Page 66 of Ruin

He sighs and drives a hand through his hair. “Because I knew it was the only way that you’d let me go.”

Jesus.

Tears burn the back of my throat. “You wanted to get rid of me so badly that you lied and told me you’d slept with another woman when you hadn’t?” My hands cover my chest, clutching at the pain there.

“I didn’t want to get rid of you, Cam. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time.”

“By lying to me?”

“It wasn’t like I’d planned on it. You started talking about leaving Juilliard again, and I panicked.”

“Again? That was the first time I even mentioned leaving Juilliard!”

He slowly shakes his head, holding my eyes. “You’d been hinting at it for months.”

Had I?

I loved being at Juilliard, but I loved Zeus more. Constantly being away from him was getting harder and harder, overshadowing my feelings toward everything else.

“It was hard, being away from you all the time,” I tell him my thoughts. “But I was willing to stick it out until we could get back to the way things had been. You were the one who walked away.”

“That’s just it. Things were never going to go back to the way they had been. Our lives had changed, and we were being pulled in two separate directions. I couldn’t let you give up Juilliard for me. Not when I couldn’t give you what you deserved—all of me. What with the constant training, fights, and strict regimes I was under, it just felt impossible. And Marcel was always on my back about you. Telling me that you were a distraction. Getting in my head, saying that, if I wanted to achieve anything, I needed one sole focus—boxing. After every single time I spoke to you on the phone, Marcel would say my head wasn’t in it. That I was distracted. And he was right. You remember how I got this?” He touches the scar on his eyebrow.

“Of course I remember.” My words are soft.

Zeus came to visit me on some downtime he had after his first big fight post-Olympics. We were out at a club. A guy was hitting on me. Zeus saw red. There was an argument. A fight broke out. The guy grabbed a beer bottle and hit Zeus with it. I’d never seen so much blood in all my life, and I’d been watching his fights since I was fifteen.

The doctor said he was lucky he didn’t lose his eye.

“Marcel wanted you gone then. That wasn’t your fault. I knew that. But he said it would never have happened if I hadn’t been with you. He said I was fucking up my career over you. That I had a chance to change my family’s life, but if I kept on as I was, that would never happen. I was going to screw everything up. He got in my head, and I let him.

“And I was just so fucking worried about you all the goddamn time because you were unhappy with our situation, and there was nothing I could do to fix it or change things. I could’ve stopped boxing and come home, but then what would I have done? Work in some shitty factory for the rest of my life? I needed money to support Ares, the twins, and my dad. I was trapped, Cam. And something had to give.

“And that something was me.”

I wrap my arms around myself.

“I thought you’d be better off without me,” he says quietly. “I thought, if I sacrificed my own happiness by letting you go, that I would be doing the right thing for my family. You’d get over me. You’d move on and have this amazing career as a dancer.

“But then, when I saw you in the club that night, dancing on that fucking podium, with that asshole trying to feel you up…” He breathes out heavily. “You were supposed to be onstage at the New York City Ballet, for fuck’s sake. Right there and then, I knew I’d screwed up.

“But, when I came here and found out about Gigi…Jesus.” He grabs the back of his neck, tipping his head back to the dark sky. “I’d given you up, and it was all for nothing. And, even worse, I’d missed out on four years of my daughter’s life.”

I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing. My mind is racing with everything he just told me.

“Cam…” he softly says my name, pulling my eyes to his.

What I see there halts all thought. He moves closer to me, leaving mere inches between us. I can feel the heat from his body. My pulse starts to race.

“Letting you go was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” His voice is rough. “Harder than watching my mother’s body being lowered into that grave. I loved you so much, Dove. I still do. I’ve never stopped loving you. And I’ve spent the last five years missing you.”

His words touch all the bruised parts inside me, like a soothing balm. But I can’t let him get close. It’s too much.

All of it.

Panic grips my chest like a vise.

And, when he reaches a hand out to touch me, I move back, wrapping my arms around my chest.