Cam ran between two rows of tents, his feet hitting the hardened dirt, the dew-drenched morning air in his lungs. His thighs burned from the pace he kept, but he didn’t let up, savoring the acidity building in his muscles. He ran, his mind focused on the rhythm of his breathing, the thump of his footfalls, and the pulsing of his heart as it kept time.
This felt normal, this running through camp in the early hours of the morning. The camp’s residents stared at him, not yet accustomed to seeing the crazy white man running past their tents without an emergency or a destination. Children whispered to their moms and giggled behind their hands; he’d have to find candy somewhere in Admin Block before he came out again.
He slowed to a walk as he approached the dirt road separating the wider camp from Admin Block and strolled across to the gate guarded by a UN peacekeeper. He raised his hand in greeting and made to turn toward his cabin when the peacekeeper yelled and flagged him down.
“Sir, were you outside Admin Block?” the peacekeeper asked, and Cam glanced pointedly back in the direction he’d come from.
“Uh, yeah. You saw me cross the road, right?” He pointed to where he’d emerged from the closest row of tents.
“Sir, it is not permissible to be outside of Admin Block without a peacekeeping escort.” The peacekeeper frowned in disapproval.
Cam scowled. “Is that the standard operating procedure here? I was only going for a run.”
“I understand, sir. But it is standard operating procedure. No one must leave Admin Block without a peacekeeping escort.” The guy wasn’t kidding.
“Since when? Is security really that bad?”
“Yes, sir.” The peacekeeper nodded, face solemn. “It is very bad. Militia groups are active in this region, and the fighting is intensifying. It is not safe to be without armed escort. It is for your safety, sir.”
Well, fuck. Cam gave the guy a terse nod and turned away, feeling like a suffocating blanket had been dropped on his head. So much for the stress-relieving run. His skin prickled at the thought of not being able to escape, to hand out candy to kids and engage in one small piece of normalcy. His darkness called, and Cam fought the urge to give in to its enticing invitation.
He had a shit-ton of meetings to coordinate, community leaders to empower, and missing inventory to investigate. As alluring as his darkness was right then, he couldn’t afford to indulge. He gritted his teeth and reached into his pack for a smoke. Nicotine would have to do for now, but as it flowed through his veins, it barely took the edge off the biting hunger for his darkness.
He leaned heavily against the wall next to the door of his cabin, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched. He could do this. He had to do this. Just one day. Patsy could help if he needed some time to himself. He could skip dinner and skim off a little more of that bottle. And then he could crawl into the uncomfortable cot and give in to his darkness.
Cam forced himself to walk at a reasonable pace into the main administrative building, backpack slung over his shoulder, hoping to find the common work room empty and the internet connection strong—neither were guaranteed. He was already fifteen minutes late for their Skype date, and Ty didn’t have much time before he had to go on air.
The common office shared by temporary staff was thankfully deserted and Cam pulled his laptop out at the desk set farthest from the door. The ethernet cable slid into its socket with a click.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered as the laptop chugged away, attempting to connect. Seconds ticked by as the dots blinked to the left and then to the right. He tapped his fingers against the table and bounced his knee as he waited for the line to be established. When his Skype contact list finally loaded, he clicked on Ty’s photo, the polished one that ANN had taken a couple of weeks ago. Pale blue rings emanated from Ty’s photo, smiling at him, as Skype dialed across the internet.
“Come on, pick up, pick up.”
The screen froze suddenly, then a burst of static came through his headphones, and then Ty was there with his perfectly made hair, dressed in a sharp suit, lips curled up in a grin.
“Hey.” The low rumble filled Cam’s ears and made its way deeper, where it curled around his heart.
He wanted to smile back. Hearing Ty’s voice was probably the single best thing from this entire day, but it didn’t make Cam feel better, it made him feel worse.
“How’s it going?” Ty asked, his face filling Cam’s screen, but something looked different.
Cam cocked his head to the side and leaned in for a closer examination. “Are you wearing makeup?”
Ty’s forehead furrowed. “Shut up.” The sound filtering through Cam’s headphones didn’t match up with the image of Ty’s mouth moving. “I’m going on air in about fifteen minutes. I should be on set already.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.” Cam scratched his beard, itchier now that he was letting it grow out. “Camps don’t really run on predictable schedules. I got back here as fast as I could.”
“It’s okay.” Ty grinned, and Cam’s heart skipped a beat. Crazy how it was still doing that. “Tell me how your day’s going.”
Cam stopped himself from swearing and bit back a sigh. He glanced at the closed door and lowered his volume. “It’s like every other shitty day.” He leaned an elbow on the desk and stuck his fingers into his hair to prop up his head. “We’re trying to figure out what the fuck’s going on with the supplies inventory. Shit goes missing, and it’s not obvious where the leak is. We’ve already got twenty-four-hour guards at the warehouse, but either the guards are in on it or stuff is getting stolen elsewhere.”
A frown lowered Ty’s brows as Cam spoke. “Have you done background checks on the guards?”
Cam shook his head. “We don’t have resources for that. Not that it would help. The military police have been tasked with general camp security, but the local population is so interconnected here that everyone’s related to everyone somehow. I’d bet a million bucks that every single one of those guards is connected to some sort of armed militia group.”
“Don’t do that. You don’t have a million dollars.”
Cam’s lips curled of their own accord, despite his sour mood. Voices drifted into the room, and Cam eyed the door. They grew louder then softer as people passed by. He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Anyway, how are you?”
“Good. This place is ridiculous. I swear there’s some chocolate maker in the city who’s raking in the cash. The past four parties I’ve been to all had fucking huge chocolate fountains.” Ty shook his head.
Chocolate fountains. At four different parties. Meanwhile he was dealing with militia raids on humanitarian supplies. Ty felt farther away from him at that moment than ever before—separated not only by land and sea, but by experiences so vastly different that Cam couldn’t hope to relate. His darkness inched closer.
“How’s your, uh . . .” Worry marred Ty’s brow. “How are you hanging in there?”
Cam didn’t want to talk about that. It was easier to keep his head down and ignore it until his three months was up. “Um . . . it’s, uh . . .”
“Have you spoken to Dr. Brown?”
“Yeah, I have.” Cam shifted in his chair and readjusted the angle of his screen.
“And?”
“And I’m fine. I’m dealing with it,” he bit out.
“Cam?” There was no way Ty believed him.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, seeking out his darkness, yearning for its quiet comfort. “Really, Ty. I’m fine. It could be a lot worse.”
Ty’s frown deepened.
“Ty, you’re almost on,” came a voice in the background.
Ty glanced over his shoulder. “Shit. I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.” He adjusted his tie in the camera. “Skype tomorrow?”
Cam shook his head in short, abrupt movements. “Going to be out all day tomorrow. Maybe the day after. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay.” Ty opened his mouth, and the screen froze for several seconds before his next words came through. “Take care.”
“You too.” The connection went dead almost before Cam could finish speaking.
He closed the laptop with a little more force than was necessary and ripped the headphones from his ears. The darkness descended as the dichotomy tore at him. Chocolate fountains; fucking chocolate fountains.
His hands shook as he packed up his laptop and stood on unsteady feet. He needed a smoke, a whiskey, and a bed—in that order. He didn’t remember walking back to his cabin; he put one foot in front of the other and held on tight to his backpack until he reached the relative safety of privacy.
The first drag of the cigarette brought the darkness wrapping more tightly around him, drawing him deeper. His lungs filled with nicotine until the cigarette burned to the butt, and then he went inside for the alcohol. Swigging straight from the bottle, he stumbled onto the floor beside the bed. The alcohol was warm as it trailed down his esophagus, and he hugged the bottle to his chest, sinking into his darkness. Fucking chocolate fountains was the last thought he had before he let unconsciousness take him, right there on the floor next to the bed.
Cam stared at his contact list, waiting for the little green bubble to light up next to Ty’s photo. They had been missing their Skype dates all week. Either Cam couldn’t make it back from some meeting, or Ty was caught up in work or a party. If Cam was honest, he wasn’t really expecting Ty to make it to this one either—Ty apparently had a lot of parties to go to.
The door to the common office space opened, and Cam jumped in his seat, heart rate shooting through the roof, hands gripping the sides of his laptop in case he needed to use it as a weapon. A blonde head popped through, and Patsy smiled when she spotted him. He forced himself to breathe and stretch his fingers, trying to relieve the pressure in his joints.
“Hey, boss.” Patsy shut the door with her foot and came over with two beers in hand. “Sorry, did I startle you?”
“It’s okay.” His heart raced as he tilted the screen of his laptop down and took the bottle Patsy held out to him.
“Is that Tyler?” She nodded at the laptop as she plopped into a nearby chair. Patsy had wrangled the relationship status out of Cam early on when he kept disappearing for Skype dates, and then wouldn’t let it go after she found out the mysterious boyfriend was the hot journalist they’d both met all those months ago.
“Supposed to be.” Cam shrugged and took a swig of the watered-down brew. “He’s running late.”
Patsy nodded. “Must be hard, eh? Being back out here when you’ve got someone waiting at home for you.”
“He’s not at home.”
She shook her head and waved it off. “Same thing. You know what I mean.”
Cam readjusted his screen and ran the cursor around to keep the screensaver from kicking in. “Yeah, I do.”
Patsy shredded the label off her beer bottle, and as Cam watched, a thought suddenly occurred to him. “How much longer do you want to be out here for? Especially, after . . . you know.”
At Patsy’s surprised expression, it dawned on Cam that he didn’t usually ask these types of questions of his staff. A fresh wave of guilt hit him at the thought of having been so wrapped up in his own shit that he hadn’t noticed his staff struggling through some of the same things he’d experienced.
“After all the shit we’ve seen?” Patsy asked as they stared at each other, her words weightier after the tragedies they had both witnessed over the years, over the past few days. “I don’t know.” She shrugged and went back to shredding the label. “I guess until I can’t do it anymore. Isn’t that what everyone does?”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
She ran her thumb back and forth across the glass bottle, understanding written across her face. “Don’t know what else I would do instead,” she said with a dry chuckle.
She had a point. Not a huge market for transferable skills that included negotiating their way out of checkpoints, rationing people to within an inch of their lives, and praying that the donor gods pulled through before everyone starved. “Come work for me.” The idea made so much sense, Cam was surprised he hadn’t thought about it before.
“In New York?” Patsy laughed out loud, but Cam didn’t get what was so funny. She sighed with wistfulness. “Sure, boss. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to throw in the towel.”
Cam’s laptop beeped with an incoming call.
“I’ll leave you to lover boy.” Patsy smiled as she stood and let herself out.
Cam waited until the door clicked shut before he accepted the call.
“Hello?” His screen showed only Ty’s profile picture, the polished headshot from ANN.
“Hey,” came Ty, crackling over the line. “Sorry, I’m at this party, so I can’t do video.” He let out a long exhale, and Cam wasn’t sure if the tiredness he heard was fatigue or the quality of the call exaggerating the sound. “These fucking parties.”
“More chocolate fountains?”
“I wish. Strippers this time.”
Cam sat back, putting distance between himself and his laptop as if Ty sat inside it. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Another rush of air blew over mouthpiece.
“Sounds like a hard life.”
Ty barked out a chuckle. “Trust me. I’d rather be over there with you.”
“No. You don’t want to be here. No one wants to be here.” He eyed the door as if someone might burst in at his comment.
“Tell me.”
Cam sighed. He didn’t want to tell Ty. He wanted to forget all of it and go back to those days when it was the two of them in New York, living life together. Cam’s darkness swirled around him, and he drew it closer, taking another swig of his beer as he sought out that safe place.
“It’s getting dangerous here.”
“Dangerous how?”
There was no good way to explain the way the air rippled with nervous anticipation, how every new face looked suspicious, how bracing himself for bad news was a regular part of his day. How did he tell Ty that his darkness wasn’t in the background anymore, it was around him almost constantly, and he welcomed it because it was safer than the crazy shit happening out there?
Cam squeezed his eyes shut. “They found two guards shot dead the other day. Single bullet holes to their foreheads. One still had his eyes open when they found him, apparently. This was right outside Admin Block.”
“Shit.”
Yeah, shit was right. He sank deeper into his darkness. “They’re getting more brazen. Things are escalating.”
“The militia groups?”
“Yeah.” Cam rested his face in both hands, elbows braced on the desk.
“Shit.”
The line was silent, but Cam could practically hear Ty thinking, his mind running through options and alternatives. But what was the point? Things were fucked up, and it was beyond Cam’s ability to un-fuck them.
“What are the security protocols there? I mean, at what point do you evacuate due to security concerns?”
“Ha.” Cam scoffed. “The security protocol is Don’t die.” Even from across the miles, Cam was sure Ty was glaring at him.
“Have you talked to Dr. Brown about any of this?”
Fuck. He hadn’t spoken to her in several weeks. She’d been on vacation, and then he’d been putting it off. He took another swig of his beer and set the bottle down harder than he needed to.
“You’ve still been doing your Skype sessions, right?” Ty’s question landed like the accusation it was. “Cam? Hello? You still there?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m still here. Scheduling sessions with her has been . . . difficult, with the time difference and everything. Look. I’m fine. I’ll be okay.” He slouched down into his chair and crossed his arms around his stomach.
“You don’t sound okay.” A beat passed before Ty spoke again, quietly. “I’m worried.”
Cam’s heart skipped a beat. “Don’t be,” he said, equally quietly. “I’ll be fine.”
Ty huffed into the phone. “The more you say that, the less I believe you.”
“Well, what do you want me to say?” Cam shifted forward, leaning toward his laptop. “That people are getting murdered? That there are entire villages of people showing up every day because they’ve had their homes burned to the ground? That most of those people are children because their parents have been slaughtered? That the staff aren’t allowed to leave Admin Block without armed escort—”
Static burst into his headphones, nearly deafening him, and Cam yanked his earbuds out. Skype showed that he was offline now—the connection must have been lost. “Fuck!”
He picked up his laptop and shot to his feet with it gripped tightly in his fingers. But instead of smashing it across the concrete floor like he wanted, he forced himself to put it gently on the desk and slowly unfurl his fingers. His hands shook, his heart raced, his skin prickled. His darkness was taking over, and he needed to get out of here.
He downed the last of his beer and then slammed his laptop shut. Keeping his head down, he made a beeline for his cabin, his darkness drawing him away from consciousness with every step he took. The door was barely shut behind him before he slid down the wall into a heap on the floor, shivers running through him despite the heat of the early evening.
He dragged himself to where he hid his whiskey in the closet and took a couple of shaky sips, some precious liquid spilling out the sides of his mouth. Ty wanted to talk security protocols. Well, this was Cam’s security protocol: succumb to his darkness because that was the only way out of the hellhole he had willingly crawled back into.
The darkness pulled hard, and he welcomed it. He drew his knees up as he leaned back against the wall, and fell into the peace that came with unconsciousness.
“Hello? Hello! Cam?” Ty took the phone away from his ear. The screen showed the line had been disconnected and Cam wasn’t online anymore. He tried dialing him anyway, but the call wouldn’t even ring. “Fuck!”
He paced the narrow hallway outside the stupid party he’d gotten dragged to, hands planted on his hips. Cam’s last words rang in his head: people getting murdered, militia groups on the move, armed escorts for the staff.
“Hey, Tyler.” The door at the end of the hallway opened, and Ty’s new coworker, Neal, popped his head out. “What are you doing out here? Come on, the strippers are giving lap dances!”
Ty put all his anger and frustration into his fake grin. “Not my kind of strippers.”
Neal frowned and cocked his head, stumbling against the door and pushing it open. Blasting music from the party rushed into the small space. “What do you mean?”
“Never mind.” Ty shook his head and waved him off. “I’ll be back in a second. Need to make a phone call.” He held up his phone.
“Workaholic!” Neal accused him as he tried to pull the door shut. “Need to play more!”
Ty glowered after him. Playing more was the last thing he needed or wanted to do. He checked his phone again, and Cam was still offline. He tapped out a quick message, hoping Cam would get it before the end of the night, and then steeled himself.
The party consisted of about twenty guys, all at varying degrees of piss drunk, scattered about the hotel suite while three topless girls shook body parts in their faces. Glasses and bottles decorated every surface.
Ty didn’t know how they managed to keep up with the parties in this city. If it wasn’t drunken debaucheries like this, it was formal galas with the wives; but either way, there was some sort of festivity nearly every night of the week. Ty was exhausted, and he’d only been here a month.
He went and poured himself a drink at the bar; one more and he could probably slip out without his bureau chief noticing. With glass in hand, he stood by the window. If there was one thing the party had going for it, it was the view. At the top of the latest shiny hotel, the room overlooked the rest of the city, blinking in lights. Ty gazed out onto the nightscape, but he didn’t see a single thing. His hand sat in his pocket, fingers curled around his phone as he willed it to ping with a message from Cam.
Please, be safe. His heart lurched as he remembered the last video call they’d managed. Cam’s beard and hair were growing out, uneven in places. His eyes sunken in, ringed with dark circles, and the bright green of his irises were a dull, bland color. He’d lost a lot of weight—a frightening amount in such a short time.
Cam wasn’t fine, Ty knew that. He knew that Cam knew that. That goddamn sense of responsibility and unfounded guilt was going to kill him from the inside out, but there was nothing Ty could fucking do about it, and that was killing him from the inside out.
He rubbed the heel of his hand up and down the middle of his chest, trying to ease the tightness that constricted his lungs. It was an unsettling feeling, like an unwanted cloak was suffocating him, and no matter how hard he tried to shake it off, it only pulled in tighter.
Until a few months ago, he’d never given a second thought to being in a relationship; it figured that he’d go and fall in love with a guy who had the most dangerous fucking job in the world. Ty drained the rest of his glass and set it down on the closest flat surface he could find.
A quick glance around the room showed that everyone else was otherwise preoccupied, and he made his way to the door. He didn’t care if they saw him leaving; he was done with this party.
The elevator ride was insanely fast, and his ears popped a couple of times on the way down. Striding through the lobby, he headed straight for the line of taxis waiting to take their drunken expat passengers back to their gated community homes. The taxi pulled away, and the lights from the hotel faded into the distance. This must be what Cam’s darkness was like: like he was moving away from the light and into the dark.
Ty’s heart lurched again, and he pressed his hand to his chest. He would never get used to caring for someone so deeply that it hurt.
The taxi drove past a streetlight, and Ty caught his reflection in the momentary glare in the window. He didn’t look any different from six months ago, and yet he felt like another person. It dawned on him that a year ago, even six months ago, he would have loved this life: working hard during the day—international superstar journalist—then playing hard at night, with all the drinking, partying, and drugs.
But look at him now: sneaking out of parties so he could go home by himself and pine after his boyfriend. He rubbed a hand over his face. Come on, Cam, message back already. But nothing. No message pinging his phone. No green bubble next to Cam’s name.
The taxi pulled up to his place, and after paying the driver, Ty let himself inside. After shrugging out of his suit jacket, he opened his laptop and logged on to Skype. Still no Cam. With a cold beer out of the fridge, he settled onto the couch to wait. If he had to wait all night, he would wait.
Three beers later, he was still waiting. And as his eyes drifted shut, the bubble next to Cam’s name remained gray.