Page 33 of Brandy Snap: Part Two
“But that doesn’t mean you have to vanish,” I replied, my voice hollow as my heart fell.
Camille bunched her fingers on top of the duvet. “I wouldn’t call it vanishing. I’ll come back when I’m better. I need time to learn how to adapt. It’s a completely different method than anything else I’ve done since the accident, so I’m really hopeful this time. Honestly, I think this will really help.”
I’d seen that smile too much. It didn’t matter how many treatments or how much hope she had. Nothing had ever worked long enough to make a fucking difference. I didn’t know if I could stand watching her lose her smile again.
“Where are you going, then? I’ll come and visit you.” If I could stay with her, then maybe I could help.
She shook her head again. “You can’t, Caspian. Not only because I don’t know where I’m going, but because you need to let me go.”
Another growl rumbled in my throat, and it wasn’t because Sin’s cock pressed against Mel’s pussy.
She brought it up sometimes, especially when Sin first had bitten Kai. Of leaving for good. Like doing something that meant I could never see her again. I had to reassure her I hadn’t changed. I was still the same Caspian from when we were kids. Even though I’d grown twisted since I presented, and even more fucked after I started going rogue.
But I didn’t want her to think I’d abandoned her. I was desperate to repay her for forgiving me after all these years. Even though she said she didn’t need anything more from me, it was never enough.
“We’re just performing for each other now, aren’t we, Caspian? Can you even say you still love me?” she asked, her voice cracking as a tremble ran up to her shoulders. “Because I can’t answer that question. We both have mates, you have two omegas. We don’t have room for each other anymore.” She was too close to tears. “Haven’t we fallen into the habit of suffering with each other for something that happened over fifteen years ago?”
My eyes shuttered as I let out a breath.
Of course we had, and of course I wanted to cling to her. Because it was so much easier to stay with her all the time than to only meet with her once a month at family gatherings. If I’d admitted five years ago that I wasn’t sure I could even love her anymore when Kai became my world, then it would have proved I couldn’t fucking save her in the first place.
“I can’t answer it either,” I admitted, hating myself again for it.
“I know.” She reached out to cup my balled-up fists. Her understanding sliced harder than any argument we could have. “But we were teenagers, Caspian. It was a different kind of love. It can’t compare to the way you feel about your pack—the way you feel about your new omega, and the way I feel about Flint.”
My eyes widened as she finally confirmed it. Though we all knew, she hadn’t actually said it to me out loud.
“So, he really is your alpha?” I asked darkly, the tension in my body was so much I swear my muscles creaked.
“Do you see what I mean? These feelings have confined us so much that I couldn’t even tell you about him because of the look you have on your face right now.” I didn’t want to know what expression I was making. Though my instincts urged me to rip open her bedroom door and snarl at Flint, it wasn’t the priority.
Because Sin was getting ready, and I wanted to feel him more than I wanted to fight for Camille.
“And you’re going to be with him? Is he going with you?”
She gave me a soft smile. “Yes, for now. But there’s other things I can’t tell you yet. Not until I get better. One day I’ll explain everything, I promise. But I don’t want to leave with this hanging between us. It has to be resolved. You have to let me go.”
I didn’t have the right to feel like our relationship was ending when I’d had my own pack for over a decade. Because I was a fucking idiot who thought I could have everything.
I thought I’d be angrier, that all the rage I’d built up over our situation would somehow explode out of me and I could get rid of it all at once.
I hated that this was the way we had to deal with it. With her literally leaving just so we could say goodbye for real.
So why was my heart still aching? It wasn’t just because Sin was sinking his fucking cock into Mel as pain beat from Kai somewhere in the house.
I whipped my hands away from her in case my aura burst out of me. Because grief was joining the fucking party, and I couldn’t handle it all at once.
“Will you at least contact me when you’re gone? Just to tell me how you are?” I asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Caspian. It’s best if we take time to be with ourselves and our mates. You have a new omega now, and your pack is going to change, isn’t it? So you need time to be with that, too.”
My jaw grit as a growl escaped. “Mel’s not staying with us. Look, we didn’t tell you because we can’t risk it getting out, but she’s only going to be with us until after the Selection Ceremony and then she’s leaving. And that’s it. There’s nothing else there. We’re only using her to protect you, I swear.”
But it was clear she didn’t believe a single word of it from the smile she gave me.
“It’s okay. If you would rather keep telling yourself that, that’s fine. But you have to realise you’re doing the same thing with her as you’ve done with me. If you could be honest with yourself, don’t you think you would be happier?”
Another silence fell between us because I knew she was right again. And how long had she been thinking of all this? How long had it taken her to work up the courage to tell me? What had I been doing to her to make her so closed off?
