Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“Cam, look at me.”
He did look at her, but the door she had so carefully pushed open over the last few minutes slammed in her face. Padlocked. The guard was back up, every feature protecting his mysteries and secreting away his thoughts.
“I know that nothing I shared with you could even match whatever it is you don’t want to tell me.” Jo bit her lip, refusing to indulge the uncertainty urging her to let this go. “I haven’t had a rough life. I’ve had it made in so many ways most people only dream of.”
“Jo, I—”
“And I know. I’m privileged and spoiled, and you probably think I can’t relate to whatever you have gone through.”
“It’s not that—”
“And no matter what it is, you have to know the way I feel is never going to change. Not when I saw you in that ice-cream shop. Not when you chose those other girls over me.” Jo looked down at their hands joined in her lap. “Not on your wedding day.”
“Baby.” His breath misted her ear and she felt his lips in her hair. “God, I really don’t deserve you, Jo.”
“You have me.” She turned her head, locking their eyes together, making this moment a conduit for all the acceptance and forgiveness, and though he wasn’t ready to hear it, all the love she had for him. “You’ve always had all of me. Please, please, please don’t ask me to settle for less than all of you.”
He dropped his eyes, the flickering fireflies in the nearby jar showing the struggle on his face in flashes of light. Jo leaned in, pushing her fingers into the silky hair at the base of his neck and fluttering kisses across the sharply defined cheekbones.
“You have me,” she whispered across his lips.
He angled his head until their foreheads met, cupping the back of her neck. He gave a small shake of his head.
“You have me,” she repeated insistently. “Nothing will change that. Not what you tell me or what you choose to hold back, but please don’t hold back because I want to know everything.”
“Jo, everything in me wants to keep this from you. Has always wanted to keep this from you.”
“Why? You can trust me.”
“Of course I trust you. Trust isn’t the issue.”
“Then just say it.” Jo rubbed her hand up and down his arm, pulling him inches closer. “Once it leaves your mouth, it’s in the light. It’s not just yours. It’s ours. I want to help.”
“You can’t help, Jo. Don’t try to fix this. This can’t be fixed.” Cam pulled back and looked at her. “I don’t want your pity. I don’t want to be some project or some freak. Or worse, some victim.”
“Victim?” Jo squinted into the dim light, straining not just against the dark, but also against the shade he’d just pulled over his eyes. “Why would I think of you as a victim?”
Cam pulled in a breath that seemed to start at his feet and crawled up his long frame before making its way heavily past his lips. She silently begged him not to hide from her. She wasn’t sure if he’d been shielding her or himself, but whatever had been between them, she wanted it gone. And in an instant, like her heart had tugged on his, like her soul had whispered to his and it heard and obeyed, the shade lifted. And what she saw in his eyes sent icy tendrils across her skin. Was it bitterness or hatred, terror or regret? Or some conspiracy of horrors? Whatever emotions converged in his eyes, it looked like hell. Hell in his eyes. And then she had to know. She had to press. She had to help. Oh, God, she had to help.
“Cam, why would I think of you as a victim?”
Everything about him seemed to drop, and Jo’s mind went back to that field earlier today where nothing weighed anything. Where on a lazy day with an audience of bees and flowers she contemplated love and gravity. Right before her eyes, the one she loved most was falling. His eyes fell to their hands. His shoulders slumped. His mouth turned down at the corners. Before he spoke the words, she somehow knew it was much too late to catch him because Cam had fallen long ago.
“Jo, I was molested.”
Chapter Eighteen
Cam had dragged those words out, and they’d left behind a sunken wake, a heavy trail as deep as a ditch. He had known this moment would come, that Jo would dig until she hit the truth at the very bottom of him. She must feel now like she had fallen into a dark, empty well with no way out.
Okay, maybe that was just him.
He wanted to escape. He wanted to run from the pity and the disgust he expected in her eyes, but he couldn’t move. The fireflies bumping against the mason jar hypnotized him, mesmerizing in the summer night. What was so great about light? Light exposed. It hurt your eyes. It showed your flaws.