He nodded. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page, that’s all.”
“Well I’m not on your page. Shit, Camden. I’m tired of fucking people over! I need to make amends and do things right for a change. If I endanger myself trying to help him, then so be it. He deserves my help and everything else he can get from me.” I flopped down on the bed, trying to calm myself, trying to pretend the next words wouldn’t hurt. “You don’t have to come with me, you know. Go rent a car, go to your Gualala. You don’t need to be dragged deeper into this sorry mess.”
He sat down beside me and grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze. “I’m not letting you go on your own. We’re in this together, until the ocean waves crash on our feet.”
I squeezed back, giving him a shy smile. “You really paint this Gualala as a paradise,” I told him.
“If you’re there with me,” he said, “it will be.”
He kissed me softly, his hand getting lost in my hair. I started to fall back onto the bed but he caught me and kept me up. “We can do this later,” he murmured into my neck. “We’ve got your uncle to save.”
We got changed into normal clothes and threw our stuff into the car. We hadn’t even had the chance to unpack.
***
It felt completely wrong to be driving south to Hemet when we should have been driving north to Gualala, but my concern for Uncle Jim was too overpowering. Thankfully the drive was just under six hours, even with the rush hour traffic, and it wasn’t long before we were passing Lake Perris and winding through the mountains. With darkness enveloping us, the roads seemed extra treacherous, and Camden was tense as he drove. I’d decided Jose was probably safest with him—they’d been through a lot together.
The atmosphere inside the car was tense too. I could tell Camden was worried and for different reasons than I was. I was busy planning what to do with Uncle Jim. Telling him we were on the run from Javier wouldn’t come as a surprise, but I wanted to leave the whole “by the way I tried to rob Camden” thing out of it. It would only hurt him that I tried to do it in his hometown, and looking back now, I felt ashamed for even trying it.
Camden, on the other hand, was cagey and silent because he was expecting the worst. He was expecting Uncle Jim to be compromised, but I just couldn’t think that way. I wouldn’t. I had to trust someone in my life, and after mistrusting everyone and finally taking a chance on Camden, my uncle deserved the same opportunity.
We reached the sign marker stating it was ten miles to Hemet when I asked Camden a question I’d been thinking of for a while.
“What had happened to your wife?” I asked gently. I knew it was a loaded question, but he and I were balls deep in loaded questions these days, drowning in our answers.
He chewed on his silence for a few beats, looking romantically pensive in his reading glasses. I looked out the window at the headlights as they illuminated the twisting road, giving him space.
“I hit her,” he said. I shrank back in my seat, a bit shocked at his admission, at his bluntness. I’d been in a short but volatile relationship with a man in Nebraska. He hit me— only once, but I packed my bags and never looked back. Sure, I was trying to con him in the end but no con was ever worth abuse.
“Why?” I asked, my voice very small, not really understanding how the man next to me could be capable of that.
He breathed in deep and I shot a look at him. His brows were drawn, eyes held in some painful memory. “Because I was an angry fool. Our relationship was crumbling beneath my hands. She’d been out a lot. I was the one taking care of Ben more often than not. I never knew where she was or what she was doing, and it was never my business to know. One day I suspected she was cheating on me. I called her on it. She admitted it. Actually, she did more than admit it. She flaunted it. She told me she wanted a divorce, that she didn’t love me, that I wasn’t worth anything to her as a man. I was nothing more than a sperm donor. I think she was back on drugs again, if you ask me. It wasn’t the Sophia that I married.
I didn’t know how to handle it. She called me names. Spat in my face. Insulted me with everything she had. It wasn’t until later that I realized what she had been doing and I walked right into her trap. She punched me, called me a name I don’t even want to repeat, and I hit her back. It was just a slap, my fist wasn’t even closed. But it was enough to destroy me. It was enough for her get her divorce and custody of Ben. It was enough to put me in her family’s debt.”