I waited for ten more minutes, wondering if I should take a chance and say anything or if I should just hunker down in the closet and prepare for the night in there. I wasn’t going to chance leaving her room now, not when she was being guarded and heavily watched.
I pulled out Gus’s cell from my pocket, checking it. He said he was going to see about getting a cell phone from a store in town, but so far I only had the line to his room. I’d have to call him in the morning and fill him in. I hoped he wasn’t sitting up worrying about us too much.
Finally I decided to risk it and I slowly pushed open the closet door. The room was dark except for the faded orange light of the illuminated walkway outside that came in through the flimsy curtains. I made my way over to the other side of the bed and got in, on top of the covers.
She rolled over to face me, her legs curled up in the fetal position, her hands clasped under chin. We looked at each other for a few seconds and in that time I wondered how I was ever going to get past this. I wondered how I was even going to try. She could give me her excuses but it wouldn’t make much difference. It didn’t take back what was done and what was done didn’t take the love away. It only made me want to try and compartmentalize it, to tuck it away somewhere deep inside, a hint of hope shining among all the wicked and soulless things. That was the only way I was going to be able to get through this – locking it up and hoping it stayed in there.
Normally I would have kissed her, felt her body beneath my hands, do all those things to her that I had been dreaming of. I had wanted it, needed it, craved it. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t touch her now, not now. I don’t even think she knew who her body belonged to at the moment. It certainly wasn’t me. And the sooner I got over that bit, the better we would both be.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I whispered softly. “They may be out there, but you’ll be safe right here.”
I could see in the gleam of her eyes that she needed me to come close, to put my arms around her and make everything alright. She was as vulnerable as I’d ever seen her. But I just turned over onto my back and let the tequila and heartbreak take me away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ELLIE
I woke up right before sunrise, when the room was a purple grey haze, the air was decidedly heavy. It was a weird atmosphere and it took me a few seconds to figure out where I was and who the man was next to me.
Camden. He was sleeping on his back, his glasses still on, lips parted. He was like a fragment from my dream, a faded portrait of masculinity, heart and ink. My heart, that beating organ that had been so elusive to me as of late, thumped loudly in my chest as I gazed at him, stirring me awake. How could I have been so careless with him?
In the end, he was here. Just like he said he’d be.
My mind fluttered over to Javier and the day ahead of me. I believed that Javier would never put me in any danger that I couldn’t get myself out of but now I was starting to second guess things. How bad was his need for revenge this time around?
And he knew … he knew this whole time what had happened to Camden, that he was on the run, and he’d never told me. I guess he knew if he had, I would’ve run away, I would’ve found some way to escape. With Camden on the run, Javier had no way of getting to him, of hurting him. I wouldn’t have been coerced into this whole fucking mess.
He had wanted me to kill my parents. It was a ridiculous notion and I could only figure that it was his way of trying to settle things with the people who hurt me. Maybe that’s why he was doing it to Travis too. Though romantics would argue that was a sign of true love, it sat wrong inside of me, like food that wouldn’t digest. Because as nearly noble as it seemed, why get me to do it?
I sighed and rubbed my hands on my face. I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do. Last night, seeing Camden in my room, I was ready to run to him, leave with him and Gus and try to make a break for it. I’m glad that we didn’t. Javier’s men would have shot them on sight. I don’t know what his plans for me would have been. Perhaps, knowing Camden was really gone this time, I would have broken completely.
I was being yanked in different directions and it was tearing me up inside. I never fell back in love with Javier, my body spoke a different language than that, but he still tricked me. He still made me believe in the lies. How deep did his feelings for me go? I knew they never went all the way to the roots, I’d told myself that, but some tiny part of me hoped for his redemption, that I somehow held the key to his soul.