Page 49 of Presence

My fists clench, nails digging into my palms. “Please, Cam… just stop, okay?” I whisper. I can’t handle this.

What did I just say? She wants me by her side. She doesn’t understand how much I’ve endured alone. She saw the good moments, the times she brought me some peace when I desperately needed it. Yes, I was a mess. But she doesn’t know how much worse it was in solitude.

What about those moments when I felt trapped in any room, the walls closing in on me, as if there was an abyss below me and I was falling endlessly, unneeded, unwanted, uncared for?

In those moments, I felt like nothing more than a burden, putting my problems on other people. Sure, after everything that happened with my mom, Cam and her family gave me shelter. Their presence was a speck of light in my hopeless life, but the surrounding darkness was so vast, so overwhelming, that the light seemed to drown in it.

I don’t want that darkness to take hold of me again. I don’t need her telling me I can get over it. I want an escape.

Cam might be open to understanding my pain, but she’s never lived through it. I never fully opened up to her, never spilled all the hopelessness that dwelled inside me. But what good would that do? Hearing something like “it’s going to get better”? How is that supposed to help me?

“I won’t,” she says firmly.

She knows me, at least a part of me, that much is true. But I know her too. As her eyes fill with tears she quickly blinks away, trying to show strength and resolve, I see how fragile she really is.

Camilla, with her loving, stable family and protective older brothers, is delicate in ways she doesn’t even realize. She could never withstand a parent abusing her. She’d have broken a long time ago if she were in my shoes.

My head spins.

What if… What if she stayed only to watch me like I’m some animal in a zoo during my darkest times? Maybe she wanted a wounded animal like me to be dependent on her.

“Leave,” I mutter quietly. My voice can’t carry any louder, but the harsh tone conveys my message clearly enough. “I don’t want you here. I’m fine, and I don’t need to be coddled by you or anyone else.”

Cam’s face hardens for a moment, the hurt evident in her eyes, but she doesn’t move immediately. She stands there, weighing her words and pushing my buttons without realizing it. Every moment she stays here hurts me.

I just want to go back to sleep, dammit!

“I’m not trying to coddle you,” she finally says, her voice steady but softer now. “I’m just trying to be here for you, because that’s what friends do. They show up. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.” She nods to herself, as if reaffirming her resolve is more important than the fact that I want her out of my space. “And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

I almost roll my eyes at those cliché lines. But when she steps toward the table, alarm bells go off in my head.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my voice suddenly louder.

She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she grabs the bottle of sleeping pills she gave me two weeks ago and shakes it. What used to be full is now nearly empty. But that’s not what makes my heart race and a cold sweat break out on my skin. It’s the fact that she turns on her heel and heads to the bathroom.

“Camilla?!” I shout after her. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“I’m getting rid of these,” she says, stopping at the bathroom doorway and facing me. “If you want me to leave, I will. But first, I’m flushing these pills down the toilet because I never should’ve given them to you in the first place.”

My heart squeezes like it’s about to explode. I’m standing straight one moment and then lunging the next.

“Don’t you fucking dare do that to me.” I clench my teeth. “Give them back to me.”

I reach for the bottle, but she steps back, her back slamming against the bathroom wall. Her hand pushes me away, the heel of her palm digging into my collarbone. But pain is the last thing on my mind.

If I don’t get those pills, I’ll be vulnerable to the presence. I won’t see Echo quickly enough for him to protect me. Hell, what if I can’t fall asleep ever again? What if I never see Echo again?

I can’t let that happen. I need those pills. My life depends on it.

“Shit, Claire!” Camilla cries out. “Stop clawing at me! You’re hurting me...!”

Only when she yells do I realize that I’m actually hurting her. My nails, long and jagged from neglect, scratch at her hand—the one holding the pills. But even though I realize it, there’s nothing pumping in my heart except adrenaline.

She’s the one hurting me here, not the other way around. Why can’t she see that?!

Her face turns pale, not just from the physical pain, but from something deeper. Maybe it’s the shock of seeing me so frantic, or perhaps she’s finally realized that she might be in the wrong here.

Regardless, she releases the bottle, and it falls onto the tiled bathroom floor, bursting open. Pills scatter across the floor with a clatter.

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