Chapter Twenty-One:
I Never Said It Was a Good Plan
I had no idea where I was or what time it was when I woke again. Disoriented, I glanced around the barren room, looking for a clock and suddenly remembered. Disarrayed images of what had happened started filtering through in pieces—gunfire, a wicker chest, the guard’s dead eyes, Rocco … I gulped to force back down the knot that was growing in my throat and got up.
From the small, downstairs windows, I could see that the sun was up and that Cameron was gone. I climbed down the creaky stairs just as he was walking through the door, grocery bags in hand.
“The corner store didn’t have much, but it’ll do us for a while,” he announced, breathless. He placed the bags on the table and rushed to meet me at the stairs.
He cradled my face in his hands and surveyed it with worry, passing his thumbs over my puffy and scratched cheeks. I forced a cheering smile.
“Mornin’,” he whispered, kissing me on the forehead without reserve.
He went to put the groceries away while I worked to get my bearings back. I made my way to the table, tightly holding onto the falling waistline of his pants and almost tripping on the hems that were dragging on the floor. Cameron chuckled at the sight of me and nodded his head toward the bathroom door. “I brought your bag in if you want to change,” he said, simultaneously glancing at me with questioning eyes.
We sat over breakfast. Even after Cameron’s insistence, I couldn’t eat anything, but I did manage to guzzle down a glass of milk, which soothed my raw throat. The stillness at the table was making me self-conscious, particularly when Cameron kept intently staring at me the whole time. I could tell that something was bothering him—with my damaged face, my untamed hair, I must have looked like I had walked off a safari. I swallowed the rest of my milk and went to shower. When I strolled out of the washroom, Cameron was sitting on the stairs, waiting for me. Whatever was bothering him hadn’t been satiated with my slightly improved appearance.
I took a seat a few stairs below him and struggled to get my wet locks into a ponytail. Cameron didn’t wait another second before scuttling down to the stair behind me, his legs to my side, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pulling me in. Something had changed. His emotions had become … unrestrained. I couldn’t explain it. Whatever the reason for the change, the new, uninhibited Cameron disarmed me. The ache in my heart still throbbing, I found it to be what I needed most.
I closed my eyes and let my head fall back.
“Emmy,” he murmured into my ear.
“Hmmm …”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Uh, huh …”
“Yesterday, when we went back into the house to pack your stuff and leave, how come you had a bag already packed?”
My eyes shot open. With everything that had happened, I had completely forgotten about the eavesdropped conversation between Cameron, Carly, and Spider.
“What is it?” he asked when I wasn’t answering. “Your body just went stiff.”
I’d forgotten who I was talking to. “I don’t want you to be mad.”
“Why would I get angry?” His body had stiffened too. I hesitated saying anything else.
“I promise I won’t get mad,” he told me finally. “Can you please tell me what’s going on?”
While I was playing with my hands, trying to find a way to not ruin the moment or the change in him, he was growing impatient.
“Emmy, you’re making me nervous—”
“I know you were going to let Spider kill me,” I blurted under his pressure.
“What?” He jumped so high that he almost sent both of us tumbling down the stairs. “… What are you talking about?”
Cameron looked at me in disbelief, like he genuinely didn’t know what I was talking about. It was easy for me to forget all the bad stuff when I was cocooned in his arms—perhaps it had the same effect on him?
Turning my face to his and taking one immense inhalation, I told Cameron everything I had overheard, word for word, without emotion. All of it seemed like a dream now. While the story progressed, I watched his facial expressions change from confused to incredulous to deeply disturbed.
“I can’t believe that you actually think I’m capable of doing that,” Cameron said, shaking his head in amazement. He moved me to the side so that he could see me clearly. “Emmy, no matter what you did or said, no matter how bad things get, that would never happen. No one would ever be able to convince me that getting rid of you is the solution. Not Carly or Spider. Not even you.”
“I didn’t imagine it,” I quickly defended, heat building behind my ears.
“What you overheard had nothing to do with you.”
“I snuck around … I talked to the guards … I didn’t follow orders …” I wasn’t exactly sure why I kept arguing with him. Was I trying actually trying to convince him that getting rid of me was a good plan?
“Yes. You did do all of those things,” he chuckled. “You and Frances have that in common.”
He was still holding on to me. When I had determined that he wasn’t going to let go, I relaxed and spoke up. “Frances?”
He brought his lips to my ear again. “Spider thinks that Frances has been spying on us and selling our secrets to rival gang members. She sneaks around the farm and asks the guards a lot of weird questions about us, about our business.”
“So you ordered her killed? She’s a mother! She’s my nephew’s mother!”
Cameron shushed me. “She’s not who you think she is, Emmy. Daniel lives with Frances’s mother full-time while Frances lives in a big apartment downtown. She disappears for days at a time. I’ve been giving Frances’s mother money every month just to keep food on their table and a roof over Daniel’s head. Frances hemorrhages any money that we give directly to her.”
Though this slightly changed my perspective on Frances, it didn’t make Cameron’s decision any easier for me to understand. After seeing my brother grow up without his mother, I knew how much children needed their mother, no matter what she was like.
I looked him in the eyes. “Cameron, she’s still his mother—”
“Don’t worry,” he hushed after reading my face. “I don’t think she’s smart enough to pull something like that off without getting caught. I was really tired when I agreed to it, but called the whole thing off the next morning.” He pulled me in closer. “After spending three nights up, worrying, wondering whether your fever was ever going to break and whether I should give away our hiding place to get a helicopter to take you to a hospital, I was ready to agree to anything by that point. Spider used my weakness to get what he wanted.”
“He must have been upset,” I said, aware of how close his face was to mine, glad that I had brushed my teeth.
“He’s been wanting to get Frances out of our lives for a long time. He hates how she still gets to Carly.” He shrugged. “He’ll get over it.”
After everything that had happened, I needed him more than ever. I considered bringing my face a few inches forward to bridge the gap while Cameron continued to shake his head in disbelief. “So how were you planning to run away exactly?”
I told him about my plan to climb down the balconies and trek through the woods. This caused him to burst into laughter.
“You were going to climb down with that huge duffle bag and drag it through the woods with you! The bag weighs more than you do! You have enough clothes in there to last you three weeks … But no water, no food. How exactly were you planning to survive out there?”
I could feel my face turning red. “I never said it was a good plan.”
“I need to take you camping someday. It’d be a hoot to watch you try to survive without a hot shower or electricity,” he teased. “Anyway, didn’t I promise you that I was going to bring you home safely?”
“It was getting hard for me to decipher between truth and lies.”
He was serious again. “Maybe I haven’t always told you everything but I never lied to you.”
“Oh?” It was done in a sort of clumsy way, the way I brought my lips to his. When I bolted in, he jerked sideways and our foreheads nearly smashed together. But I didn’t let this dissuade me. I pressed my lips hard against his. Then I forced myself to pull away to see the effect. Cameron’s cheeks were flushed and he was a little winded.
“Does it mean anything to you or am I still just wasting my time?” I asked him.
He caught on and smiled slyly. “It doesn’t mean anything. Just a kiss, nothing else.”
I leaned in again. This time he leaned in too so that we met in the middle. It was soft, not so clumsy. After a while, he gently pulled my face away and held it inches away from his. “I did lie about that,” he admitted. “I wondered for a long time what it would be like … but when I finally kissed you that night, I knew I was in really big trouble. And then I heard about that Griff guy being up in your room, alone with you, I felt like someone had just stabbed me in the stomach. I panicked. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”
I understood what Cameron was saying—I had felt exactly the same way when he had told me that the kiss had meant nothing to him. I winced at this memory but quickly recovered. “Actually, I kissed you,” I corrected. “And next time you feel panicked like that, will you talk to me instead of turning into a jerk?”
“Only the truth from now on,” he said.
“Promise?”
He chuckled. “I promise.”
I kissed him again. But when I tried to seal the space between our bodies, Cameron seized up and leaned back. “I have to check on Meatball,” he announced while my lips were still on his. Then he lunged past me and practically ran to the door, where he stood waiting. He forced a reassuring smile but the crazed look on his face confused me.
I went to meet him and tried to mask the ache in my voice. “Where’s Meatball?”
He shrugged. “Swimming. That’s all he does when we come here.”
“Swimming?” I didn’t remember seeing a swimming pool.
Cameron’s eyes sparkled. He took my hand and we went outside. We walked to the back of the cottage and followed the beaten path into the woods. Being in the woods reminded me of something I was trying hard to forget. If he hadn’t been holding onto my hand, I would have turned around, running.
“How did you find me yesterday? I ran pretty far into the woods, but you still found me?” I regretted asking the question as soon as it hit my lips. All the horrifying images of that night started rushing through my mind. I choked back the tears and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
“Meatball caught your scent by the pool. He started sniffing around and bolted for the woods. I knew he had found you, I ran after him.” He took my hand to his lips as we continued to make our way among the trees. “You really scared Meatball when you shot at him. I don’t think he was expecting that kind of welcoming after running all that way. Good thing you have no hand-eye coordination,” he said. Then he considered with more seriousness, “I’ll have to teach you how to shoot. You should know how to protect yourself better than that.”
“Cameron,” I said, “I was really far out. He couldn’t have possibly followed the scent that far.”
“Meatball has spent his whole life learning to follow your scent. Finding you is his favorite game. He hunted you down through a huge crowd of people the first day we met in the projects, remember? You’re like his real-life Where’s Waldo.”
The pathway led to a dock and a pond. There were trees and brush that came right up to the water’s edge and large lily pads floated on the surface with pink and yellow flowers attached to their underwater stem. The sun was peering through the break in the trees, and the beam of light glittered on the water. It was magical.
Meatball was swimming around in a circle; his head was the only thing that could be seen out of the water. He looked like a big muskrat.
We lay on the dock with our hands crossed over our stomachs enjoying the sunshine while Meatball continued his tireless swim in circles.
I looked at the blue sky through the leaves of an overhanging tree. “What is this place anyway?”
“It’s my place,” he said with emphasis. “I come here whenever I need to get away and be alone. It’s the only place that no one else knows about but Meatball and me—and, well, you too, now.”
“Spider and Carly don’t know about this place?”
“Nope.”
I paused, debating whether I was going to ask the next question that I really wanted to ask. It came out well before I had time to dwell on it. “What about that Manny girl? Did you ever bring her here?”
From my peripheral, I could see Cameron break a smile. “No, Emmy. No one.” He continued to smile at the sky and, after a few minutes, he turned his body toward me, resting his head on his fist.
“Well?” he asked staring at me with amusement.
“Well, what?” I tried to make my voice sound as innocent as possible.
“I know you’ve been dying to ask me about Manny. So, go ahead. Ask away. Nothing but the truth.”
“Do you love her?” As the question came out of my mouth, I realized that I had asked him the same question that she had asked Cameron about me.
“At some point I think I might have liked her a lot, but no, I didn’t love her.”
“But she spent the night with you?” I turned to him and confessed, “I saw her T-shirt in your drawer.”
“Yes, she has spent the night,” he answered, alert.
“With you?” My voice sounded more jealous than I had planned to let on.
“Yes, with me.”
“More than once?”
Cameron remained silent.
“Nothing but the truth remember?” I reminded him.
He sighed. “Yes, more than once.”
“Were there other girls like her?”
“I never brought anybody else to the farm,” he replied.
“But you have been with other girls,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” he admitted. He watched me carefully. “This bothers you, doesn’t it?”
It bothered me as much as a broken nose or a nail in the head would bother me. “A little,” I de-emphasized.
“Does this make you think that I don’t really love you?” he wondered with worry.
That too. “I don’t understand how you could be with someone in that way and not love them.”
Cameron turned his eyes to the sky. When I thought that he wasn’t going to answer me, his voice came back to me. “It was easy for me to check up on you when Bill first died. I’d go watch you play soccer at school or watched while you shopped in the mall. When I was sure that you were okay, I could leave without thinking twice about it. But then I started to want to see you more and more. That’s when things got really weird. I watched you go to rich people parties … I wanted you to have all those things in your life …”
A shadow had crept over Cameron’s face. He took a long breath before he turned his eyes back to me. “The hardest times for me were definitely when a new guy came around to sweep you off your feet. Every time I thought for sure that this guy or that guy was going to stick and be the guy that you’d fall in love with. That’s when I’d decide to go out and live my own, abnormal life. Find some girl to keep me company.” He took another moment, then he chuckled. “Maybe I didn’t throw them off my bed like some people, but the girls never lasted.”
“But did you have to do that with them?” I asked half-teasingly, trying to change the mood back.
I was grateful when he laughed. “Emmy, I’m a gang leader. The people I do business with would think there was something wrong with me if I didn’t do that.”
His face was near mine and he was smiling. I took advantage and kissed him. It was strange for me to want someone so much it hurt. He let me kiss him for a second, but then he withdrew and rolled on his back turning his eyes to the sky. I felt like I had just been slapped in the face.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing, Cameron.”
Cameron turned to me in shock. “What?”
“I know I’m not as pretty as Manny,” I told him, holding back tears.
“Is that what you think?” he huffed.
“I don’t know what I think. One minute, you’re hugging me, the other minute you’re running away. I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.”
He sighed. “Emmy, I wish you could see yourself, see what I see, see how beautiful you are. Have you never noticed how everyone’s head turns to watch you enter a room?”
“I’m sure the red hair and polka dots have nothing to do with that,” I mumbled, sarcasm seeping through.
“Where did you get such a screwed-up view of yourself?” His temper flared a little. “You’re beautiful, Emmy. Why can’t you see that?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. Cameron hadn’t been there when kids were trying to outdo each other on finding new nicknames for me or when they were taking bets in high school on whether I had red hair, all over.
He took a breath, reached over and swept a lingering hair away from my face. “For me, there’s no one else but you.”
A tear escaped the corner of my eye and slid down the side of my nose. “Then why won’t you kiss me?”
His eyes were piercing. “Do you know how hard this is for me? I want to kiss you. I want to wrap my arms around you, never let you go.”
“You’re making me so confused.” This time I let myself roll onto my back in exasperation. Something blocked my sun. I opened my eyes to see Cameron leaning over me. He was wretched. All the features of his face were pulled in pain.
“I thought I lost you,” he told me in a murmur. “When I got back to the house, when I found Rocco … Emmy, I started looking for your body too, and when I didn’t find you … I thought for sure they had taken you, which would have been just as bad. I had no idea where to start looking or how I was going to get you back—”
“But you did get me back. You found me.”
“I found you,” he agreed. “But look at what I’ve done to you. Everything that you’ve been through, that you’ve seen … you would have never had to go through that if it wasn’t for me. The fact that you’re here is pure luck. I’m not going to make this worse for you by making us more complicated. I haven’t changed my mind, Emmy. Once this blows over, you’re going home.” There was no hint of doubt in his voice.
“When?” I asked, my voice shuddering.
“I don’t know. As soon as it’s safe for you.”
I left it alone—for now—but I wasn’t going to give up. Since Cameron had recognized that there was an us, I still had hope.