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)
“You a sick motherfucker, Mac. Gimme my shit.”
The speed-of-light slap sent Mama to the floor, and Cam was afraid her fragile bones would shatter.
“What I tell you about back talk?” Mac reached a hand out, helping Mama to her feet. “I’ll take care of you, but we gotta have an understanding. I’m always in charge.”
“I know that.” Mama worked her jaw, sliding her tongue across her teeth, maybe to make sure she hadn’t lost another one. “You didn’t have to…”
Her eyes landed on Cam, and for a second, maybe half a second, she looked sad. She looked sorry. But then the scratching and twitching started, and Cam knew Mama wouldn’t help him. Mama needed her fix more than she needed him.
“Where my stuff, dammit?”
By the time Cam stood to his feet and had his pants pulled up, Mama was on the couch, skeletal hands trembling around that pipe, cupping a flare of light and smoke.
She didn’t look at Cam again.
“She failed you.”
Dr. Stein’s words pulled him up out of that hell. He took in the Persian rug under his feet and the soft cushions at his back. He knew he sat in the luxury of Dr. Stein’s office, but he still tasted blood on his lip and still smelled Mama’s smoke.
“Cam, why did you keep the gun?” The tiniest scrap of compassion poked through Dr. Stein’s therapist mask. “Why did you sleep with a loaded gun under your bed?”
Cam stewed in a pot of his own silence, feeling the skin fall off his bones the longer words eluded him.
“I needed it.”
“No, you didn’t need it. Mac is dead. You killed him.”
“But he could…She…” Cam’s words disintegrated, died in his mouth. Watery emotion boiling over in his throat. He would not do this. He wouldn’t let her do this to him.
“Cam, it’s okay. Let it go. Let it out.”
“Fuck!” The expletive exploded from his mouth. “I’m not doing this. She’s not worth it. She never cried for me. Never cared about me. Fuck her.” He glared at Dr. Stein. “That’s what I say. Fuck. Her. Sorry excuse for a mother. Sorry excuse for a human being. Druggie. Whore. Who needs her?”
“You did. You needed her to protect you, but she didn’t. That hurts.”
“No, it makes me mad. I’m not hurt. I’m not…” Cam choked on an ill-timed sob, squeezing his eyes shut, needing to catch the tears before they fell. “She didn’t do anything. She…she saw…and she…”
Cam’s shoulders heaved and shook. He clamped his hands over his eyes, but a deluge of tears, unrelenting, streaked down his face. Oh God. Pain sliced into his heart like a razor blade, nicking every tender place he’d tried to protect or ignore. How could she not even care? How could she see her own son on the floor naked and hurt by that monster and just smoke her pipe?
“She never even asked me about it.” Cam thought his voice would come out as a roar, but it was a whimper. Weak shit. He cleared his throat. “She could have asked me about it.”
“Your mother was an addict, Cam. So out of her mind she sold her body and sold out her own son for her fix. She didn’t protect you, and you had to defend yourself.”
“But I couldn’t ever defend myself. He got me every time.”
“Until you killed him.”
“I killed him.”
“He’s dead. He can’t hurt you anymore except for the ways you are allowing him to. In your dreams. In your life when you shut people out. When you shut Jo out.”
“But I couldn’t even kill him right because he came back and he was going to hurt Jo the way he hurt me.”
“But that was a dream.”
“I know that, but when I’m in the dream, it’s like I don’t know.”
“What if I told you Mac is dead?”
A ragged chuckle cut Cam’s throat.
“I’d say no shit.”
“You say that like it’s self-evident, yet you held a loaded gun to your girlfriend’s head because you thought she was Mac, so obviously, somewhere in your subconscious, you think he can still hurt you.”
“But he—”
“He cannot, Cam.” Dr. Stein’s eyes never left Cam’s face. “You can let him go.”
“Let him go? I’m not holding on to him. He’s the one who won’t leave me alone.”
“I think your subconscious manifests him out of your lingering fear that you are still not safe. That you still need protection. And as an extension of that fear, you think Jo needs protection, too. You never confronted Mac in your dream until he threatened Jo. Did you notice that?”
Shit. He hadn’t. Dr. Stein should charge double.
“No.” He dropped the concession into the quiet Dr. Stein allowed him.
“Cam, I ask you again. What do you want?”
Cam let the question echo in his head for a moment, sniffing and wiping his nose to regain some semblance of composure.