“Fate, please, I am so sorry. You’re right, I should have come to you. I just wanted to protect you from it all.” I see tears rolling down his face and it takes everything in me not to go to him. He has ruined every moment with him right now because I doubt his words, his love.
“This is why I kept pushing you away.” This was it, my fate was to be burned. “I told you I was like a moth to the flame and you just burned me, Cameron. There’s no going back from this,” I say because I just can’t see a way around this. He was willing to let her come between us again after he swore it would never happen.
“There has to be some fucking fish fact or logic to prove this can be whole again. Something that can heal the burnt pieces,” he says and my mind is a mess. There are ocean plants that help with inflammation and other medical drugs, but I’m giving him no help in this. We are not an ocean with all its wonders. We are just Cameron and Fate. Well, we were, we will never be that again.
“This is not the end. There is no end for us. ‘Forever in a day,’ Forever, that’s fate,” he pleads.
“Our ‘forever in a day’ has passed. Those days are over, Cameron. I can’t trust you. I don’t trust her and she’s everywhere. She will always be in our way. This will always haunt us.” My words cause us both pain and this needs to end. We are only hurting each other. He’d be better off without a girlfriend with my history in his life. It could come up any time and I know I still haven’t come to terms with it in this moment, so he will always worry for me. What will that worry make him do? Something like this. I just can’t do this again. The more I’m with him the more I need him and I already will be broken without him. Barely able to catch my breath but if I let him in again I might not even have that strength if something happens.
“You don’t have to do this. I love you, Fate,” he declares and I let it sink in one more time that I have been truly loved by this man but the world just doesn’t want to give us our forever. No, that’s all gone, all I have is an empty heart.
“You can’t,” I implore.
“I love you, Fate, please hear me,” he pleads.
“No, that’s not possible because I’m all used up. I’m unlovable,” I say and he hears my honesty. I feel as if I have nothing left to give him.
“Stop saying that,” he yells at me while grabbing me and pulling me into a passionate kiss. My body gives in because my heart is telling it this is the last time.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’ve broken my heart. I need you to leave. I can’t do this right now.”
Watching him walk out that door is like a ton of bricks being dropped on my heart. I want to call Clarissa and tell her everything, but I need to figure this out for myself first. It’s time I find my own strength and stop depending on others to help me figure out my life.
I keep going back to everything he said. I know he thought he was doing the right thing. He was trying to protect me. I can’t say that he hasn’t always tried to do that. Unfortunately while doing that he hurt me worse than the thing he was trying to protect me from. I’m not just losing Cameron here. Scott and Cecilia will be cut from my life too and I feel that loss already, but nothing compares to the empty feeling of knowing I have to move on without Cameron. Move on? That’s ridiculous, I won’t move on. I can’t, he’s made that impossible. No one will ever measure up to the peace he brought me and no one will be able to take the pain away from the loss of him. I keep playing over his words in my head and I want to believe them. ‘You don’t have to do this Fate, I still love you.’ Could it be that easy?
It took hours but my willpower wavered. I should have trusted him and not jumped to conclusions. Picking up the phone, I call him because I too made a promise if I thought I should run after him that I would. Now I just worry he won’t take my call. It rings a few times before he answers and all that pain I was feeling disappears. Cameron, my Cameron picked up my call. Then I hear that voice. Trisha. I can’t hear what exactly she is saying, but I know it is Trisha. There she is, always getting in our way again. The pain comes crashing back but this time there is no hope.
“Fate,” he says and my world is torn apart just by the sound of the pain in his voice. He’s hurting too but he’s not alone. I’m here barely breathing.
“I’ll be gone by the time you get back. So this is our goodbye, Cameron, have fun with your friend.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cameron