“What happened?” I asked, before the guilt could eat me alive in silence. “How did you get shot?”
“Mexican police,” he said unscrewing the next bottle. His eyelids were drooping, his gaze lazy and if I looked closer, full of something like contempt. “We were driving on the highway outside of Tampico. They took a shot. Lucky shot.”
“We?”
He nodded slowly. “Me and Gus.”
“Gus!” I exclaimed. “Where is he, is he okay?”
“He’s not shot, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said rather coldly. “He’s up in the hotel room.”
“You’re staying here?”
“Came all the way down to Veracruz to get you, Ellie.”
I blinked, tried to say something intelligible, but nothing came out. I took a seat on the corner of the bed and put my hand on his knee. He eyed it until I took it away. Something had changed so terribly much and I was so afraid to find out what it was. He was looking at me with the eyes of a stranger.
I gave him a weak smile. “Well, thank you for coming to get me. I don’t even know how you found me.”
A shadow seemed to fall across his face. He looked like a shell-shocked soldier, older, wiser, harder.
He licked his lips. “It wasn’t easy.”
“How is Sophia and Ben?”
He let out a sharp, cold laugh. “Oh, Sophia and Ben? Oh, they’re just fine. Especially since they got rid of their chump Camden.”
His voice was twisting, slicing, going to a bad place.
“What—”
He sat up straighter, sneering through the pain in his shoulder. “They’re absolutely fucking fantastic. Maybe a bit mad that their little set-up didn’t work. Oh yeah, Sophia, her brothers, probably your little boyfriend Javier, they were all in on it.”
My eyes widened at the term “boyfriend.” I felt like my lungs dropped through to the floor. No …
He went on, louder, his eyes watering, blazing angrily into mine, “Nothing like finding yourself on the front cover of the LA Times, wanted for assault and homicide. Nothing like having to run for your fucking life while trying to track you down!”
I couldn’t breathe at the memory of Javier reading the LA Times …
“Nothing like going to fucking Mississippi to find you and end up in your old fucking house that you shared with him and then learning what he had planned to do with you.”
I shook my head, the tears springing to my eyes, unable to make sense of what he was saying, where this was going. Though he was set up, he still went all the way to Ocean Springs to try and save me.
“What was the plan?” I whispered.
He leaned forward as if he was going to tell me a secret, eyes glinting. Darkness was falling fast outside of the window but I was too frozen to try to turn on the lamp.
“Javier brought you there to kill your parents.”
Ice. Pure ice.
“What, why?” It didn’t make any sense.
Camden shrugged with his good shoulder. “’Cause he’s fucking Javier and he’s fucking insane, that’s why. Just how brainwashed are you?”
“I’m not brainwashed.”
He laughed again, this one more brutal. “Oh, that’s a good one. So, tell me, what did he say or do to you to get you to come down here and kill Travis?”
“He told me he’d kill you,” I cried out in indignation.
“And you believed him?” he asked.
“Of course I fucking believed him! I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
“If you believed him,” he said softly, rolling the bottles of tequila back and forth over the bedspread covers. He smiled once, to himself. “If you believed him, that he would do such a terrible thing to me, that he had that power …” his eyes flicked up to meet mine, “why would you go ahead and fuck him?”
The world was pulled out from under me. One fell swoop, and everything I had to stand on, everything I thought was solid was gone. I was falling, straight into my guilt. The tears rolled down my cheeks, I struggled to keep the sobs inside.
I couldn’t look at him anymore. I couldn’t look at myself ever again.
“I’m so sorry, Camden.”
He waited a few moments, rolling the bottles back and forth, before saying, “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. I didn’t do it to hurt you. I don’t know why I did it.”
“Because you’re weak,” he shot in. Another half shrug. “And you never really gave a shit about me.”
“Camden, please!” I sniveled, reaching for his hand. He let me hold it, cold, no life in it for me. “Please, listen to me. I didn’t think you’d ever come for me. I thought you would go on in your new life with Sophia and Ben. I thought I was alone and I’d stay alone as I’ve always been and …”
“Nice sob story, Ellie Watt.”
“It’s not a sob story! It’s the truth.”
“Oh ye of little faith.”