Page 56 of Their Arrangement
She never had.
And yet?—
There she was.
Still.
Hauntingeveryfuckingplace Camille hadtouched.
I passed under a bridge and a truck blew past on the other side, spraying water across my windshield with a slap. The glass shuddered beneath the force. It felt like being hit.
Like a curse.
I clenched the steering wheel harder. My jaw ached from the tension.
I should’ve never followed her.
Should’ve let her sit there in the rain until her knees bled and her voice went hoarse.
Should’ve let her rot in her guilt. Let her choke on it the way we did when we picked out the casket. When we signed the death certificate. When we cleaned out Camille’s office and sold her apartment and scrubbed her laughter out of our goddamn lives just to survive.
But I didn’t.
I followed her.
And I watched.
And I felt something I had no business feeling.
Not for her.
Not for Camille’s ghost in a too-tight skirt and trembling hands.
Cloe was a shadow.
A stain.
A girl who walked like she’d been taught to shrink.
But when she turned her head?—
When she pressed her hand to the marble and whispered Camille’s name?—
She looked nothing like a ghost.
She looked ruined.
And she wore it well.
I hated that.
I hated how my cock stirred when I saw her wet and desperate and broken open by memory.
Not because she reminded me of Camille.
But because she didn’t.
Because whatever she’d been two years ago—Camille’s project, the pretty charity case in a borrowed dress—she wasn’t that anymore.
