Page 98 of Warrior's Cross

It had done something to Cameron. Changed him somehow. He couldn’t feel anything but the awful ache and piercing loneliness, and he wasn’t sure he ever would.

Standing here in the midst of the peaceful glen, quiet despite the crowd, it suddenly became all too real. Cameron would never see him again. He would never be able to tell Julian the things he wanted to say.

That he was sorry. That he was a fool. That he’d face any danger if he could just be with him.

He staggered from where he stood with Blake and several of the other servers from Tuesdays and pushed his way out of the group to walk across the path to a marble mausoleum. Stepping behind it, he slowly slid down the wall until he sat on the ground and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, trying to stop the tears. He hadn’t cried since that night, since they’d pushed him away from Julian’s side.

Now the agony swelled so painfully that he thought it might choke him. But the exhaustion meant he couldn’t gasp, he couldn’t wail. He could only sit, quiet and heartbroken, while the tears streamed down his face.

The sun shining down on the city made the snow-covered sidewalk in the distance glitter, and the glare swirled up in shimmering trails.

Downtown Chicago was a concrete and metal maze that held in all the cold like an icebox, and just like it would roast you alive in the summer if you let it, it would freeze you solid when the wind blew. The wind off the lake was the worst, its frigid gusts enough to freeze standing water in bare minutes.

Cameron walked along the street in his heavy wool coat, duffel bag over one shoulder, cell phone in his opposite hand. “No, I don’t think so,” he was saying. “I’ve been out all day, and with this cold weather, I need a damn break!”

“Well, you should come for dinner soon. Jean-Michel is afraid you don’t like his food anymore,” Blake told him over the phone.

“He should know better,” Cameron said drolly. “Okay. Thursday. How about that?”

“Sounds good. I’ll reserve a table for us,” Blake responded happily. “How’s work going?”

“Pretty good, I guess. No complaints,” Cameron answered vaguely.

“I understand. We can talk about it at dinner,” Blake offered.

“I guess I should visit the restaurant more often,” Cameron responded, his tone gone distant and flat.

“You do what you need to do, kiddo. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there. Now get back to work,” Cameron said, some smile back in his voice.

“Will do.”

Cameron closed his cell phone and slid it into his pocket. He shook his head. After nearly six months, Blake was still taking care of him. Or at least trying to. Cameron had finally started rebelling in early fall.

The first few weeks had been horrible. Cameron could barely stand to be awake, much less up and moving around, and he stayed closeted in his apartment, just trying to wrap his brain around what had happened.

Two weeks after the funeral, while feeding the dogs, he suddenly remembered Smith and Wesson. A phone call to Blake revealed that the house had been emptied and sold at auction not long after Julian’s death, bought by a man overseas who had yet to arrive and claim it.

Blake himself had attempted to find the two cats, going to Julian’s house the day after his death, but he’d searched the house from end to end with no avail, and none of the staff knew anything about their whereabouts.

Preston had disappeared the night Julian was killed, and no sign of him or the cats ever surfaced. Cameron was devastated. He knew Julian had loved those cats. They were absolute monsters, so why else keep them if he didn’t love them?

He could only hope Preston had taken them with him.

After a month, Blake came and banged on his door and told him that if he refused to work at Tuesdays, then he had another job for him.

With Blake’s guidance, Cameron became a relay contact. All he did was answer a cell phone, take the message—often in code he didn’t understand—and call someone else to relay the information. He was accurate, fast, and most importantly, kept his mouth shut about it.

After the first few insanely large under-the-table payments, Cameron repainted his apartment, remodeled the kitchen, and bought new furniture for the first time in his life. He bought a new, nicer wardrobe that Miri helped him pick out. She wanted him to socialize more. He decidedly didn’t, but after a couple months, he started going out with her and some friends just to get her to leave him alone about it.

He found the distraction really did help sometimes.

After summer passed, he realized that he didn’t sit on his hands well, and he joined a nearby gym. Finding it another welcome distraction, he went religiously, and to his surprise, toned up his wiry muscles quite a bit. He also ran a couple miles on the treadmill each time he was there. The changes in his body made him feel like a different person, one that he liked, and when Blake suggested he take a kickboxing class, he went along amiably.

After a week of the class, he realized that his lie about Julian’s bruises coming from kickboxing had been pretty well-crafted after all.

Cameron hadn’t wanted to go back to Tuesdays. Ever. It had taken three months before Blake even got him up there. The foyer was the worst. The marble had soaked up the blood and been stained beyond any hope of cleaning. It had been replaced, but the new tiles were slightly whiter than the ones that surrounded it, and so they had created a decorative medallion on the floor instead.

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