Page 83 of What He Always Knew
Blake closed her eyes, forcing a breath before the mixture of a laugh and a cry left her lips. She shook it off, running her hands back through her hair, and then her eyes found mine.
“Rot in hell, Reese Walker.”
She turned on her heels, and I stood to watch her go, suddenly wishing I could reach out for her and comfort her. But how could I, how could I be the solvent when I was the poison, too?
Blake shoved through the front door, and when she did, she toppled right into Cameron.
He caught her before she fell, and she straightened herself, looking back at me once more with tears in her eyes before she shook her head and stormed toward her car. Cameron watched her with me until she whipped out of the driveway, and once the car was gone, he turned.
The husband of the woman I loved was on my doorstep, and there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t like the reason he was there.
“We need to talk.”
I stepped out onto the front porch, guard up and ready for whatever fight Cameron had brought with him.
“What do we need to talk about?”
Cameron nodded toward the door I still held. “Maybe I should come inside.”
“Maybe not.”
He laughed, shaking his head like my answer didn’t surprise him. “Fine. Doesn’t matter where it happens, but we need to talk about Charlie.”
My shield dropped a little then. “Is she okay?”
Cameron walked over to lean against the wooden railing on my porch, crossing his arms over his chest. “She’s fine. At least, she’s as fine as she can be in the situation we’ve put her in.”
“Ididn’t put her in any kind of situation,” I defended. “You’re the one who made her wait two months, to give you a chance or whatever.”
“Like you wouldn’t fight for her if you were in my shoes.”
“I wouldn’t have lost her in the first place.”
Cameron’s nose flared at that, his jaw tight, and I would have bet money that he was two seconds away from charging me. But instead, he blew out a long breath, gazing out over my front yard.
“I didn’t come here to fight you,” he said, his voice resigned.
And as much as I hated the man, I felt a little sorry for him in that moment. I never considered how he felt, how it would be to see his wife with another man, to know he was losing her to him.
If I was being honest, I didn’t care because he’d betrayed her first — not just with turning his back on her after their children passed, but by cheating on her, too. Still, I knew what it felt like to fuck up and then have to stare at the consequences of those decisions as they unfolded.
“So, why did you come, then?”
Cameron squinted against the sun, still looking out over my yard and past it, off into the distance.
“You don’t know me,” he said first, his tone careful and calculated. “I know you think you do, but you don’t. To you, it probably seems like I’m a selfish man, one who took his sweet, caring wife for granted. I bet you think I’m a man who never imagined she’d leave me, who didn’t see any other man as a threat, who never once considered what it would be like to lose her. But, you’re wrong.”
I finally stepped onto the porch with Cameron, letting the screen door close behind me. I still kept my distance, though, standing tall against my house while he stayed against the railing.
“I always knew what I had with Charlie,” he continued. “I always knew how special she was, from the very first moment I met her. It’s why she was the first woman I let inside my head, inside my heart, and why I was scared every single day regardless of the fact that she swore she loved me. Because I’m fucked up,” he admitted, those words riding out on a laugh. “I’m fucked up and I know it, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how she managed to see through that and find a good man in me. Or why she married me, or stayed with me. But she did.” He looked at me then. “Until you.”
“I didn’t change anything when I came into town, Cameron,” I said. “I just gave her someone to talk to, someone who would actually listen. And I loved her the way she deserved to be loved. I let her see another life, one she could live, if she wanted to.”
“That may be the way you see it,” Cameron acknowledged. “But, I love her, too. And I’ve loved her in a way you haven’t yet, in a way you can only imagine. I loved her on the hardest days of her life and some of the best ones, too. I loved her in the way you love someone you build a life with, the way you love someone you build a family with.” He swallowed. “It doesn’t matter if our boys didn’t get the chance to live. We had a family, one we built together, and then we had to love each other through that loss, too.”
“Except you abandoned her,” I reminded him. “You left her to grieve on her own. You shut her out, and then, you cheated on her.”
Cameron’s eyes widened at that, shock flashing in them. He was surprised she’d told me, at least, that’s what I guessed. And that only made me stand taller.