Page 87 of My Sweetest Agony
My breath catches at the passion burning in his gaze, the absolute surety in it, even when I’m not sure about anything anymore.
“It was like time stood still, Ivy. Lightning struck. The earth shifted under my feet. All those clichés you always hear about in the movies and romance novels. All of it happened to me the instant I laid eyes on you that night. I saw you sitting there, and I just…” He shakes his head, tilting it as he stares at my lips. “I knew who you were instantly. I knew you thought I was him. I knew I was doing something wretched and wrong. But I couldn’t walk away. I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t let you slip through my fingers.”
Instead, I came on them…
I unraveled in his arms, under his touch and kiss.
I came apart.
“But I wasn’t yours to have…”
He flinches, his eyes squeezing closed. “You think I don’t fucking know that, Ivy?” His palm slides away from my face, and he steps back, shoving his hands through his hair. “I’m not a good person. I’m the guy who tries to steal his brother’s girlfriend. And that night destroyed everything. My relationship with Drew, my relationship with my mother because I couldn’t ever come home. All of it gone in a fucking instant because I saw you and had to have you. Because I wasn’t strong enough to walk away. Because I wasn’t a big enough man, or a good enough person to just tell you who the fuck I was and let Drew have you.” He pounds his fist over his heart and opens his eyes, now wet with tears. “I had to take you, and it cost me my fucking sanity.”
The cracking of his voice on that final word rips my chest open, as if his pain has become my own. But I don’t understand what he’s saying. I don’t understand any of it.
“What do you mean?”
“Just because I knew it was wrong doesn’t mean I regretted it. Not for a fucking second because I was fucking obsessed with you, Ivy. Obsessed. I followed your social media, stalked your posts about romantic dinners with Drew, watched you two fall even more in love through photos and words you said…and every minute of every day afterward, you were all I thought about. How your lips felt against mine, how your tongue tasted, how fucking wet you were, and mostly how, for the first time in my life that I could remember, it wasn’t all black and white. For the first time that night, with my hand between your legs and your mouth on mine, I saw fucking red. An explosion of color. That vibrancy of life was pushed back into me, and it was all because of you.” He shakes his head, as if he can’t find the words to express what he’s really trying to say. “Kissing you tasted like red, Ivy, and knowing that I couldn’t have you…it broke me.”
It broke him.
That word echoes in my head, along with the confessions he made to me over the past several weeks.
“Oh, God. Is that when you…”
I can’t even get the question out because I know the answer.
He told me.
Explained it all when he tried to warn me away from him so many times.
His life crumbled, and he fell down that hole of addiction that took him so long to climb out of, that he still battles every day.
And it all started because of me.
Cam shoves his hands through his hair, shaking his head. “I’m not blaming you. None of this was your fault. It was mine. My weakness, my inability to cope with all the emotions exploding within me. The guilt over what I did to Drew. The shame of not feeling guilty and wanting to do it again. The want that I couldn’t stop feeling for what wasn’t mine. It was volatile, Ivy. I was. It was my selfishness that made me descend into that pit I dug for myself. All of it was my fault.”
He destroyed his life.
He went down a path that left him this tortured, anguished person…
“No.” I shake my head, the tears streaming down my cheeks as hot as the anger and shame burning through me. “It was mine. I should have known. I should have?—”
Cam closes the distance between us in two steps and takes my face in his palms. “Stop saying that, and stop thinking that way. This is why I didn’t tell you when I showed up at your house. Because I didn’t want you questioning everything, didn’t want you thinking that your entire relationship with Drew was a lie or that you could have, in any way, known in that garden. One night doesn’t change what four years built. It doesn’t.” He presses his chest into mine and tightens his grip on my face, ensuring I’m holding his gaze. “But now you see why I warned you away, why I told you that I was toxic and bad for you, why what happened the other night when we got back from the shore never should have happened. And never should again.”
Everything he says, every single agonizing word of it is true.
Cam is selfish.
He’s unhinged.
He has no control over his life or his emotions.
He’s exactly the type of guy women should avoid.
He’s the opposite of Drew in every way.
Drew never would have done what Cam did that night.
