Slashed (Extreme Risk 3)

I don’t know why I’m telling her all of this, except that she keeps asking questions and the answers keep falling out of my mouth before I can stop them.

“I didn’t ask if you need him to be involved. I asked if you want him to be involved. There’s a difference, Cameron.”

“Nobody calls me that anymore.”

“Of course, I’m sorry. Cam.” She pauses. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t have to answer anything that you ask me.”

She doesn’t respond but I can tell that I’ve hurt her even though she doesn’t have any room to be hurt. Even though she’s hurt me a million times through the years with her absence. Sighing, I shove a frustrated hand through my mess of curls before saying “look, I’m sorry. This whole having a mother who wants to talk to me thing is new. I’m not sure how to deal with it.”

“Don’t apologize, Cam.” She puts a heavy emphasis on my name. “I just want to help, if you’ll let me.”

“I don’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s help. I can do this alone.”

Even as I’m saying the words, I’m wrapping my arms around myself, rocking softly. Because I can do this alone, but that doesn’t mean I want to.

And yes, I know I’m not alone. I know Z and Ash and Tansy and Ophelia will be here for me when I need something. So will my brothers, despite our recent differences. But it’s not the same thing as having Luc here. Not the same as having him be a part of my pregnancy and my baby’s life.

Not the same as having him be a part of my life.

It’s been three months since we had that fight, even longer since we’ve been close like we used to be. I miss him. I miss the way we used to be. I miss the way we could be if everything—life, fate, even ourselves—would just get the hell out of our way and let us be.

But that’s a pipe dream. Too much has happened between us—too much is still waiting to happen—for us to go back to who we used to be.

When we were just friends.

When we weren’t sleeping together.

When I wasn’t in love with him.

The thought comes out of nowhere and I try to shove it back down inside of me, but it won’t go. Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones, maybe it’s just how depressed I’ve been, or maybe it’s my mother on the other end of the phone asking me if I want Luc in my life. Whatever it is, it triggers something inside of me. Something that makes me realize my feelings for him are much deeper than I ever thought they were.

Oh, I’ve always loved him. How could I not when Luc is such an all-around good guy? He’ll give you the shirt off his back, go out of his way to help you any way that he can, thinks about other people and what they need way more than he thinks about himself. But loving him is different than being in love with him—which I am very desperately afraid that I am.

Why else would I feel so empty without him? Why else would I be so angry and distraught and hurt that he doesn’t trust me? That he doesn’t want to be with me the same way I want to be with him?

My mind is reeling at the revelation and I don’t know what to do with it. Part of me wants to hang up on my mother and call Luc right away. Another part of me wants to curl up in the fetal position and suck my thumb until I stop shaking.

As it is, I don’t get the chance to do either. Because my mom is talking again and she’s saying things I don’t want to hear but can’t ignore.

“If you want him in your life, Cam, you need to tell him. You can’t expect him to guess.”

“It’s not that easy, Mom.”

“Believe me, I know how not-easy things like this can be.” She pauses and in her silence I can hear the distance of seventeen years. The distance of choices she made that can’t ever be undone. “I wanted to come back. A long time before now, I wanted to call your father up and beg him to let me come back. But I was afraid to ask him, afraid to open myself up to his rejection. To my children’s rejection—”

“If you’re trying to make me feel guilty—”

“You have nothing to feel guilty about. I’m the one who left and I’m the one who has to live with the consequences of that decision now that I’m back. I’m just trying to say don’t be too proud to let him know how you feel. Don’t wait until it’s too late—until you’ve lost seventeen years that you’ll never be able to get back—before you open yourself up to him and tell him how you feel. I know it’s a risk, know that you might end up hurting more than you already do. But do you really want to spend the better part of two decades wondering if you could have changed things?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her and I think it might be the truest thing I’ve said in a long, long time. “I don’t know what I want, don’t know what I can live with and what I can’t. Everything is coming at me so fast right now that I feel like I can’t breathe. Like I’m drowning—”

“Of course you do, Cam. And I’m not making it any better by pushing at you. I’m sorry. I just was afraid that if I let you off the phone without telling you this, I might never get another chance.”

I don’t dispute her assertion, because I can’t. I don’t know how I feel about her

after her revelations, don’t know if they change things between us or if they don’t. She still left, still disappeared for seventeen years without so much as a word. Being afraid doesn’t condone that, not when she had a husband and seven children waiting at home for her.