Just For You (24 page)

"Don't pretend like you know me, either, then. Don't accuse me of trying to stifle you when you don't even have the first clue about me!" Imogen didn't care anymore. She let her voice rise until she was nearly yelling at the top of her lungs. The tears that stung the corners of her eyes were no longer tears of sadness but tears of anger.

"Yeah, and why is that, Imogen?" Cameron challenged. "I don't know a God damn thing about you and for the past couple months all you've been trying to do is get to know everything about me. How is that fair? I want to know where you're coming from. Right now. Tell me, Imogen. Why are you here?"

"We've been through this, Cameron." This time, Imogen's voice was quieter, less confident. It was tired.

"No, that's not what I mean, and you know it." A look came over his face that Imogen didn't like. It was cold, cruel, and mischievous.

Her jaw settled and her brows pulled down. "Don't."

"I'm going to. Tell me why you're here in Illinois. Tell me what you're running from."

Imogen felt like the wind was taken out of her. Her knees were shaking and her hands formed into tight fists at her sides.

Cameron raised an eyebrow and folded his arms over his chest. "I'm waiting."

Imogen closed her eyes and sighed. The entire world was spinning and she needed a second to figure out which way was up and which way was down. Somewhere in the distance a dog howled. A train blew its whistle. The sound of a wheelchair grated across the wet cement of the hospital parking lot. When she opened her eyes, all she could see was the darkness that surrounded her. Imogen licked her lips. There was only one way to get out of the corner she'd been backed into.

"Katrina. You might remember it, it was a little natural disaster we had a couple years back. Our house was destroyed. Everything we owned was annihilated. We were left homeless, along with hundreds of others. I had no choice but to find the nearest shelter and that was where my parents and I stayed until we could move upstate with my aunt."

He swallowed. Hard.

"I worked three jobs trying to support us. Finally we were able to pool some savings together so that we could rent an apartment. Insurance came through on the house but my parents didn't want to rebuild. We waited for our insurance to cash out and with that money we bought a modest house together. My mother died within two years from cancer and my father was left permanently injured in the hurricane. I cared for him until he passed away of a broken heart, a little over a year after my mother died."

Memories she'd tried so hard to push down were rising back up to the surface again. She felt them crash over her, let the shock take its hold, let the sting of repressed memories settle on her skin.

"After that I didn't want to be there anymore. Everywhere I went I remembered. Remembering hurt. The only way to get away from the pain was to move." For the first time since she'd started speaking, Imogen looked directly at Cameron. There was nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed about, nothing from which to be afraid. Her eyes, still filled with tears that now spilled onto her cheeks, met his eyes, dark and somber.

"Yes, I ran away from my problems. Sit there and judge me, Cameron. I dare you. The difference between you and I is that I didn't run away from a family who loved me. I didn't treat them like they were no better than the dirt on my shoe. You call me a hypocrite? Fine, I'm a hypocrite, but at least I had the decency to stick around when I was needed. You came to this hospital tonight to be with your brother, that's what you need to remember. You didn't come here to fight with me, and you didn't come here to fight with your parents. Would you have come here if you and I never met, or would you have made some dumb excuse about why you couldn't be here to hold Alex's hand when he wakes up? I don't know the answer to that, Cameron, only you do." She wiped the tears from her face and swallowed the bile in her throat. "There you have it, Cameron. There's my story, the big, big mystery. Satisfied?"

Cameron felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. The cruel smirk on his face was gone; it was replaced now by a grave, hard line. There was a cold sweat on his forehead and the back of his neck. His stomach trembled. His throat was tight. He didn't know what to say or what he
could
say.

The spectators slowly began to return back to their own business and there was a hum as life started back up again.

Imogen shook her head at him, simultaneously walking backward. "Asshole," she whispered just loudly enough so that Cameron could hear it, too.

As he watched her spin around mid-step, showing her back to him, Cameron couldn't help but think that there was no other time he agreed with her more.

Chapter Thirteen

This Could Get Ugly

"Fuck!"

The word seemed to vibrate off the cars in the parking lot after he yelled it. Cameron watched Imogen as she became smaller, until he could barely make her out anymore. Cameron was biting his lip, mentally screaming at himself, every single curse word he could think of pinging against the walls of his brain.

Somewhere on the third level of the hospital he noticed, from the corner of his eye, that a window shade had been pulled open. He looked up to see a nurse standing in the window with a disapproving look on her face. She was saying something to the patient in the room, and Cameron knew it was about him and all the noise he was making.

Sneering, he flipped her off as he turned and made his way back into the hospital. Once inside, he did his best to be on good behavior. Alex needed peace, quiet, and calm, and damn it, Cameron wouldn't be the one to take it away from him.

"Everything alright?" Todd asked as soon as Cameron walked inside. His parents were gone; Todd was sitting at Alex's bedside with one ankle resting on the opposite knee.

Cameron glared and shook his head. "Nothing is right. It's not important right now," he grumbled, standing over Alex. He thought to ask where everyone had gone, but he decided they didn't matter.

His brows drew as he looked at his brother. Minutes passed again before he looked away, this time at the monitor which tracked Alex's heartbeat. It was steady. It was strong. Cameron's grip tightened around the cold railing of the bed.

If only he'd been there. He realized this was half-stupid of him. Of course there was no way in a real universe that he could have stopped his brother from being hit by a driver who, for all Cameron knew, was drunk, or just looking the wrong way, or a thousand other probable situations. But he felt like it was his job. It was his duty, and he failed. He failed in the biggest way.

That's what big brothers did, after all. They looked out for and protected the younger ones. Now Imogen's words rushed back to him in his mind, and they were stuck on repeat, taunting him.

"
The difference between you and I is that I didn't run away from a family who loved me."

Cameron flinched.

It's not true. It's not true. It's not true.

It was difficult not to think about the way Imogen's back looked as she walked away from him, every step taking her that much further away. He scowled as he thought it over in his mind, second by agonizing second: the threat in her words and the sting in her voice.

She was cruel to him, he thought. Everything he'd opened up to her about in the last few months had been flung right back at him, this time sharp as daggers. What the hell did she know, anyway? She could eat her words, for all he cared. Who did Imogen think she was, putting herself up on a pedestal, criticizing him for the way he lived his life when she was no angel herself?

Looking at Alex as he slept, watching his chest rise and fall delicately, with the pounding
beep, beep, beep
of the monitor at his side signaling the loss of time, Cameron, for a million reasons, thought he could cry. He wanted to cry. He didn't.

The shuffling of feet brought Cameron back to reality and he looked around, irritated at the sudden intrusion of sound. He caught Todd as he was in the middle of standing up. One long arm of his was extended behind his back, the opposite hand wrapped around the wrist and pulling, in a stretch. Todd saw Cameron's annoyed expression and stopped.

"Sorry, I'm a little stiff."

Cameron didn't respond, only turned back to Alex and sighed. Without looking away, Cameron bent over and gripped the chair behind his legs underneath the seat, sliding it forward and sitting down, stretching his legs in front of him. He folded his arms across his chest, a pose Todd came to recognize over the years as defensive, and gnawed on the inside of his lip.

Finally he cleared his throat. "Hey, Todd?"

"Yeah?"

Silence. A swallow.

"Thank you."

No explanation was needed. It was all implied. Thank you, he was saying, for being here with me tonight. Thank you, he was saying, for making me the most important person in your life right now. Thank you, he was saying, for your presence.

"You're welcome."

Soon enough the rest of the family joined them. Hours passed and they took turns sleeping, making coffee runs, rousing Alex to make sure he hadn't fallen into a coma, and talking to the nurses.

It was nearing 4 am when Alex finally stirred on his own. Cameron, weary eyed just the moment before, jumped up from his chair upon hearing the slightest noise- a harsh wheeze coming from the bed. When Alex's eyelashes fluttered, Cameron unconsciously moved closer. He was the first person Alex saw. A faint smile painted his young, bruised face.

"Cameron?" Alex murmured with a thick, small voice.

One word was all it took to shatter him. One word was all it took to make Cameron weep.

* * * *

Todd and Cameron sat on the bottom two steps of the staircase which led to the second story of the hotel, where their room was. Somewhere in the distance a train came through, rattling the ground underneath their feet. They could hear the blaring of its horn. Cameron was tracing circles around the top of his glass beer bottle, more than three quarters full, even an hour after he'd opened it, while Todd sucked on the end of his third cigarette.

Cameron didn't want to be here. It was a hotel where people rented by the hour, where drug dealers sold to naïve teenagers, where prostitutes did things to married men that their wives wouldn't do for them at home. Dawn was breaking over the horizon. It would be light in minutes. Neither he nor Todd had slept for 24 hours. Cameron had to be pushed and pulled and prodded and persuaded to leave Alex and get some sleep. Todd promised to pay for the room, which he did. It was a waste, anyway, Cameron thought to himself, taking a swig of beer (ignoring the fact that he was drinking at nearly 6 am). The room was getting no use whatsoever.

Todd tapped him on the shoulder with the back of his knuckles and held the cigarette out to him between three fingers.

"You want some?" he asked, his eyes squinted against the smoke which undulated from his partially opened mouth.

Cameron eyed it for a moment before shaking his head. "Nah, man. I quit smoking."