anxiety-inducing and also thrilling.

It was a jumble of immense highs and deep lows and the rightness of it was getting harder to ignore .

Kameron squeezed my fingers, bringing me back to the present moment.

We didn’t say anything else for the rest of the drive.

Everything that might still need to be said was communicated through touch alone.

We arrived at the nursing home, and I was taken aback by how nice it was.

I had an image in my mind of nursing homes being places of grief and suffering, but there were flowers in every color of the rainbow blossoming in window planters, and gorgeous flowering shrubs lining the walkway.

It was lovely and inviting in a way I hadn’t expected it to be.

“Ready?” I asked Kameron as he put the truck in park and turned off the ignition.

“As I’ll ever be,” he said. We exited the truck, and I followed him up the path to the front door. Once buzzed in, we checked in at the front desk and received our badges.