Page 75 of The Fall

I looked up at Dean, who was shifting his attention to me with a question in his eyes.

“Dean, I’ll see you later, okay? Just let me talk to Cammie.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not following what is going on here,” he said apologetically to Cammie, taking a seat next to us.

“Of course you aren’t,” she said dryly. “Please, Dallas, please tell me you aren’t really doing this.”

“Cammie,” I begged softly, looking back to Dean, who refused to leave. “Dean, please go.”

“Do you want to tell him, or should I?” I whipped my attention to Cammie and saw the inevitable confrontation on her face. She had no intention of backing down.

“Cammie, let it go,” I warned, my voice deadly. I felt the fire spread in my chest as my limbs trembled from her threat.

“No fucking way,” she seethed. “No way, Dallas. You can’t keep pretendin—”

“Let it go!” I yelled, grabbing the attention of everyone in the cafeteria. “Please,” I begged softly.

“No,” she said quietly, glaring at Dean. “He needs to know.” I watched as she turned to Dean with as much hate rolling off her as I’d ever seen from her 5’3” frame. “She miscarried your baby four months after you left for Columbia.”

Dean shot back in his seat, disbelief covering his features.

Cammie continued, not at all fazed by my threatening posture or Dean’s reaction. “The morning after her college graduation, I found her curled up on your beloved fraternity steps. She was damn near hypothermic from freezing to death, waiting for you! She still believed you would come! Oh, and then there’s the Adderall freak-out. Did you tell him about that?”

“Jesus Christ, Dallas!” Dean boomed. I stood quickly in an attempt to flee the scene unfolding.

“How could you do this to me?” I said hoarsely, tears streaming down my face as I glared at my friend. She had every right to hate him. Cammie exclusively had every right not to want him around me. She was all I had when he left, the only one I had let in. She had dealt with the complete mess I became when Dean left. She suffered everything with me—the loss of the baby, the death of me when I’d returned from New York, and everything else leading up to the last straw three years later, the night I graduated college.

She kept her voice down even though the damage was done. “You wouldn’t let me call your parents or your sister. You wouldn’t even let me call him, and this is the asshole responsible!”

“For what I did to myself?” I said, trying to reason with her. Dean was staring at me, but I avoided it. I couldn’t let him see me like this. I felt the anger take over in that moment. I welcomed it.

“Thanks for the visit, Cammie. Don’t be a stranger.” I didn’t bother looking at Dean as he stood up next to me, and I walked quickly away from the table.

“Don’t you dare,” Dean hissed behind me. “Dallas!”

“She won’t talk to you about it,” Cammie piped sarcastically behind me, “She won’t talk to anyone. If I hadn’t been there, I would have never known. Don’t think for one minute you weren’t responsible. I watched her go from a happy, confident, and beautiful twenty-year-old to a complete fucking—”

I couldn’t hear anymore. I knew what I had done. I knew I had taken the loss of both Dean and our baby to extremes. I wasn’t exaggerating when I told my mom I’d lost it. I’d lost our baby, followed quickly by losing Dean, and then I’d lost my mind.

And before he waltzed into my life, I had just gotten it back. My fear was not unfounded. Dean had completely consumed me again, and I’d let him. I made it as far as the small hallway leading into the courtyard when he caught up with me.

“Stop!” It wasn’t a request. It was an order. I felt the hallway narrow and put my hand up to steady myself. I never wanted him to know. Never. I’d kept it from everyone, even Rose. I turned to face him. He was beyond angry.

“What the hell were you think—”

“No, you fucking stop,” I warned. “Don’t. If we have a hope of a future together, you’ll let this go and never ask me about it again.”

“Don’t you dare threaten me with that!”

“It’s the only way. If you push this, Dean, we are over,” I warned.

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I told you. It’s simple. You missed a lot of years.”

“Fine, you aren’t the girl I left. I’ll take my chances. Dallas, how could you have not told me you were pregnant?” his voice cracked. “Or that you lost—”

“That’s right,” I snapped. “I lost. You didn’t know any fucking differently.”

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