Page 5 of My Sweetest Obsession
I suck in a deep breath and release a heavy sigh. “Because it was supposed to be your wedding day. I watched you sign for that delivery, and I knew what it was because my mom told me they were supposed to be delivered that weekend. I knew it was his ashes, and I knew it was undoubtedly the most excruciating day of your life. I had already seen how distraught you were, and I was worried about you. I wanted to?—”
Shit.
It doesn’t matter what I wanted to do that night or any other time.
None of it matters.
Nothing will ever make this okay for her.
She bolts back up onto her knees and heaves over the trash can again, tears dripping down her face as her body revolts against the information I’m giving her.
And that need to explain, even if it doesn’t mean anything, overwhelms me.
“I needed to make sure you and my mom were all right, but I couldn’t tell you guys what I had done. What had happened. I couldn’t—” I choke on a sob. “You asked me why I ordered a beer at the bar, if it was to test myself.” I shake my head. “I don’t do it to test myself, Ivy. I do it to torture myself because I deserve it. I deserve every ounce of agony I suffer staring at that pint of beer or double shot of whiskey sitting on the table or bar in front of me. I deserve it because it is nothing compared to what he suffered in his last moments…because of me. Because I was selfish. Because I wanted something that wasn’t mine. Because I took a taste of it, knowing I shouldn’t and couldn’t have it. I sit and stare at that drink I can’t have to remind myself what one taste of you cost me.”
She whips her head toward me, and the pain and hatred in her eyes are enough to make me recoil. “I thought he was having an affair.”
I clench my hand around the bottle. “I didn’t know you would think that. I had no idea. I would’ve told you sooner if I had?—”
“Fuck you, Camden.”
With her body trembling, she rights herself and struggles to stand, grabbing the counter to keep herself steady.
“Ivy, please?—”
I somehow climb to my own unsteady feet, hand pressed to the brick wall to keep myself from tumbling over. The whole room spins, her beautiful face a black and white and gray kaleidoscope. I squeeze my eyes closed until it stops. When I reopen them, she’s already on the move toward the door.
Doing exactly what I knew she would when she found out the truth, leaving me without a look back.
“Ivy, please, I’m so sorry.” A strangled, desperate sob slips out. “I?—”
She stops and whirls to face me, her hands fisted at her sides. “You don’t get to apologize to me. This is all your fault, Cam, all of it. You took Drew from me. You tainted my memory of him, of what we had. All for what? So you could prove that you could take me? What kind of sick fucking game is that? One I want no part of but you put me at the center of it anyway.”
Her steps move her toward the door, but then she pauses for a moment and turns. A second passes where I can physically feel her hatred, rage, and anguish rolling off her. Then she stalks toward me and bends to scoop up the needle and heroin that have been sitting beside me for hours. With her eyes locked on me, she closes the final few steps between us and snatches the bottle from my hand.
With it clenched tightly in her trembling fist, she eyes it and then her gaze drifts to the drugs in her other hand. “But I’m also not going to be responsible for you killing yourself.”
She turns and storms out the still-open loft door.
Her heavy footsteps on the metal staircase ring in my ears as I slide back down the brick, not even caring about how it bites and scrapes my bare skin.
I thought losing Drew was going to kill me.
But I was wrong.
It’s this.
Seeing how badly I destroyed Ivy and obliterated everything good in her life.
Losing her is what’s truly going to do it.
2
IVY
I thought I knew darkness.
I believed I had lived in it after Drew’s death and become old friends with that place in my head where nothing and no one could penetrate the gloom.
