“Where have you been? Do you have any idea how scared I was? How scared Mom was?”

“Mom doesn’t care.”

I pulled her back, grasping her upper arms. “Yes she does, Sarah. I know she may not show it like she should, but she does care. We’ve both been worried sick about you. Why would you just leave like that? You know you can’t go anywhere without an adult with you. How did you even get over here?”

She lifted her shoulders. “I rode my bike.”

“You what!?” I screeched.

“I had my helmet on, I was being safe.”

“No Sarah, you weren’t safe. At no time is it ever okay for you to leave the house without someone with you and go anywhere, let alone ride your bike several miles away. I don’t care if you had on a helmet or not.”

“I’m sorry.” My tone was getting her upset all over again, but I didn’t care. I wanted her to be upset, I wanted her to feel even just an ounce of the fear I’d been feeling for the last two hours.

Breathing in deeply I tried to calm my frazzled nerves. “Listen, we don’t have to talk about it right now, but when we get home, Mom, you, and me are all going to sit down and talk. I think we need to make some new arrangements.”

She nodded and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “K.”

I stood back up and faced Camden. Narrowing my eyes I gritted through my teeth, “How long had she been here?”

He tilted his head to the side as though he were confused by my confrontational tone. “It’s been maybe fifteen minutes. She knocked on the door, I let her in, and tried to get her settled before I was going to give you a call.”

My fingers flexed then dug into my palms. “Don’t you think that’s the first thing you should have done? Call me crazy, but we’ve all been driving around trying to find her, and you could have put me out of my misery fifteen minutes ago?”

“Keegan I think you need to settle down and take a breather. She’s fine, she’s safe, everything’s okay.”

“No Camden! Everything is not okay!” I screamed. Tears were pouring out of my eyes at a steady pace, and I wanted to wring his neck. “Don’t you get it? Everyone has been out looking for her; me, Macie, Dodger…the police! You should have called me.”

He narrowed his eyes, and his stance became rigid. “You’re upset, and if you want to take it out on me, then fine. But I did what I thought was best, so I suggest you calm down and not get even more worked up.”

I saw Sarah look up at me out of the corner of my eye. If she wasn’t here, I would be digging through the kitchen drawers for a murder weapon right about now. Instead, I resolved myself. Turning toward the stairs, I started to make my way up to my room. In my closet I pulled out a duffle bag and began throwing all of my clothes in, not caring if they were folded neatly.

“What are you doing?” Camden asked from the doorway.

“Leaving.”

He felt him come into my room and approach me from behind. “Why?” He sounded confused.

“Because I need out, I need to step away to get a break from everything.” I went back to my closet and collected more things.

His arm shot out, and he grabbed my wrist. “Would you stop for a minute and talk to me?”

I faced him. “What do you want to talk about, huh? Do you want talk about the fact that you didn’t think of me again when there was something that was obviously important? Or how about that you conveniently didn’t tell me about Bree when knowing that you had a sister is a pretty big fucking deal. Or maybe even that I told you that I loved you for the first time and you had nothing to say about it.” My chest heaved as air rushed out of me, and I broke out into a full on sob.

He tried to bring me into him, but I yanked my arm away. It pissed him off. “So you’re just running away. You’re not even going to give me the chance to talk to you, is that it?”

“You’ve had plenty of chances to tell me the shit that you’ve kept from me. Clearly I’m not a vital person in your life. You place your value in other things, and I’m too far down on your list of ‘what Camden gives a shit about’ for you to care.”

He moved fast. Ripping the clothes out of my hands and throwing them against the wall, he clasped the back of my neck and made me look him in the eyes. I’d never seen him so angry in all the time that I’d known him. There was no mistaking the intensity of his words when he spoke. “You ever say anything like that to me again, I can promise you this is done. You’ve never been low on my priority list, and if you ever were, believe me you’d know it. I do things in my own way. You needed to take some time to process how you felt about me. That was fine, I was giving you that time. But in no way was that a reflection on my feelings. Was I wrong for not telling you about Breslin? Hell yes I was wrong, and I regret it. Should I have called you when Sarah came knocking on the door tonight? Yeah, probably. But everything I do Keegan, I do it in my own way. It’s not because I’m trying to be mean, or facetious, or blatantly hurtful. I’m about done with you lashing out at me because you’re pissed off. If you haven’t noticed I’m not a very tolerant man. It fucking ends now. So you either get on board and deal with how I am, and I will try to make a concerted effort to be more open with the shit that comes my way, or you walk away. I won’t stand here and let you accuse me of not caring, when I actually care more than you could imagine.”

His fingers were digging into my hair, and I was panting so hard that my lips were dry. I felt so bewildered by his words that I wasn’t even sure how to respond to him. Instead I stayed silent going over every word, processing each one so that it made sense. Apparently it was the wrong thing to do, because Camden abruptly let go of me and took a step back. His eyes bounced back and forth between mine. The one emotion that was so easy to read from him was pain. Somehow in my silence I’d crushed him and now he was the one pulling away. My heart lurched and I wanted nothing more than to say, ‘wait, I love you. Let’s not do this, can we just start over?’ But I didn’t. My feet were plastered in place as I watched him close his eyes and take a deep breath. When he opened them again, he shook his head at me and walked out. Without a care that Sarah was downstairs or that Macie might still be in the car, I flung myself onto my bed and curled into the fetal position and cried.

Camden left me.

THE NEXT MORNING I WAS LYING in my bed staring at the yellow walls. Walls that Camden had painted for me because he was trying to do something nice, something to show he cared. The fact that I had a bag packed beside my bed was weighing heavily on me, but the idea of walking out of the apartment not knowing when I’d be back made me want to hurl myself off a cliff. If I walked out on Camden, that would be it. He wouldn’t forgive me, and there’d be no coming back. There was a light tapping on the door before it was opened and in walked a showered and refreshed Bree. I thought she had left town already but apparently not. Lucky me.

“Hey, mind if I come in?” she asked.

Uncurling myself, I scooted up the bed and pushed my hair behind my ears. “No, come on in.” I really wasn’t in the mood to talk to anybody, and certainly not her. I might know who she was now, but that didn’t mean my brain was yet computing that she wasn’t the enemy. I should get to know her though. Camden protected her, he loved her, and he was a part of her, because they shared the same DNA. And anything that was Camden, I loved.

She came and sat down next to me, stretching out her long toned legs and getting comfortable next to me like she’d known me her whole life. “How’re you holding up?”