Page 59 of What He Always Knew

Words were becoming as hard for me as they were for him.

“How was your session with Patrick?” I managed after a while.

Cameron kept his eyes on his hands, and I watched my own, trying to relieve the tension.

“It was fine.”

Fine.

I swallowed, thinking of how complicated my relationship with that word was now. It was how I’d described my state of being for so long, what I’d told people when they asked how I was — or how Cameron and I were. But fine didn’t mean everything was okay. It meant I didn’t want to talk about how things really were.

It meant I was surviving. I was breathing. But that was all.

“That’s good,” I said.

Cameron nodded, glancing at me just as I came across an ugly, thick weed buried deep under where I would plant new flowers soon. I leaned back on my heels, grabbing my farmer’s knife.

“It’s hard,” he said, voice soft as I started working at the weed. “Talking to him. Sometimes. He just… he likes to talk about my dad.”

I stilled, the knife hovering under the weed. I stared at it before pulling up gently, freeing part of it.

“I can imagine,” I said. “We never talk about him. Not since we were in college, that one time, when you told me what happened.”

Cameron scratched his jaw, marking it with soil as he did. “Yeah. But it’s good, even when it’s hard. I have a lot of…feelingstoward my dad, I guess. That I never knew about. Or rather, that I never dived into.” He cleared his throat. “I think he’s part of the reason I have such a hard time talking.”

I yanked at the weed, my heart in my throat. I could sense it, something big building with Cameron’s every sentence.

“I could see that.”

I tried to give him his space to feel out his next words. He seemed frustrated, like the words were right within sight but blurred by a glass he couldn’t break through.

“The night you came home from the conference, there was something I wanted to tell you. But, it’s not easy to talk about.”

The sun slipped behind a cloud then, making me shiver with the chill of the shade.

“And I want to tell you, but you just have to know that—”

“Shit!”

I dropped the knife, that hand coming up to press hard into the palm I’d just slashed with it trying to cut the last of the stubborn weed. Blood poured through my glove, and I cringed against the pain.

“Oh, shit,” I said again, this time more resigned than panicked.

Cameron was already on his feet and pulling me up from my knees. He carefully rushed me inside and straight to our kitchen sink, peeling off my glove and running water over the cut. I watched the clear liquid turn red as he rinsed me, the sight of blood always making my head spin.

I gripped the counter.

“It’s deep,” Cameron said, and I just nodded. “We should go to the hospital. I think you need stitches.”

I held onto the counter with my free hand, holding the injured one under the water as Cameron slipped away to grab our first-aid kit. He dried my hand when he returned, wrapping it in gauze and checking that it wasn’t too tight before leading me to the front door.

“I’ll grab you a light jacket from upstairs. Here,” he said, swiping his keys from the table in our foyer. “Let me start the car first, get it warmed up.”

“It’s nice out,” I reminded him. “I’ll be fine.”

“Well, we don’t know how long this will take. Let me at least get the jacket.”

He was already three steps up when I called his name.