I’m the grown-ass man whose life is a fucking dumpster fire.
“Not much to report. I go to work, come home and work out, eat, go to sleep. Repeat.” I sigh, dragging my hand through my sweat-drenched hair.
I can practically see her eyes roll through the phone.
“Wilder.”
“Cam.”
Her breath huffs into the speaker. “Are you okay?”
There it is.
The worry heavy like lead in her words. If this were anyone else, literally anybody, I’d tell them to fuck off and hang up.
But it’s Cam. And no matter how much I want to push her away, keep her as far away as possible from me, from all of the fucked-up shit in me… I can’t.
Mostly because she wouldn’t let me. After years of trying, it’s clear that it’s not happening.
We met when I was ten and she was eight.
It was the first time I’d been put in a group home. I was old enough to hate my mom after beginning to fully grasp her neglect and abuse, but still young enough to be terrified of new places, new people, new nightmares.
It wasn’t the first time family services had taken me. No, I was already a fucking pro at the age of ten.
But it was the first time I was put into a group home with other kids.
Cam… she was just this little thing. Mousy and quiet. Her skin hung on her bones like she hadn’t eaten for weeks, and yet, she offered me her chocolate chip cookie at dinner because she said I needed it more than her, not knowing that it was my favorite or that that cookie made that first night bearable.
She was the only friend I ever had, until she was taken too.
Put in a foster placement home.
And I didn’t see her again for a long time, until the next time we both ended up back at the same group home again at the same time a few years later. Both older, more hardened to the fucked-up shit we’d been through since we last met.
She’s been here in my life ever since, no matter how much I tried to push her away. No matter how many times I said fucked-up things to her to get her to leave.
The only family I have is the girl who never gave up on me.
A sister, but not by blood.
“I’m good, Cam,” I say.
“Wilder, do not make me get on a plane from New York and come to NOLA just to beat your ass. Don’t you dare lie to me.”
I laugh. “First of all, you’re the most unintimidating woman on the planet. Second, you’re not leaving Lily with Brennan. He’d shit a fucking brick.”
“My husband is very capable, thank you very much,” she retorts, and I hear him say in the background, “Thank you for that, baby, but please do not leave me alone with this tiny terror.”
Her laugh fills the speaker, and fuck, if Ihada heart? It would be squeezing beneath my ribs right now.
After everything we’ve been through, she’s found happiness. She has a family and a career that she loves, in a city that isn’t full of fucked-up memories that haunt her.
Cam deserves the life she’s built. The happiness that lives in her.
Out of the two of us, she’s the only one who has ever deserved anything good from life. Because sheisgood.
A heavy silence stretches between us before she adds, “I know this sucks, Wilder, and it’s not what you thought would happen, I get it. You thought things would go differently, and I know you don’t want to be back home, but maybe this…” She trails off, and suddenly, my throat feels tight, somethingforeign gathering at the base. “Maybe this is what you need to finally stop running. Maybe being home, you can finally work on healing those broken things instead of trying to beat them into submission.”
