Page 14 of The Fix

Cami brought forth a small smile as she pulled the door open.

She’d tried so hard to look like her old self, the girl Hollis had fallen in love with, the one who’d left his pool party four months before, not knowing she was about to walk into hell.

She couldn’t actually remember being that girl, but she at least remembered what she looked like.

She’d curled her hair and applied makeup, shading and highlighting and adding a blush to her cheeks.

She’d shined her lips and spritzed on her signature perfume that brought back that day so strongly and abruptly that she’d practically collapsed on her bed, doubling over as though she’d received a gut punch.

She’d used baby wipes to remove it as best she could and then tossed the bottle in the trash.

Hollis returned her smile as he stepped inside, taking her in his arms and hugging her briefly.

The quick embrace was too much and not enough.

She both craved affection, desperately, yet wanted to scream when anyone touched her.

But she took comfort in the fact that he wanted to touch her at all—today anyway.

Everything is going to be fine. “Hey, babe. You look great.” He glanced around. “All moved in?”

“Yeah.” She pushed the door closed and engaged both locks.

The rental still didn’t feel like home, but she felt mostly safe there anyway, and she liked that it was smaller than the house they’d lived in .

.. before. Her heart sped the way it always did when she thought of home —of that house—and she pulled in a deep breath.

She was working every day to heal, even the days when she could hardly get out of bed.

She owed that to her mother and her sister—she was now their voice in the world.

And she owed it to the innocent life she was carrying.

“I have a fire going,” she told Hollis as she led the way to the living room down the hall, pulling the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands and lifting her shoulders.

She was nervous and scared, and she didn’t want to cry.

It would make it difficult to speak, and that’s why she’d asked him to come over today.

He followed along behind, and when she sat down on the couch, he sat right next to her. Then he took one of her hands in his as he sighed, brushing back a wisp of hair from her cheek.

“You look so gorgeous, Cam.” He ran a thumb over her cheekbone, and she sighed and leaned into it. If she relaxed enough, his touch felt good. She’d needed it, and his tenderness made her believe everything was going to be okay.

He bent forward and kissed her. When he swept his tongue between her lips, her spine straightened and her heart jumped, but not with excitement, with fear.

She felt a scream rising in her throat and pushed at him, their mouths coming apart as he stared at her in surprise before anger flashed in his eyes.

It was there and gone in a second. He contained it well, but she’d seen it, and it sent a multilayered shiver down her spine .

.. resentment, disappointment, anger of her own.

“Sorry,” she murmured, turning her face away. “I guess I’m ...”

“Don’t worry,” Hollis said dismissively, picking up his phone on the coffee table and looking at the screen. “I can’t stay long anyway. I’m supposed to help my dad with something.”

“But you just got here.” She was aware of the whine in her voice, the neediness, but she held back a cringe. Wasn’t it expected that she’d be needy right now? “I haven’t seen much of you. I was concerned that—”

“You don’t need to be,” he said, still scrolling on his phone for a second before placing it back down.

“I just wanted to give you time. What happened ... God, Cami, it’s shattered the whole community.

” He ran a hand through his hair and sat back.

“Even the nation. Dateline contacted me yesterday.” Dateline.

Yes, they’d contacted her, too, and she’d erased their message.

But Hollis didn’t ask about that. Didn’t ask if the constant media coverage, even so many months later, bothered her.

Didn’t ask if she’d watched any of it or whether she could not.

“I appreciate ... the time.” Even though you didn’t ask if that’s what I needed.

You decided for me. She couldn’t tell if she was being petty, though.

She didn’t know if her emotions were rational or not.

Her world had collapsed, and she felt buried beneath the rubble, completely unaware what direction she was facing.

She didn’t trust herself. She was constantly spinning.

Yesterday, she’d been washing dishes at the sink, and then she’d suddenly found herself staring out the window.

When she looked at the clock, twenty minutes had disappeared, and she didn’t remember one thought that had run through her mind.

For nearly half an hour, she’d been totally blank.

How could she judge Hollis’s behavior when she couldn’t even understand her own?

He leaned forward and picked up his phone again. “Well, I should—”

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out.

His expression didn’t change. He stared at her as though she’d just said two words that, by themselves, didn’t explain a thing and was waiting for the remainder of the information that would make it make sense. “What?”

“I took a test the day of ... the day of the ... when ...” She let out a shuddery breath.

Even now, months later, she couldn’t finish that sentence.

She fiddled with her sweatshirt sleeves, pulling them over her hands again.

“But I didn’t get to look at the results.

I stuck the test in my bag, and I’m not even sure where that is now.

There were so many officers and detectives tromping through there, even before the moving company.

Anyway, when I took it, I was pretty sure, though.

I mean, I was hoping I wasn’t, but all the signs—”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He was angry. Of course he was. She’d expected that, hadn’t she?

His whole life was laid out before him, a golden path toward Princeton in the fall, which would certainly end at a prestigious law firm and then a political appointment after that.

He’d mapped it out for her as they’d lain entwined in his bed the weekend his parents were out of town.

“It doesn’t have to change your plans, Hollis.

I have my dad here, and when you’re done with school we can decide—”

“You’re pregnant ? How do you even know”—he stood up—“Cami, how do you even know it’s mine? You were raped.”

She flinched. What was it about that one word that stabbed at her the way it did?

How did the sound of it cause flashes of him , over her, invading her body?

Why did that single syllable bring to mind the sour smell of his breath and the taste of her own tears?

Why did the memory itself stretch across her mouth like that silver piece of tape that had stolen her words and her breath.

It was a moment before she could speak. “They tested me in the hospital,” she finally said.

“That day. It wouldn’t have been positive, yet if .

.. Hollis, they confirmed what I’d suspected.

I was already six weeks pregnant. I ...

I couldn’t deal with it then.” She looked down and shook her head.

“I put it out of my mind. It was too much, Hollis.” I was spinning.

Nothing felt real. My mother and my sister were suddenly gone, and the memories of their violent deaths were invading my every thought.

The guilt was unimaginable. It still was. She’d gone over and over what she could have done differently, rearranging the order of her escape again and again, until it was the four of them leaving that house together instead of just her and her dad.

But in the hospital when they’d told her, she’d been dissociated from her body.

In many ways, she still was. She felt like she was somewhere outside herself, floating in the ether.

A pregnancy had barely made sense. She couldn’t wrap her head around that reality.

And so, she’d let it go, until she couldn’t.

“It was too much ? Jesus Christ, Cami. So you waited to spring this on me? Now? Right after I got my acceptance letter to Princeton?”

“I didn’t really decide anything. I just ... I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

He paced in front of the coffee table, murmuring under his breath.

Cami swayed slightly. She felt as tenuous as vapor, like anyone who looked upon her could see straight through to the other side.

For a moment she wondered if this was even real, or a nightmare she was having about Hollis’s potential reaction to the news of their baby.

She blinked, feeling at risk of going into that fugue state that she’d found herself in at the window yesterday and other times since coming home from the hospital.

He turned toward her then, and in the few seconds he stood staring at her, her own voice rose in her mind.

You’re mean, Hollis. Not just now but in general.

You’re petty and weak and selfish, and you always think you’re the most important person in the room.

She gave her head a small shake, again, unwilling to trust her own feelings.

Not right now. “I know it’s a lot. I don’t expect you to be happy about this right away. ”

He suddenly stopped and turned toward her, his expression accusing. “Are you ?” he asked. “Are you happy about this?”

“Happy? I’m not sure I remember what happiness feels like right now.”

He looked away, once again ignoring her pain.

“There was some kind of mistake,” he said, and his expression brightened as though he’d just found a trapdoor in his prison cell.

“Maybe you got the timing wrong. Maybe the test in the hospital was a false positive. Or maybe you just wish the baby you’re carrying was mine.

Mixing things up, or even straight-out lying, would be understandable, Cam. ”

Her mouth fell open, and she felt an odd twisting in her chest. Of all his reactions, she hadn’t expected that.

He was really suggesting she knew this baby belonged to .

.. her attacker? “I can take a paternity test if you want. When the baby’s born.

” I’ll never forgive you if you make me do that, she thought, and again, wondered if she was being fair.

“When the—” He pressed his lips together and turned away for a moment, raising his hands and gripping his hair.

“Cam, baby.” He rounded the coffee table and sat back down on the couch and took her hands in his once more.

“A kid? A kid is the very last thing you need right now. Think about this. How would you even ... Listen, there’s a solution to this problem, Cami.

You’re not thinking straight, but you don’t have to deal with this.

” She noted he’d said you , and not we .

He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckle, his lips lingering.

He was right about that. Unfortunately, that ship had sailed. She pulled her hand from his and splayed it on her stomach, where there was a small curve. “I can already feel the baby.”

He stood again as though she’d suddenly caught on fire. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Cami, I really am. And again, I can understand why you’d want to ...” He grabbed his phone off the coffee table. “My mother ...”

“Your mother? What does your mother have to do with this?”

“She’s suggested I start college fresh. No distractions.

I was already planning on ... Listen, it was good while it lasted.

It was great. Anyway, I forgive you for lying and trying to make this”—he waved his hand in the general direction of her midsection—“my problem, but I have too many things happening for me to let you drag me into this. I’m sorry, babe.

Really. You’re hurting and I get it. But . .. I have to go.”

She watched him race for the door, practically tripping at the edge of the living room where the carpet turned to tile, and then she heard him fumble with the lock before the door opened and then slammed, the sound echoing in the quiet house.

Cami collapsed back onto the couch, staring at the wall in front of her, a hysterical laugh bubbling up her throat.

She clapped her hand over her mouth, stifling the shocked hilarity.

But then her face contorted, the laugh turning into a sob.

Cami lay down and stared blankly at the wall.

She barely felt her lips moving, but she heard her own choked voice. “Goodbye, Hollis.”