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I answer.

“Hello?”

“Cam?”

The voice is deep, masculine, and smooth. Unmistakably Lucien’s.

Oh my God.

I drop the phone and curl into a ball on my bed. I can hear his voice through the speaker, insistent and distant.

“Cameron? Cam, please⁠—”

I reach over and end the call. Then I block the number with shaking fingers.

Panicky, gasping sobs shake my whole body, and I press my face into my pillow to hide the sounds from Liam, who might hear me from the living room.

Everything I told her, no, told him, was real. Lucien knows all of it. Lucien has seen me at my most honest, at my most pathetic. And I don’t know what he’s going to do with that.

I cry until I have no tears left. Until my eyes are swollen, my throat is raw, and exhaustion pulls me under.

16

LUCIEN

The call goes straight to voicemail.

I stare at Cameron’s name on the screen and try again.

Voicemail.

He blocked me.

I drop the phone on my bed and hook my hand over the nape of my neck, squeezing until the tension radiating up my spine turns to a dull ache. But it’s my ribs that feel broken, like some violent force ripped out my heart, leaving a grotesque void.

I never saw Liam leave Cameron’s apartment, and now he’s in there, with Liam. Liam with my Cameron. Liam, who’s probably sitting close to him on a couch right now, offering comfort I can never give.

Is Liam touching him? Is Cameron letting him?

The flashing images singe my mind. Liam’s hand on Cameron’s face, wiping away his steamy tears. Cameron leaning into the touch, desperate for someone to make him feel safe again. Liam kissing him. Cameron kissing back because he needs to feel something other than the horror of what I did to him.

Liam’s hands sliding under Cameron’s shirt and Cameron arching into it, letting Liam lick his wounds, letting Liam lick him.

Fucking fuck.

I grab my pillow, press it against my face, and scream into it until my throat is raw.

Cameron was happy with me.

With me.

As Gwen, yes, but it was still me underneath. My words. My thoughts. My desperate need to know him, to understand him, to be understood by him.

He showed me, showed Gwen, that, for the first time in his life, he felt seen. That he could be vulnerable without performing. That he didn’t have to be so contrived. He could just be Cameron.

And I gave him that. I did.

But I destroyed it because I was too impatient. Too selfish. Too desperate to have him look at me, at the real me, with that same openness, that same trust.