After dumping my shoes next to my aching feet, I reach into the back seat for my laptop. I would rather be with Grayson in Cameron’s apartment, but protecting him remotely is a suitable alternative.
I boot up my laptop, and when it fires up, my fingers move at the speed of light. The surveillance feeds flicker to life only seconds later, and I catch the tail end of Grayson and Cameron’s argument.
The audio is patchy, but the video is clear. Cameron’s face is contorted with anger, and her voice is ugly as she spits out a string of insults. She calls me a bitch, a homewrecker, and a fraud, her words shooting from her mouth like daggers.
Grayson stands his ground. He doesn’t raise his voice or let her bait him into a verbal altercation. He defends me with a silence that maims Cameron’s heart more than words ever could.
She wants him to fight, to bring himself down to her level.
He refuses, which only grows Cameron’s rage.
Her hands fly in all directions as she paces the living room. “You’ve always liked strays, haven’t you, Gray? They’re like aproject for you. You think you can patch them up and then send them on their way.” Unexpectedly, she throws a vase across the room, narrowly missing him. It shatters against the wall next to his head before it sprays the flooring beneath his bare feet. “We’re not broken toys, Grayson! You can’t save us all.”
He finally speaks. “I’m not trying to save you, Cameron.”
“Don’t make this about me. This isn’t about me. This is abouther.” The accuracy of her hand thrust has me worried that she knows she is under surveillance. “It’s the baby, isn’t it? You think because she’s going it alone, she’s an easy target.”
Ouch.Her words don’t hurt me. It’s my own insecurities eating me alive. Furthermore, if she had said them about any other man, I might have believed them.
“But what you don’t realize is that she’s using her vulnerability against you, and you’re eating right out of her palm.” Grayson shakes his head, but she doesn’t see it. “You believe her, don’t you? You believe the lies she told you.”
The temptation becomes too great for Grayson. He nibbles at the bait. “She hasn’t lied to me.”
“How are you so blind?” Cameron steps closer to him, doubling the heaviness of the gun strapped to my thigh. “What did she tell you? That I stayed away because I was scared your dad would follow through with his threat? That I couldn’t look at you without fearing what might happen next? What lies did she tell you, Grayson?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer her. “Whatever she told you is a lie. I didn’t stay away to protect my family. I stayed away because she threatened me. What do you think tonight’s show was about? My goal was to scare you away for good. She told me she’d put me away for life if I didn’t push you away… and she said my baby sister would occupy the cell next to mine.”
She could have had him if she’d left off her last sentence. I don’t care if it could net me the biggest fish in the baby-making pond, I wouldneveruse someone’s sister as bait to catch them.
Mercifully, Grayson knows that.
“You’re sick, Cameron. You need help.”
As she pulls away from him, she curls her arms around herself. “I can’t believe you believe her over me! I’m your girlfriend. I am meant to come before anyone.” Her following words are more scripted than heartfelt. “Did you ever care about me? Did you ever love me?”
“Yes,” Grayson shouts back. “I loved you. But this isn’t it, Cam.” He waves his hand around the mess, which can’t conceal how many items she has ruined. “This is”—he stumbles before he goes with straight-up honesty—“wrong.”
As all psychopaths do, she only hears what she wants to hear. “Loved? Not love. Youlovedme.” She rolls her eyes, lowering her maturity even further. “Yeah, right. You’ve never cared.”
Her accusation escalates their fight to the point where frayed edges are visible. “I spent seventeen years looking for you. Seventeen fucking years, yet you feel you have the right to tell me I don’t care. I never stopped looking for you, Cameron. I scoured the entire fucking planet looking foryou. I’ve proven my loyalty.”
“Then why are you throwing it away for her?”
Now that the edges are worn, Grayson can’t hold back. “Because she deserves closure as much as I do. She deserves to know what happened to her baby sister?—”
“So I was right. She’s just another charity case.”
“No.” Grayson shakes his head so fiercely I imagine my favorite hair products overtaking the tomatoey paste that coated our pasta. “It is the thought of anyone else giving her the happiness that will come with that closure that tears me apart. Iwant to be the reason she smiles, not a prick who only works a case with her because he wants to get into her panties.”
The effect of his words is immediate. Cameron freezes as the hard lines scouring her face with wrinkles soften. “Case?” She looks sick, like being a law-abiding citizen is the lowest of the low. “You followed in your father’s footsteps? You joined the bureau!”
Grayson shakes his head, but it is too late. Cameron knows the truth.
“After all he did, you still followedhislife plan!” She pulls away from him, huffing. Considering what arsenal she has to toss out, I’m shocked when she goes for the weakest ammunition. “He threatened to press charges against me when we borrowed his car to spend the day at the beach.”
For every truth told, more follow. “Youstolehis car, Cameron. You didn’t borrow it.”
She laughs in his face as she digs her phone out from beneath the mess on her entryway table. “Because you wouldn’t. You give off bad-boy vibes, but you’re as soft and pathetic as the other fools I left behind.”
“The other fools you left behind?” The accusation in Grayson’s voice is as high as his brows. “Exactly how many fools are we talking about, Cam?”
