The Truth Within (Pelican Bay 3)

“Talk to me, Ford,” Cam urged. His fingers were running up and down my arm.

“It’s too much sometimes,” I finally admitted.

“What is?”

“The memories… the pictures in my head. I can’t always process them because I feel the same stuff.”

Cam’s fingers paused briefly. “Is that why you have to replace one memory with another? Like what you did after your brother and his friends scared you… by researching the history of the house?”

I nodded. “If I can, I put the memories away.”

“Away?”

I closed my eyes because it was just so fucking humiliating. He probably thought I was no better than a child who thought hiding under the blankets from the monster would keep them safe.

“It’s okay, you can tell me,” Cam said softly. I felt his lips brush the top of my head.

“It’s like there’s this box in my mind I can just keep stuffing shit into and I don’t have to think about it anymore. I don’t think I really realized how often I’ve been doing that until lately.”

“So you want to put me in that box?” Cam asked. “You want to put what happened between us tonight in there?”

I quickly shifted so I could look him in the eye. “No,” I said with a shake of my head. “No, definitely not.”

His sigh of relief broke my heart. Never in a million years would I have guessed someone as assured and confident as Cam would also have an insecure streak that ran so deep.

“What was his name?” I asked.

“Whose?”

“The ex… the one who gave you cheap plates as an anniversary present.”

Cam actually relaxed a little. He smiled and then glanced at the fireplace. “It was actually a belated anniversary gift… he forgot.” His eyes shifted back to me. “I guess I’d never have to worry about that with you, would I?”

I laughed. “Nope.”

“And I’d never win an argument because you’d remember everything we’d said.”

“Not true,” I responded. I ended up crossing my arms under my chin so I could lie on his upper body and watch him as we talked. “Some people can remember things like that, but for me, I have to have seen something to remember it. The things I remember about the night I first came to this house are all the things I saw… but the things I heard and smelled… those memories might be more enhanced because of what happened that night, but I don’t remember everything Jimmy and his buddies said. But I remember how I felt. And with you tonight… I may not remember everything you said to me in ten or twenty or fifty years, but I won’t ever forget the way you looked at me or the way you reacted to my touch or my words.”

Cam shifted so he could put his arms behind his head. “Is that why you don’t look people in the eye?” he asked. “So you won’t have to remember their expressions and maybe that will make it easier to forget the things you were feeling at the time?”

“Mostly,” I admitted. I wasn’t really interested in going into details that sometimes I didn’t look Jimmy or Uncle Curtis or my mother in the eye because it was a different kind of self-preservation. “Tell me about your ex.”

Cam sighed. “Right. The ex. What do you want to know?”

“What’s his name?”

“Carter.”

“How did you meet?”

“He worked for the Detroit District Attorney. He was an investigator. He had to interview me for a case involving an off-duty cop who shot an unarmed suspect… the district attorney had to decide whether or not to charge the officer.” Cam’s eyes flicked back to the fireplace. “I was attracted to him from the get-go, but I assumed he was straight. Even if I’d known then that he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have pursued anything with him because he was married with two kids.”

As much as I wanted to know about Cam’s previous relationship, actually hearing about him being attracted to someone else irritated me.

A lot.

“We had a lot in common so we ended up just hanging out after work a few times a week… grabbing a beer or going to a game, that sort of thing. It was a year before things changed. He was divorced by then and had started a new job at this fancy law firm.”

“How did things change?” I asked.

Cam was silent for a moment. “Quickly,” he finally said. “One night we were hanging out at a bar. I wasn’t a drinker and neither was Carter, so we usually just watched the game and maybe had a beer or two at the most. It was the same that night, except there was this guy that kept checking me out from the other side of the bar. I’d told Carter I was gay early on but it hadn’t ever been a big deal. So anyway, this guy was checking me out and it just seemed to piss Carter off more and more. He started drinking and just being an all-around dick. But I wasn’t interested in the guy because I was done with the hookup scene by then. The guy followed me to the bathroom and made a move on me. Carter showed up and went off on him. I had to pull them apart. I shoved Carter into the bathroom to try and calm him down and then he was all over me. Kissing me, saying he wanted me, that sort of thing.”