Page 86 of My Sweetest Agony
Cam nods. “Drew and I never spoke again.”
“What?”
That wasn’t what I meant.
I was referring to my relationship with Drew, to the fact that he brought me home after the party and made love to me for the first time. We were inseparable after that. I didn’t just give my body to him; I gave him my whole heart.
Cam locks his jaw, a muscle there ticcing. “I’m sure he wanted me to call, wanted me to apologize, wanted me to offer some sort of an explanation for the way I acted, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give him one. Because I didn’t regret it. I couldn’t when”—his bare chest rises and falls sharply—“when it was the single greatest moment of my life.”
No.
I wince, squeezing my eyes closed against the flood of turbulent emotions and voices in my head.
They scream and thrash.
They fight to make sense, to find what was real and what was a lie, but I can’t tell anymore. All of it blends together into a swirl of black and white like the paint Cam places on the canvases.
Something clatters to the floor, and this time, when I hear Cam move closer, I don’t have the power to retreat.
My entire body feels numb.
Useless.
On the verge of collapse.
Everything I thought I knew about my relationship with Drew was a lie.
All spawned from one night—that I didn’t even have with him.
Cam stops in front of me and grips my chin, forcing my face up, and I let my eyes open, almost blinded by the intensity of what stares back. “Everything the two of you had was real, Ivy. You had over four years together. You had a life together. A future together.”
His words barely register over the whooshing of blood in my ears.
I can’t look away from his penetrating gaze, from the force of it and the way it locks me in place.
How did I not see it?
How did I miss it?
The differences between them…
The darkness that creeps into his blue eyes that Drew’s never had…
The slightly more crooked smile…
The way this heat that blazes across Cam’s gaze as he looks at me burns like a wild inferno, whereas when Drew looked at me, it smoldered.
“I-I should have known.”
Cam shakes his head. “No. You shouldn’t have. Drew and I often wore similar clothes without even planning it. And back then, I didn’t look like this.” He motions toward his face. “I always covered my tattoos for my mom’s parties. We probably looked exactly the same that night to everyone. And I was a fucking selfish prick who took advantage of the situation.”
“But why?” My lip trembles along with my body. “Did you really hate him that much that you had to?—”
I can’t even say the words.
Can’t even bring myself to think them.
His brows draw low, his gaze confused now. “Hate him?” He shakes his head, and a humorless laugh slips from his mouth. “I didn’t hate him, Ivy. I loved Drew more than anyone on this planet.” He sucks in a long, slow breath as he searches my face, and then his thumb moves up and brushes over my lips. “Until the moment I walked into that yard and saw you.”
