Page 12 of My Sweetest Obsession
“To the wedding.”
Mom blinks rapidly, her eyes wide. “Drew invited you to the wedding after all that?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Ivy did. But I didn’t know that until last night, when I got this…”
I climb from the counter and walk over to the wall where the box sits on the floor. Mom was probably too worried about me to even give it a second glance when she got here last night.
What would she have thought if she had seen it?
My hand trembles as I reach in and pull out the doll. She sees me approach the counter with it, and more tears well in her eyes. Her hand covers her mouth again.
When she finally lowers it, her lips part on a surprised little huff. “He sent that to you?”
I nod.
She knows exactly what it meant to him, what it means to me, what it would have meant if I had received it. It could have changed everything between us.
“He sent it the same day Ivy sent me the invitation, but it didn’t get to me. It…” I shake my head, staring at the doll in my hands that suddenly feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, carrying the weight of all my mistakes. “It got lost or stuck in the mail, I guess. But I came back as soon as I got the invitation.”
Guilt skates across my skin about how I spent those six months.
Painting and obsessing over her.
Planning my approach and how I would win her from my brother and my best friend.
“I watched them, Mom. For a long time.” I look up at her from the doll. “NA tells us to wait at least a year before diving into a relationship, and I knew I was still too unsteady to go to her. But seeing her again? All it did was make my longing even worse. She’s like a drug to me. The worst fucking kind because I can’t go to rehab for it.”
Mom purses her lips, examining me as I struggle to move forward in the story because the next part will tear her apart. “What happened, Cam?” She pulls my free hand into hers and squeezes. “Tell me.”
I set the doll on the counter, staring at it as the memories of that night bombard me like a horror movie playing on repeat. “I called and told Drew I was in town, that I was going to tell her everything, that she deserved to know the truth. He showed up here, and we argued.” I glance at her, pulling from her hold, unable to accept any form of comfort or affection when the guilt eats me alive. “It was really fucking bad, Mom. And we both said things we shouldn’t have, and he left.” I swallow the sob that tries to climb up my throat. “He drove off pissed and worried that he was going to lose her to me, and he ran that stop sign and?—”
It’s her sob that cuts the silence.
And I finally let the tears fall.
She drops her head down, burying her face in her hands, and I let her cry.
Because the last thing she wants right now is for me to touch her or to comfort her, not when I’m the reason she lost him.
Each breath I try to take is more of a struggle the longer I watch her.
Her pain permeates the air, makes it heavy, impossible to draw into my lungs fully.
It takes a few agonizing moments before she finally lifts her head and looks at me with tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes. “Is that why you didn’t come to the funeral?”
“I couldn’t.” I choke on the words. “How could I when I was the reason he was dead? How could I?—”
She climbs from her stool and steps up to me, only, instead of slapping me across the face like she would have every right to, she tugs me into her arms, wrapping them around me and holding me like she did when I was a child and skinned my knee.
And I let her.
I cry.
I finally cry the way I’ve wanted to.
My anguish pours out of me in waves so heavy I soak her shirt, burying my face against her shoulder. Now that she knows everything, it feels like a giant weight has both been lifted from my shoulders and has resettled on my heart because she’ll never be able to forgive me.
All of this is my fault.
