Page 192 of From Rivals to I Do

“Listen, Camilla, there’s a part of this that you don’t know,” he said. “There’s a lot that you just don’t know, in fact.”

“What don’t I know?” She laughed and the sound was bitter and hollow. “Enlighten me, Abel. What more could you possibly tell me that would make this all right? Don’t you understand what you did to me? To my family? You took my father away from me.”

He almost told her then. It would just have been three simple words. It was not me. That is all. He just had to tell her that he wasn’t the one to do it. But he was struck completely dumb in that moment. Slowly, standing in the storm of her rage, he realized that if he told her that it wasn’t him, he’d have to tell her who it actually was. If she believed him, it might only make the whole thing worse. He imagined she would never want anything to do with either of them after that.

“You know,” she went on in his silence, “I talked to Rafael this morning. He called to apologize for his behavior and asked me to forgive you for your crimes. Do you know, he even asked me not to fire you? Your brother was kind enough to actually ask me for clemency.”

And just like that, the rage came back. Abel could feel it boiling up from his center. For all Rafael’s platitudes and I’m just looking out for you speeches, at the end of the day, things were turning out exactly how Abel suspected they might.

“He’s a better man than you,” she said, crossing her arms. “Better than you could ever be because at least he said he was sorry for what he’d done. You cannot even do that.”

Abel could not speak. He just stared at her in disbelief. The betrayal was complete now. Rafael wasn’t looking out for him and probably never was. Rafael was only looking out for himself. The ten years that Abel gave up so that Rafael could have a life as a free man meant nothing to him. He meant nothing to him.

“Camilla,” he said. “Rafael isn’t who you think he is.”

“Guess that’s for me to find out, isn’t it?” She smirked at him, then added. “Wonder if he likes to go dancing, too?”

It was as good as a slap across the face. Abel stepped back, tore his eyes away from her, then turned to leave as the tears started stinging his eyes. He got as far as the door before he said, “I’m sorry, Camilla…”

He walked out without hearing anything else from her and went back into the kitchen to work.

For the rest of the day, he stayed with the wounded feeling from the fight with Camilla. She had gotten him good with the implication that she might start dating Rafael. It made him sick to his stomach.

However, Abel was beginning to feel a little differently by the night's end.

He walked home. Rafael had offered to pick him up, but that was the last thing that Abel wanted. He left a few minutes early, avoiding his nightly routine of staying behind until everyone was safely out. With the way he was feeling, he doubted that any harm would come to anyone if he passed on the ritual for one night. Besides, he wasn’t interested in waiting awkwardly in the parking lot as Camilla went out to her car.

He walked only a few blocks before Rafael’s car rolled up next to him. He rolled down the window and shouted. “Hey. Get in.”

“I’m good.”

“Come on, Abel. Do not tell me you are still upset?”

Abel threw him an annoyed look and kept walking. “I heard you called Camilla this morning. How long did you wait until after I left? Five minutes? Ten?”

“I was trying to keep her from firing you.”

“You were trying to get in her good graces. Well, lucky you, it worked. You win, I guess. The hero gets the girl.”

He went silent, his car rolling slowly to keep up with Abel’s pace. “She never would have chosen you, man. Just so you know. It was never going to be you. I was always going to be her man.”

That made Abel stop what he was doing and stare at him. Rafael stopped the car and the two of them stared into the darkness. “Camilla has been mine since high school,” he said, his eyes shining at him in the dark. “High school. I knew since then, man. It was never going to be anybody but me and her.”

“She wasn’t in high school but for a minute,” said Abel, his throat dry.

“It was long enough. And had it not been for her father, it might have been sooner.”

Abel felt his feet go numb and his stomach twist. “You’re a rotten brother,” he said. “You know that? Rotten.”

“I am the only brother you got. You are about to get in this car or what?”

Abel stared at him for a long time and suddenly, the confusion fog lifted. It was as bad as he suspected. It had always been that bad. He had just never seen it.

“I’m good,” he said and kept walking.

When he got home, Rafael wasn’t there. Abel went to the bathroom to throw up.

Chapter ten

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