Page 125 of My Sweetest Agony
And now I realize how naïve that was because I didn’t understand what had forced the rift between them in the first place.
“Fuck.” Cam drops his head back against the brick and releases a sardonic laugh, scrubbing his hand over his stubbled cheek as he stares at the ceiling. “I thought he sent it to me and was gloating”—he tilts his head, his eyes meeting mine—“about marrying you. I thought it was a ‘fuck you’ from him rubbing it in that he won.”
“Jesus, Cam…”
His confession twists the knife in my heart, driving it in even deeper.
He gives me a little half-smile again and takes a sip. The lower the level of bourbon drops in that bottle, the harder it is for me not to walk right over there and snatch it from his hands. But the way he’s shaking, I don’t want to do anything that might make things worse, that might push him off that thin wire currently tethering him to whatever reality might still exist for him to stand on.
“I don’t understand the GI Joe, Cam. Why would he send this to you? Why are you so?—”
He holds up his hand to stop me, the sadness seeping into his gaze so heavy I physically feel it in my gut. “It’s a peace offering. It was one.” One of his shoulders rises and falls, but the motion is strained, as if any movement is too much for him right now. “My best guess is that when you two were going over the guest list and you were handling all the invitations, he had the same idea you did, to reach out to me. But this”—he motions toward the box the toy came in—“was his way of doing it…”
With an action figure?
The alcohol must be messing with Cam because he isn’t making any sense. I stare at the doll, trying to grasp what he’s telling me, but Drew never mentioned a GI Joe.
He never told me he reached out to Cam.
None of it.
Just more secrets he kept.
Cam lets his eyes drift closed, still resting his head on the brick. “When our dad died, everything we had of his became that much more valuable to us. And he had only one of those. And Drew was the oldest, so it was his, no matter how much Mom told him to share it and that it was both of ours.”
Of course, she did.
Nancy never would have drawn lines in the sand with something like this that clearly meant so much to the boys.
“Drew didn’t let you have it?”
He shakes his head, taking another sip without looking at me. “I stole it from his hiding spot a couple of times to play with it, but it always resulted in a fight Mom had to break up.”
My heart aches for her and for them. The boys were clinging to something that belonged to their hero, and at that age, the thought that keeping the other from it would be so hurtful never would have occurred to them.
It was an impossibly sad situation, and this doll clearly still meant a lot to both of them since it was the thing that brought Cam to my house in the first place.
I swallow past the lump in my throat, examining the doll in my hand—the scratches and small imperfections that show how much it was loved. “But he sent it to you…”
The tears burn in my eyes as Cam angles his gaze toward me and nods before gulping down another drink.
“He did.”
“Was there a note?”
He shakes his head. “There didn’t need to be. He knew I would know what it meant, that it was time for me to come home. He didn’t say anything about the wedding or you. I imagine he thought I’d call or maybe just show up.”
A peace offering.
It’s exactly something Drew would have done.
Cam put him in an impossible situation with what he did the night of that party, and no matter how mad I am at both of them for lying to me about it, I can see how hard it would have been for Drew to send this. To take that first step toward clearing the air and maybe forgiveness.
But that was the kind of person he was.
I never knew Drew to hold a grudge or bad feelings toward anyone, which is what always made the situation with Cam so confusing and out of character for him.
The fact that Drew reached out to Cam without telling me, at the same time I was reaching out to him, trying to get him to come to the wedding and maybe resolve whatever their issues were drives the already embedded knife so deeply that it steals my breath on a choked sob.
