“Well … I don’t have faith in people. You know that.”
“I know nothing!” he screamed. “I came all this way for you because I thought you were in trouble and you aren’t! You’re in the kind of trouble you want to be in. I. Know. Nothing. About you.” He seemed to have overexerted himself and lay back against the headboard, eyes rolling into the back of his head which he gently shook back and forth. “I’m so fucking tired of being shit on.”
“I know,” I said quietly. I looked down at my hands like they were foreign objects. “You are the last person I’d ever want to hurt.”
“But you did. Who else have you hurt today? Javier? Travis?”
“I don’t know who I’m hurting anymore. Camden, please, you have to believe me. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I slept with Javier because … because I loved him once. And he’s made me believe that I belong with him, with this kind of life, that this is the best that I can get.”
“He’s right.”
I looked up at him in shock. He was looking at me, our past written all over his face. I don’t think I’ve ever had a knife stuck in me so deep. I don’t know if I’d ever deserved it as much as I did then.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CAMDEN
I knew I hurt her.
Her face crumpled like a demolished building, pretty and strong in one moment, a ruin in the next. I knew she was hurting, feeling it, feeling everything. I knew she felt like absolutely nothing. Worthless. Rotten.
I knew she felt like I did. That’s what I wanted.
She looked away from me, the tears frozen in her wide eyes, always threatening to spill over but never quite doing it. No release.
As angry as I still was, as bitter as the air tasted, there was a pang of sorrow somewhere in my chest. For fighting so dirty and hitting so low. No matter what Ellie deserved, how broken and utterly messed up she was, I still loved her. Deciding to not love her anymore wasn’t going to be that simple.
Besides, I had to think about the big picture, about Gus, about Ellie. My feelings for her, what we had shared, didn’t even have to come into the equation. I came there to rescue her, to save her from all of this, and until the bitter end, that’s just what I was going to do.
I only wished it hadn’t hurt so much. I wished I had the strength inside me not to care.
“Ellie,” I said quietly. I reached for the last tequila bottle tossing it at her.
She caught it and stared at it numbly. She was in shock, dazed, lost in her thoughts and a million waves of remorse. I knew that look too.
I nodded at the bottle. “Drink up, baby.”
She quickly screwed off the cap and drained the contents into her throat. She coughed a bit but got it down then chucked the bottle across the room where it landed on the tiles with a clatter.
My back twitched in response. That was going to fucking kill me in the morning. I couldn’t tackle her in this place without hurting her. What was a little bit of extra pain for me in the long run? My shoulder was already killing me, my heart doubly so.
“Camden,” she started, looking down, shoulders slumped as she sat on the edge of the bed. For the first time since I’d known her, she looked frail, easy to break. It didn’t suit her. Another face of Ellie Watt, another person I’d have to get to know. “Were you … are you sure that Javier wanted me to kill my parents?”
I nodded. “You believe me, don’t you?”
She looked at me, all brown eyes. “Yes. I do. I’ll never doubt you again.”
I didn’t particularly trust that. Ellie doubted everyone and everything that ever crossed her path. It was hard for me to blame her when I saw it everywhere she went. Even now, she was discovering it with Javier, though she surely should have seen that coming. Oh, I couldn’t wait to get my hands around that man’s neck.
“I don’t understand why he’d do that, why not just tell me?”
“Gus and I have been trying to figure it out too. You did say he had a twisted code of ethics and that he kept his promises. Look what happened to Uncle Jim.” Yes, look what happened to Uncle Jim, I wanted to repeat for her benefit. He killed your uncle then you still slept with him. You fucked a murderer.
The rage was dying to sweep in again. This was going to eat me alive until the end of my life.
Only if I let it.