Everything is a mess.

Starting with having someone who isn’t Cameron, with her body pressed up against me and her arms around my shoulders. It makes me cringe and it takes everything in me not to shove her off of me. She doesn’t feel the same, she doesn’t smell the same, and her hot breath in my ear giggling and whispering how drunk she is solidifies that fact. I have to wrap my arm around her waist as we move into the room just so she doesn’t stumble and fall in those fucking six-inch heels she’s wearing and make a fool out of herself.

I’m going to kill my brother for saddling me with his date because he was tied up at work. Why he decided to tell her to meet him at my house is beyond me, and I had no choice but to agree to his pathetic begging on the phone when he called to say he was running late. It was either bring her to the dinner so he could meet us here later, or stand in my kitchen half the night and continue watching her drink herself into a coma with the bottle of tequila she pulled out of her purse after I let her in the door.

Right now, I’m wishing I would have let her continue drinking and left her passed out on my couch. I have too much on my mind to worry about making sure this woman doesn’t throw up on someone’s shoes or fall down in the middle of the dance floor.

In the span of twenty-four hours, my life went to shit and I have no one to blame but myself. I’m an idiot. Such a fucking idiot.

After getting that text from Bobby, hightailing it out of camp and getting him off the ledge of wanting to take a drink, I wanted nothing more than to get back to Cameron and pick up where we’d left off, hating that I had to walk away from her when we were right on the edge of something, but I couldn’t let that guy down, and I knew she’d understand. Then I got back to camp, I saw her crying over Aiden, and it all blew up in my face.

“Hey, asshole. Who’s the skank?”

My head jerks to the side to find Amelia standing next to me, shooting daggers at the woman still plastered to my side.

“I’m Bethany!” she chirps, holding her hand out toward Amelia, too drunk to realize she was just insulted.

“Don’t care,” Amelia tells her in a bored voice, ignoring Bethany’s outstretched hand and turning her angry eyes to mine.

“Sorry I’m late. What did I miss?”

Jason appears on the other side of Bethany, and she immediately unwraps her arms from around my shoulders and throws herself at my brother, causing him to stumble backward a few steps before bracing himself and the woman teetering on her heels of death by placing his hands on her hips to steady her swaying body.

“You missed about a gallon of tequila shooters,” I tell him. “You owe me so big right now it’s not even funny.”

Jason laughs, but the smile on his face quickly dies when he notices Amelia standing on the other side of me.

“Wait. This is your date?” she asks him, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at him.

“I…um…well…” Jason stutters, trying to untangle himself from Bethany, who isn’t so much holding on to him because she wants to, but because she has to.

“Would it have killed you to ask me if I wanted to be your date?” Amelia asks in annoyance as Jason continues standing here staring at her with his mouth wide open. “Forget it. I’ll deal with you later.”

She looks away from my brother and his drunk date to point at me.

“You. Come with me.”

She whirls around and stomps off, and I decide to follow her when I hear gagging noises coming from Bethany. Leaving my brother to deal with his own mess, I quickly move through the crowd of people until I catch up with Amelia standing by the opening of the tent opposite the main door I just came through.

“You are so lucky right now that woman was not really your date,” Amelia tells me as soon as I get to her. “You’re going to have to do a lot of groveling with Cameron, but I’ve got your back.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about, but the more she speaks, the angrier I get.

“I don’t need you to have my back. I’m sure Cameron is fine.”

Amelia’s eyes narrow as she stares at me.

“You’re sure Cameron’s fine? Are you kidding me right now? I have never seen her so devastated as when you walked in that damn door with another woman on your arm. What the hell has gotten into you?” she asks.

“Maybe I finally realized I wasn’t in the mood to be her fucking rebound from Aiden!” I fire back, clenching my hands into fists when the truth of the words I just said hit me like a ton of bricks.

I feel sick to my stomach saying something like that out loud, but now that it’s out, I can’t take it back. I hate myself for being so damn jealous of my best friend, but I can’t help it. It hurts everything inside of me that he got what I’d always wanted, and will never have.

Her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water and I angrily shove my hands into the front pockets of my pants. I don’t want to have this discussion right now, especially with Amelia. She has no idea what’s going on and she’d never understand.

“You’re a goddamn idiot,” she finally mutters, shaking her head at me.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You, are a goddamn idiot!” she tells me, her voice rising, not giving a shit if people in our general vicinity can hear her.

“You could never, in a million years, be Cameron’s rebound from Aiden.”

“Really?” I scoff. “And why is that?”

She takes a step closer to me and lowers her voice, the anger suddenly gone from it and replaced with sincerity.

“Because Aiden was always her rebound from you. You goddamn idiot,” she says again with a sigh. “And really, you can’t even call what she had with him a rebound. Three dates in the span of two weeks right after you left, each one more awkward and weird than the last, until they finally realized it was a dumb idea. And don’t even get me started on the guy she dated in high school that she ran into after Aiden died. She keeps that guy so far at arm’s length it’s a wonder he can even hear her when she speaks. Jesus, do you two ever talk about anything even remotely important?”

What the hell is happening right now? There’s no way what she’s saying is true. No fucking way.

“They were in love. He was getting ready to propose. Aiden told me that himself and she still wears his fucking ring on her finger,” I reply lamely, my heart beating faster and my body breaking out into a cold sweat.

“Uh, they definitely were not in love,” Amelia laughs. “Cameron was heartbroken and lonely after you left, and Aiden wanted to get laid. The farthest he got was trying to hold her hand at dinner at a fancy restaurant and she freaked out and yanked it away, knocking over an entire bottle of wine, which spilled onto his lap. Two weeks later, she introduced him to a single mother here at camp, and he fell head over heels in love with her and her daughter. He proposed to her a few months before he died. Yeah, that ring she wears was from Aiden. It was a birthday present from him.”

No, no, no. This is not happening. This can’t be happening. Why in the hell didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he come right out and say he was in love with someone other than Cameron and that he was going to marry someone other than Cameron?

I’m pissed at Aiden for all of thirty seconds. Half a minute is all it takes for my anger to morph into guilt. He never told me, because I never asked. I never once asked him for more details. I never once asked him to tell me all about the woman he was in love with, because I assumed it was Cameron. I knew he’d asked her out right after I left, and I couldn’t handle knowing anything about it. I couldn’t stand hearing all of the details about what was happening between them. Imagining everything they were doing together was bad enough; I was the worst friend in the world, all because I couldn’t see anything through my jealousy. I stayed away for four years because I couldn’t handle coming home and seeing Cameron happy with someone who wasn’t me, even if he was my best friend.

“And if you’re still doubting things, take a look around you, my friend. Anything look familiar?” Amelia asks.

I finally take the time to look around the tent and all the air in my lungs rushes out of me like someone punched me in the stomach.

Red, purple, and green decorations brighten every inch of the tent, magnolia blossoms sit on every table, people walk by with plates heaping with barbecued brisket, and going by the mouthwatering smell alone, I know it’s from Lewis’s. The band that’s been playing at the far end of the tent suddenly catches my eye, and my hands start to shake when I realize who it is that’s playing.

“Like I said, you’ve got a lot of groveling to do,” Amelia reminds me. “The last thing Cameron said before she walked out of here was something about how you once told her you’d never bring a girl here who wasn’t as special to you as this camp was. I’ve forgiven you now that I know she wasn’t your date, but Cameron is going to be a whole other story. I’m not kidding you when I say I’ve never seen that woman so devastated.”

She filled this place with everything I told her I’d missed when I was overseas. She did this for me, and I devastated her.

Jesus, I’m a fucking idiot.

“She went that way, heading towards the stables,” Amelia tells me, pointing behind her to the opening of the tent.

I don’t even take the time to thank her. I take off running out into the rain, splashing through puddles, moving as quickly as I can across the lawn until I get to the stables. Shaking the rain off of me as I walk inside, my eyes roam around the dimly lit area in search of Cameron. The main overhead lights have been shut off for the night, and the only lights to see by are the strands of large lightbulbs hung from the rafters above my head.

Moving quickly down the long hallway, I pass by all of the horse stalls until the hallway opens up into a large tack room. My feet come to a stop when I see Cameron. Her back is to me and she’s leaning her elbows on the railing of the gate that leads into the indoor arena, staring at the huge, empty room.

I watch her head drop forward and I hear her let out a sigh before she turns around to face me, and I realize she must have heard my footsteps pounding against the concrete as I made my way to her.

Nothing prepares me for what I see when she turns around. The green dress she’s wearing is the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen, even though it’s wet from the rain and the skirt is clinging to her thighs. Wet pieces of her long blond hair are stuck to her neck and her shoulders, and even though she’s so beautiful standing here fresh from the rain, that’s not what makes it so hard for me to breathe right now. Seeing the devastation Amelia told me about written all over her face, and the tears streaming down her cheeks, mixing with the splatters of rain that fell down on her, is what stabs a knife right through my heart.

Neither one of us says a word as I continue walking toward her and then stop again a few feet away.

“You were never in love with Aiden,” I state in a low voice.

She looks at me like I’m insane before angrily swiping the tears off her cheeks.

“What? No. Of course I was never in love with Aiden. Are you serious right now?”

I nod, taking another step forward.

“Did you really mean it when you said you didn’t know how to be happy without me here? That you didn’t know how to live without me?” I ask.

Her eyes narrow and she crosses her arms in irritation in front of her.

“You’re an asshole. I can’t believe you’re asking me this. I can’t believe what an idiot I was,” she complains.

“Just answer the question. Did you mean it?”

She just shakes her head at me and I watch her cheeks flush with anger.

“Cameron, did you mean it?”

“OF COURSE I MEANT IT!” she finally shouts, throwing her hands up in the air.

I take another step toward her.

“But it doesn’t matter, does it? None of it matters,” she continues, the anger in her voice quickly replaced with a small sob that breaks my heart. “I asked you to give me a reason. Four years ago, I asked you to give me a reason and you didn’t. You pushed me away and you left. And here we are, back where we started, and it’s happening all over again. I’m making a fool of myself and making wishes that will never come true. You took yourself out of the game five years ago and now you’re doing it again. I can’t do this anymore, Everett. I can’t play these games anymore.”

I stare into her eyes. I watch the tears fall down her cheeks, and I know after this moment, there will never be any going back. I can’t do this anymore either.

“It was never a game for me. Ever.”

With one final step, I close the distance between us. In one quick move, I grab her face in my hands, pull her toward me, and slam my mouth against hers.