The Truth Within (Pelican Bay 3)

“No, of course not.”

“Then fucking look at me,” I snapped. “If you want to end things with me, then I want you to damn well remember it!”

Ford stilled, then rose to his feet.

“I don’t… I don’t want that.”

He still wouldn’t turn around.

“You asked me not to give up on you,” I murmured. I saw him flinch and knew I’d struck a nerve.

Finally.

“Maybe you’re not ending things,” I said quietly. It felt like my heart was being ripped from my chest but hell if I was going to go through this again. My feelings for Ford were a million times stronger than they’d been for Carter, but I couldn’t become someone I wasn’t… not even for him. “Maybe you can’t end something that never really started,” I whispered. I turned to go but his voice stopped me as I was reaching for the door handle.

“They’re all I have, Cam.”

I knew who he was talking about, of course. “I’m not asking you to give them up,” I said. “They’re your family… I would never make you choose.”

Ford turned around and let out an ugly little laugh. “You’re talking like you think they’d actually come around someday… that maybe they’d be okay with us being together and we can get together for Sunday dinners and holidays. I know you’re not asking me to choose between you and them. But they will make me choose. My mother will make me choose. And it’s not just you I would be choosing. I’d be choosing to be someone I don’t even really know. You keep asking me all these questions about what I like and what my dreams are.”

I could tell he was desperately trying to hold back tears.

“I don’t have those things, Cam. I don’t have dreams. I don’t have favorite foods or movies. I eat what they eat.” He pointed in the general direction of town. “I watch the shows they want me to watch! My favorite books are the ones my mom likes because I want to know what she’s talking about over the dinner table when she brings them up! I drive my mother to church and I sit next to her on that pew every Sunday and I nod my head when she does because if I fucking don’t… if I don’t, it’ll be me back in that icy pond waiting for someone to show up… someone who isn’t ever going to come.”

“What if you do everything right, Ford, and they still don’t show up?” I asked. “Are you just going to let yourself slip beneath the surface?” I practically barked. I couldn’t help but be angry with him. The idea of him just letting go like that… of choosing to live a life that was slowly drowning him…

I couldn’t.

I just couldn’t.

“I tried, Cam. I tried to have all those things,” Ford whispered. “After everything that happened with Theo, I saw this chance… this one chance…”

“That shit that pastor told you—”

“No, not then,” Ford murmured. He leaned back against the wall and then slid down to his ass on the floor. All the fight had left him. “When I went to stay with my aunt Grace.”

I moved so that I could crouch in front of him.

“What was the chance?”

“I knew who she was before I went out there. When my mom said I was going to stay with Aunt Grace in Philadelphia, I was so happy. I know that’s fucked up because I’d hurt Theo and that cop and done so many terrible things, but Aunt Grace was… she was…”

“What?” I asked gently.

“My salvation,” Ford said softly. He finally looked me in the eye. “I found out about her when I was twelve. I heard my mom and dad arguing about her… it was about the year before my dad died and my mom married my stepfather. My dad kept saying they should just give me back to Aunt Grace and my mom was saying that Aunt Grace couldn’t take care of me… that she couldn’t even take care of herself.”

I shook my head in confusion. “Your parents took you from your aunt?”

Ford nodded. “Aunt Grace is my real mom. She and my mom are sisters. Aunt Grace was only fourteen when she had me.”

“Holy hell,” I muttered.

“I’d only met Aunt Grace a few times growing up. She… she had a lot of problems. With men, with drinking. She’d go through these periods where she seemed like she had everything together and then something would happen and she’d end up in rehab or a psych ward because she’d tried to hurt herself. My mom would always go to whatever city Aunt Grace was living in and get her back on her feet, but she wouldn’t let her come stay with us in Pelican Bay. When I went to stay with Aunt Grace, I thought maybe I could make her better and we could be together, her and me… as a family.”