Page 15 of My Sweetest Obsession
Those dark waves that lapped at the shore when we spread Drew’s ashes
Everyone claps, and I step down from the small riser and make my way back toward Mom, unable to look at her as I slide into the chair next to her. I bury my face in my hands, the tears soaking them and my medallion.
She wraps her arm around me and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “Everything will be okay, Cam. Why don’t you come home with me? Come stay at the house.”
People start filing past, conversations floating through the air as the meeting concludes, though I didn’t even register hearing the final words.
I keep my head dipped low, unable to look at Mom as I decline her offer. “I don’t think I can, Mom…”
“You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
Nodding, I swipe my cheeks and finally lift my face to her. “I know, but…I can’t be in that house right now. There are too many memories.”
Almost two decades of them jumbled in my head that are hard enough to remember without being in that space, seeing all the reminders of Drew’s life that is gone because of me.
It’s where we took our first steps together. Where we said our first words. Where we opened Christmas and birthday gifts and grew into adults under Mom’s watchful eye and with all her love focused on us so intensely.
I couldn’t survive it—walking in that door and those memories flooding me.
Mom presses her lips together tightly. She isn’t happy about my refusal, and I’m sure it’s a mix of concern and offense that I don’t want to be with her, but eventually, she nods. “Okay, but will you please promise me something?”
I want to say anything.
But that would be a lie.
There are things I can’t promise.
Things I shouldn’t.
Not when it feels like I’m spinning out of control.
“What?”
Mom holds my gaze, her eyes somehow clear at the moment when I can’t seem to stop the tears from falling. “Day or night, anytime, you’re going to call me if you need me.”
I nod, a sob lodging in my throat. “I’ll always need you, Mom.”
And that’s truer than I even realized.
For four years, I’ve kept my distance, stayed in London rather than coming back here to face the consequences of my actions. I couldn’t be in the same room as Drew and not know how badly I wounded him, feel that guilt eating away at me. But that meant hurting this woman as much as it hurt me. Maybe even more. Because she didn’t know what kept me away.
It wasn’t just what I had done to Drew and Ivy.
It was because I couldn’t let her see what I had become.
A shell of myself.
She would have taken one look at me and known I was deep into something I shouldn’t be. And that confrontation would have meant admitting my true addiction was to the one woman on the planet I couldn’t have.
Those years of excommunicating myself to keep her insulated from my downward spiral tore me apart as much as my guilt and the drugs and alcohol did. Because I love her so damn much and needed her so many times when I couldn’t call her, couldn’t hop on a plane and fly home to feel her arms around me or hear her comforting words.
But now she knows everything.
All the dark and dirty secrets.
It simultaneously feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and a new one has settled.
Because now that she knows, if I fail, if I take the step that Ivy stopped me from last night, it’s going to hurt that much more.
