Page 39 of My Sweetest Obsession
And I always will.
Her jaw sets, and her lips press into a firm line. “Well, stop. You don’t have to.” She shakes her head as if to enforce her statement. “I don’t want you to. I don’t want anything from you, Cam. Not ever again.”
She turns and stalks through the sand back toward the boardwalk, leaving me standing at the waterline alone.
The smell of the ocean, the sand, and all my regrets fills my lungs, and I squeeze my burning eyes closed as I process what she just said.
So much hurt and anger laced her words and voice.
Not that I didn’t know that’s how she felt, but hearing it from her lips makes it a thousand times worse.
It makes it more real.
It makes any hope I might have had of being involved in that baby’s life evaporate in an instant.
Ivy doesn’t want me in her life.
She doesn’t want me in the baby’s.
And that’s probably for the best.
But I can’t just walk away.
I open my eyes, and tears flow down my cheeks. “Happy birthday, brother. I’ll make sure she’s okay. I promise.”
12
IVY
The bunch of bananas sits in the center of the counter.
Something so innocuous that probably half the homes in America also have waiting to be consumed stirs up a maelstrom of feelings the moment my eyes land on them.
It’s far from meaningless in my house.
Tears I would love to blame on hormones rather than conflicting emotions well almost instantly, just as they have every week when the new fruit or vegetable shows up in my kitchen with Cam’s notes.
And these…he must have brought them before he came to the shore, after I had already left to drive out there.
My stomach twists as violently as my heart does as I approach them and set my purse on the counter beside the note.
The baby is the size of a banana at 20 weeks.
These are also really good for both of you.
I told Cam not to worry about us, that I didn’t want anything from him, and I meant it.
I don’t.
I can’t want or need anything from Camden Usher ever again.
All wanting him has ever done is destroy my life.
From the first damn moment I saw him in his mother’s garden, all he’s brought is lies, pain, and turmoil.
I tried so hard to set aside my anger today, to concentrate on why I was standing there in the sand and accept that Cam was beside me for the same reason—that despite everything, he loved Drew.
But my anger has become a living and breathing thing that survives on my grief and feeds off it, staying alive and rearing its ugly head when it shouldn’t.
