Page 51 of The Weight of Her Silence
Silence fell.
Camille’s voice dropped, low and sharp.
“Don’t rewrite this like you were some helpless man. You wanted this. Every time.
You craved it. Craved me.”
Nate looked away.
She stepped closer.
“Don’t turn me into your scapegoat just because you’re drowning in guilt. You didn’t just fall into my bed—you stayed.”
“I know,” he said, quiet.
Camille waited.
“So what now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” she said.
“You’re already pulling away. You’re standing here, punishing me for a choice you made over and over again.
But the truth is, you don’t regret me, Nate. You just hate the reflection I hold up to you.”
His stare was cold now.
“I’m going home.”
Camille’s face twitched.
“To your dying wife?”
“To my children. To the woman who gave me everything I didn’t deserve.”
“You’ll come back,” she whispered, eyes suddenly glassy.
“You always do.”
But this time he didn’t respond. He walked out, and the door closed behind him like the end of a chapter he was afraid he’d already written in ink.
???
Ava had always been observant. She saw things in people. The tight way her mother smiled when her father was around. The way Caleb had started sleeping with the hallway light on again, like he was eight instead of eleven. The way their father came home late even now, even after the hospital.
Tonight, she sat on the edge of her bed, her laptop closed beside her, her fingers tracing invisible lines into her comforter. Down the hall, Caleb’s door creaked open.
“Ava?”
She looked up. “Yeah?”
He shuffled in, oversized hoodie drowning his thin frame.
“Can I stay here tonight?”
“Of course.”
