“I’m sorry,” I say, as I push through the pain to try and make a pile of the glass shards for easy cleanup. “Please finish telling me your story.”
“You’re bleeding,” Cameron points out, positioning himself between me and the counter so that he can stop me from hurting myself further.
“I’m fine,” I say, but feel the warm trickle of blood down the back of my hand and hold it up to examine it.
My curse has caused accidents far more serious than this one, so I barely bat an eyelash at the blood that leaks from the jagged cut in the pad of my thumb, but Cameron is horrified and thoroughly checks my hands for any other cuts or lingering glass, and then quickly wraps my thumb with the dish towel to apply pressure.
“It’s not that bad, I promise.”
He tightens his grip on me when I try to pull away. “Drew, stop. You might need stitches.”
“Seriously, I’m fine,” I say, and manage to get my hand free to remove the towel, but the cut immediately starts bleeding again as soon as the pressure is removed. I allow Cameron to rewrap it and we stand there, barely an inch between us. He holds my hand in his and tries to catch my gaze again, but I avoid looking at him.
“Drew,” he says, gently, just as a bright flash of lightning illuminates the room, followed by a long roll of thunder. The lights in the kitchen flicker, but the power remains on, and I meet his eyes once the lights return to normal.
“The rest of the story doesn’t matter,” he says. “What does matter to me is that I properly thank you for your honesty in that article and tell you how much it has helped me to heal. Knowing that at least one person out there understood me and also took a personal offense to being excused for an awful thing that they had done—” He pauses and shakes his head as if he still can’tquite believe it. “It’s a gift, Drew. Your words were a gift to me. I know that sounds counterintuitive, and maybe a little morbid, but your article means more to me than you will ever know, and I will forever be grateful to you for that.”
I let out a breath and push aside all my warring emotions so I can simply be in this moment with him. For whatever reason, Cameron and I are two souls cut from the same cursed cloth, destined to go through life with a guilt on our backs so heavy it makes it nearly impossible to breathe most days. And God, destiny, or fate thought it important to bring us together at this very moment. Six months after his parents died, and right as I’ve decided to try and move past the pain of losing mine.
Maybe it is counterintuitive, and a little morbid, like he so perfectly said, but the knowledge that he truly understands the darkest parts of me feels like a gift. A gift of the grandest sort, and the complete opposite of a situation concocted by my long-standing curse to punish me for my wrongdoings.
I blink up at him in wonder, just as a second, stronger flash of lightning crashes outside, as if earth herself is punctuating this moment we are sharing with a sky-sized exclamation point. The lights flicker wildly around us again, but this time they click completely off, and the whooshing of the dishwasher comes to a halt as we are cast into complete darkness.
Chapter twenty-six
RIGHT BEHIND YOU
Ireachoutinstinctivelyfor Cameron in the dark, and he releases my thumb to wrap his arms around my waist to pull me in close. “The generator should kick on any second,” he says, his voice thick from everything that he’s already said, and what still remains unspoken between us.
The air in my lungs starts coming out in shallow breaths, as the totality of this moment sinks in. With everything that Cameron just said, and the way that I fit perfectly in his arms, I feel completely safe, both emotionally and physically, making the juvenile crush I had on him seconds ago morph into something much deeper.
Part of me wants to rest my head against his chest until the lights come back on, but the other part of me has the overwhelming urge to see what would happen if I lifted my chin, instead. Would he rest his forehead against mine, or lean in for something more? I shake the thoughts away as soon as they come, because that can’t be right.
We just shared a profound moment in admitting that we are responsible for our parents’ deaths, and that is not something that youkissabout right after. Plus, he already established that the reason he was so intent on finding me at multiple times around the retreat was to admit to me that he read my article, and nothing more. And yet . . .
“There you two are,” a female voice says while shining a cell phone light in our faces.
I push away from Cameron like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and wince at how much it hurts my thumb.
Delaney laughs sardonically from across the room. “I already saw you guys, so there’s no need to pretend,” she says. “Although I already knew that you two were together the second that Drew arrived with that Eagle Lake coffee cup in her hand.”
I find it hard to believe that something as small as showing up to the retreat with a coffee would be enough to make Delaney think that we were together, so I look to Cameron for clarification. In the dim light from her phone, I only read anger on his face.
“Relax, Cameron,” she says, the end of her words still mildly slurred from alcohol. “I’ll be out of here tomorrow morning so that the two of you can officially take over this thing together. I just came down here to turn on the generator so that my phone isn’t dead in the morning.”
She heads towards the accordion doors and pauses when she reaches them to pull her fluffy robe closer around her before unlocking it.
“It’s not safe to be out there right now,” he says through clenched teeth. “And the generator should have already kicked on by itself, so there’s probably something wrong with it.”
“Cam, you there?” Ollie’s voice calls from somewhere near the front of the house.
“In the kitchen,” Cameron calls back, and Ollie’s phone flashlight soon joins Delaney’s in illuminating the dark space.
“Doesn’t this house have a generator?” Ollie asks.
“It does, but it’s old,” Cameron says.
Delaney grows impatient and cracks open the accordion door, letting in the sounds of the pounding rain and distant thunder.
