Page 3 of Aftermath

The steaks and the beer made it worth popping an endless amount of Pepto. Yeah, his fucking nutritionist had told him to stick to "stomach-friendly" foods for now, but if he wanted a fucking steak, he'd eat one.

Austin eventually walked out and sat down, too, and he was dressed appropriately for this weather—cargo shorts and a T-shirt. It was fucking insane how much clothes had come to matter to Cam and possibly the others who had been taken, as well. 'Cause you took a lot of shit for granted. Like wearing what you wanted.

During…that time…Cam had been stuck in the coveralls he wore at the garage. Which he'd never wear again. Landon had already assured him he could work in other clothes—when he eventually returned to work, of course.

"Riley didn’t want to leave earlier," Austin sighed, explaining why he was late. "Took a while to convince her."

Cam nodded with a dip of his chin, having heard countless stories of Austin's little girl. He'd even met Riley himself, but it had been a short moment with too many family members in a small space. Cam didn’t like small spaces. Never had.

He liked them even less now.

"She doesn’t look like you," he stated for no reason at all. He was still trying to simmer down from before, and maybe insignificant bullshit would help. "Just the hair." He remembered light brown hair that matched Austin's, but that was about it. Or maybe her eyes, too? Fuck it. He wasn’t sure.

Austin didn’t reply to that. "Are you taking your meds?"

Cam rolled his eyes and grabbed a beer. "Who are you—my fucking father? Yeah, I'm taking my meds. Christ." He was lying. He hated his meds.

Austin sighed again.

Still feeling agitated and antsy, Cam chugged down his first beer quickly and then leaned back in his chair, reminding himself that Austin was here now. Nothing had gone wrong. It was just Riley who'd been reluctant to leave her dad.

It sucked that they lived in completely different parts of the city. On opposite sides, even.

"So…big birthday tomorrow." Austin went for conversation again.

"Not really." Cam closed his eyes and breathed calmly. "Thirty or forty would've been big. Or even thirty-five. Not thirty-four."

If anyone had a big birthday coming up, it was Austin. In December, he'd turn forty. Cam remembered that from one of the times he'd had an anxiety attack in that metal cage. Austin had calmed his ass down with useless trivia about accounting, childhood stories, and some other personal crap that had made Cam focus on something other than his hyperventilating.

After a moment, he opened his eyes and lolled his head to the side, facing Austin, who was silently watching him. With Austin around, Cam was both relaxed and distressed. There was something about Austin's presence that Cam had grown to want more of, yet there was something else that left him dissatisfied. Almost as if he'd been teased mercilessly and then been left hanging.

It irritated Cam. A lot. And he refused to delve deeper into it, 'cause he knew where it would lead.

"You have weird fucking eyes," he muttered with a frown. Depending on how the light hit Austin, they could be brown, green, and even bluish. Weird. Now they were a mix between green and gold, but then again, the umbrella was yellow. Sighing, Cam closed his eyes again and tapped the pad of his thumb to his fingertips. Index finger, middle finger, ring finger, fuckin' pinky. Repeat.

"Are you all right?" Austin asked quietly.

"Yeah. And I should be asking you that." Cam's reply was mumbled as he finally reached a higher state of calm. His breathing slowed and his eyelids felt heavier. "Have you been sleepin' any?"

"Not much," Austin admitted, and Cam could hear the exhaustion in his tone.

"The shrink gave you sleeping pills, didn’t she?"

"Yep. But I don’t like them."

Cam could relate. He didn’t like them, either. They made him loopy, which in turn made him feel less in control of himself. Control was fucking important. Vital. It was something he'd struggled with since he was born, but he'd never been so robbed of it than during those five months in a humid, basement hell.

Austin wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he figured he'd been at Cam's house for quite a while when he noticed that Cam had fallen asleep in the deck chair.

Much like himself, Cam suffered from nightmares and flashbacks, so Austin thought about waking him. He studied the younger man, who had lost weight, too. They were still both fairly muscular, though Cam was a bit slighter with his narrow hips, but it was clear several pounds of fat and muscle had been lost.

Cam's pale body was decorated both intentionally and not. Along his ribcage, inked vines tangled in barbed wire and song lyrics snaked up to his shoulder. From there, countless tattoos covered his right arm. An angel from behind with black wings, a skeleton he recognized as a famous rock band's mascot, more lyrics, a vintage car, a few darkly colored puzzle pieces, names, dates, an old-fashioned microphone, a pair of drumsticks forming an "X," a snowflake, and two words that had stuck with Austin from the moment he'd spotted them. Along the old-fashioned microphone's cord that lingered down between several other tattoos, the words "wired differently" had been inked on a loop. Over and over, those two words followed the mic's cord.

The good memories from their months in that cell could probably be counted on one hand. The time Cam told Austin the stories behind his tattoos was one of them. Now, his mind voluntarily drifted there.

In the meantime, Cam had no choice. Trapped by sleep, a nightmare pulled him back to the very same cell; only, he wasn’t discussing ink.

The fucker, whomever he was, who had kidnapped Cam as he was getting off work three days ago, usually left the faint florescent lights on, but there were times he left his victims in the dark, too. Right now was one of those times. Without windows, there was no sense of time and direction, but the man who'd been thrown into his cage yesterday was sleeping fitfully, so maybe it was night.

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