One thing I hadn’t been aware of—Camry Hastings had a mean throwing arm. She also had a temper, but I’d known that.

But I hadn’t counted on this.

“You ass!” she shouted. “You think you can come back here and, oh, hey…I talked to your friend and I know she’s an addict and was trying to get me to fuck her for money, but she backed up your story so it must be true…and everything would be okay? Guess what, Jacen? It’s not okay! It’s not fucking okay!”

“Ah…” Hands up, I tried taking a cautious step toward her.

She looked around wildly.

Fuck. Her hand closed around a cup full of pencils and markers, half of them spilling out as she picked it up. The rest spilled out as she pulled her arm back, ready to lob it at me.

“Okay, okay…I’ll stay right here,” I said, freezing. That cup looked like it had been thrown on a pottery wheel or something. I didn’t fancy having to dodge that, too. “Look, baby…I’m sorry.”

She menacingly readied her projectile once more. “You don’t have the right to call me baby. Not after...” She shook her head. “I want you out of here.”

“No.” I lowered my hands, ready to let her throw the cup, every last pencil and marker that had fallen out, the damn kitchen sink if it would help. But I wasn’t leaving. “I was an ass. I was wrong. You’re right to be pissed. I know all of that.”

“Good. Glad I have your approval to be pissed.” She jutted her chin up, then pointed. “Now, get out. And do me a favor, tell Kaleb I’ll call him when I’m settled so he can know I’m okay.”

Denial raged inside me, but I shoved it—and the instinctive the hell you’re leaving—down. “Can we…just, Camry, I reacted badly because I was scared, okay?”

“I’ve already said this once, Jacen. It’s not okay.” She blinked rapidly, but it wasn’t enough to hide the tears I saw glinting in her eyes and I wanted to grab the cup from her and smash it over my own head.

As her hand fell to her side, the weariness in her expression cut me to the bone, and if things hadn’t ended so terribly, I might have been able to wait, might have been able to let her sleep.

But as it was…

“I was scared,” I said again. “In the past few years, I’ve lost everything that mattered to me. My career, my mother. I wasn’t ready to think about losing the only other person that matters.”

“I don’t care what your excuses are,” she said, her voice thick and rusty. “You wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t believe me, but you listened to somebody else, believed somebody else. And I’m supposed to believe that I matter to you? The hell I do. What happens the next time we get in a fight or you think I’ve done something and I haven’t? You don’t trust me—”

Tears spilled out.

Fuck this.

I moved toward her with long, purposeful strides, ignoring the yelp and ignoring the mug as it hit my shoulder.

Cupping her face in my hands, staring down at her battered, bruised, beautiful face, I said, “It’s not you I don’t trust, Cam. It’s me. I lost it the last time my life fell apart. Then there you were this morning…I didn’t know if I could handle losing you again.”

“I already told you—”

I cut her off with a kiss. Or what I tried to make a kiss. When she didn’t respond, I reluctantly raised my head. I wasn’t going to give up on us, but I wasn’t going to force myself on her.

“Why won’t you just go? I can’t keep doing this,” she whispered. “I’m tired, Jacen. I’m tired of being rejected, and I’m tired of everybody leaving me.”

“Then why do you want me to go? I’m here because I realize how fucking stupid I was…I realized how much of a coward I am. I’m sorry, Camry. Give me another chance,” I said, burying my face in her hair. “I love you.”

She froze then, her face taut, body still, yet an incredible tension vibrated inside her. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.” Easing back, I cupped her chin in my hand and lifted her face until we could see each other’s faces. “I love you. It wasn’t the thought that you’d done drugs that made me push you away. It was seeing you hurt, seeing you in that hospital bed. It was the thought of letting myself love you and lose you.”

She twisted out of my arms, and I let her go. As she paced away, I shoved my hands into my pockets and waited. What was I going to do if it was too late? What was I going to do if I’d destroyed the best thing I’d ever had just as I’d found it?

“I don’t understand you. How can you look at me at say you love me, but earlier you thought you were dealing with a junkie?” she asked, slicking her palms up and down the sides of her jeans.

Her clothes were wrinkled and worn, like she’d spent most of the past day in them. Her eyes were shadowed, so heavy with exhaustion, they made her skin look even more pale than usual, which made the bruise on her face stand out even more. I knew what had caused that now. Somebody had hit her. It was clear enough to see, if I let myself look. I didn’t understand how I hadn’t seen that already.

“Well?” she demanded, jutting her chin up. “No answer? You told me you didn’t want to be with a heroin addict. Now you seem to get that I’m not an addict, but what if I don’t want to be with somebody who doesn’t trust me?”

“I do trust you,” I said, a hollow ache spreading inside me. “I’m sorry I hurt you, but it’s me…it’s life…I don’t trust. I lost so much, Camry, and it made me a coward. After losing my career, my mom…most of my friends…fuck. What can I say? I’m chickenshit.”

Her eyes slid toward me, then away.

“I saw you lying there, battered and bruised and I lost it. I thought I couldn’t handle it if something happened to you. But all day long, I’ve been seeing how you looked when I left you in the hospital,” I said, taking a step toward her. “It’s a miracle I still have a job because my brain was not on work. I ended up thinking about everything but work, thinking about you, how you could have gotten hurt, what might happen, how I could help—even when I told myself I didn’t want to help, my brain, my gut, other parts of me were saying otherwise. Camry…I can’t say it enough, but I’m sorry.”

She turned away, her slim shoulders shaking.

“I’ll never doubt you again. I’ll do whatever I have to do to prove myself.”

Taking a step toward her, I waited.

“And what happens the next time you get scared, Jacen?” she asked softly.

“I’ll deal with it.”

“Really.” She turned then, facing me, her eyes hot and hard. “Let’s see about that.”

She picked up the phone then, something I hadn’t been expecting. She punched in something on the keypad and I watched, confused. Even when she hit the speaker button I was confused.

The confusion didn’t let up even when a hospital answered and she asked to be connected to the emergency room. While we were waiting, she looked at me.

“I was stuck with a needle,” she said.

“I know that.”

“But do you know the consequences?” she asked softly. “I do. Anybody in the medical field, anybody who’s ever had to deal with this shit, anybody who might have been exposed to HIV or hepatitis, they know it. You’re lucky you’ve never had to learn...”

A voice came on the line. Camry lifted a hand, then focused on the phone. “Hello, yes, I had to have blood drawn earlier, and I was told to call this number for the results. They said they put a rush on it.”

She gave her name while I processed what she had told me.

Shit. Son of a bitch. Shit. Fuck.

Head spinning, I shoved the heels of my hands against my eyes. She’d been stuck with a needle in a fucking crack house. Had it been dirty? Was she sick? Was she going to get sick?

“Rethinking things, are you?”

“No,” I said, dropping my hands and staring at her. “I’m getting scared and pissed—for you. How can you be so calm?”

“What good does it do me to panic?” she countered.

She focused back on the phone. “Yes…”

The woman’s voice came clearly through the speaker over the next few moments, relaying negative results for HIV, Hep A, and other acronyms I didn’t recognize.

I started to breathe a sigh of relief, but then she kept talking. “Are you familiar with the prophylaxis for these events?”

“I’ve already picked up the medications and started. When do I have to come back in?”

Camry kept her eyes on me as the woman gave her a time frame.

The call ended a few seconds, maybe a minute, later and Camry set down her phone, the expression on her face unreadable.

“You looked so happy for a minute, but you don’t get it. Those test results just mean I was clean. It doesn’t tell me shit about what might have been on the needle. So…sorry, Jacen. We still don’t know shit. For all I know, in a month, when they retest me I’ll have HIV or Hep A or both, or maybe several other things too. We just don’t know. Are you scared now?”

“I already told you I was pissed and scared,” I told her, understanding now what she’d been telling me. More, what she’d been going through. Alone. “And I’m still pissed and scared…for you.”

I moved to kiss her and she stopped me. “Don’t,” she said, turning her face away.

My heart gave a painful thud. “Do you still want me to leave?”

“I…” She huffed out a breath. “I haven’t decided. But that son of a bitch hit me in the face, and I’ve got a cut in my mouth. I can’t kiss you right now. I shouldn’t have let you kiss me earlier.”

Understanding dawned as she colored and looked away.

“I can’t do anything until I’m on these treatments for a while. Until…I know. Because I won’t do that to you.” She sucked in a deep breath, then met my eyes. “Because I love you, Jacen.”

“I’m not…wait…what did you say?”