Page 49 of My Sweetest Obsession
So vivid and lifelike, it feels like I could reach out and touch the five-year-old versions of the two men who have altered my life in such immeasurable ways.
Drew and Cam…
Sitting on a curb…
In their matching outfits and shoes…
Sharing a cheesesteak…
My throat tightens, and I struggle to swallow through the clog that has lodged squarely in it as I stare at the painting of exactly what Cam described to me while we sat in that booth at Max’s.
God, was that really only a few months ago?
It seems impossible to believe when so much has happened since then, when so many things that are so huge have changed in such a short period of time.
The baby kicks, almost as if she’s sensing my heightened emotions and is responding in kind.
I rub gently at the spot and glance up at Marlo. “Where is this?”
She snags the phone from my hand and scrolls down through the written article to another photo of the mural taken from farther back. “On a building behind Max’s parking lot. It appeared overnight.” Her wide eyes scan over the screen, her lips parted in awe. “I mean, he must have been up all night painting that?—”
“No.” I shake my head, my body trembling as everything that happened last night replays through my mind. “It wasn’t all night.”
Because I woke up to him gone well before midnight.
The bed was already cold.
Which means he must have left here to go do this.
Hot tears trail down my cheeks, and Marlo grabs my wrist, dragging my attention back to her rather than what any of this means.
Her brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
Pulling free from her hold, I stumble to the couch and drop down onto it, afraid my legs won’t continue to hold me up. “He was here…”
Marlo looks from me to Gladys sitting on the end table. “I figured he was at some point. He stopped by with dinner and was worried when I told him you had already left.” She trails her fingers around the edge of the pot. “And he saw Gladys and wanted to bring her to you.”
A smile tugs at my lips. “Yeah, he…uh…stayed for a while.”
Her eyes widen. “What’s a while?”
Shit.
I bury my face in my hands, embarrassment heating my cheeks. “I’m not totally sure. I fell asleep, but I woke up hungry around maybe eleven, and he was gone…”
She drops onto the couch beside me, narrowing her assessing gaze and likely seeing far too much. “What’s wrong?”
So many things.
All those reasons I was lying in that bed alone, staring at the wall, trying to escape into a fantasy because reality was crippling yesterday still exist.
That agony that made me break down in front of Cam when I promised myself I would never give him a reason to worry because I needed him out of my life still lives in my chest.
Drew is still gone, and we’re still here, facing a future without him.
But as I rest my hand over my stomach and rub at the spot where the baby likes to press her foot, the emptiness I felt when I woke to Cam gone doesn’t seem so…fathomless.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
