“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?”