Path of Destruction (11 page)

“You look awfully happy for someone who’s keeping a pretty big secret.”

Cami closed her locker to find the one person who needed a storm warning all her own. Warning: Blond Hurricane Seeking Answers. The nine missed calls should have tipped her off that Ella Jane wasn’t going to just let it go.

“I’m not...” Cami shook her head, feeling as nervous as she had when she saw the forecast that morning. Of course, Ella Jane Mason would track her down at school. It was just wishful thinking to hope that she’d stay on her side of the building.

“Look, I know it’s you. You were the mystery girl that my brother spent all of his time with this summer. Your picture is all over his phone. I heard your voicemail and I checked the invoices. You were the only account he had in the Bluffs. I know that you had something going on with him and you’re going to tell me exactly what happened between the two of you.”

Like hell I am.

“Nothing,” Cami lied easily, wondering how long she’d be able to keep the denial with Ella Jane acting like a damn super sleuth. Wouldn’t be long until she had video surveillance of them at the Pinkberry drive-thru. “He was our landscaper. That’s all. And the voicemail...” she started to say as a flood of images from the night of the storm crashed down on her.

She’d called him from that rickety old barn, professing her love for him before she’d made a break for the root cellar.

“It was after the bonfire and I was drunk. I thought I was calling Hayden.”

Ella Jane’s face tightened at the mention of Hayden’s name, and for a second, it looked like she might turn around and leave.

“I don’t buy it. You mean to tell me that you spent the summer lounging by the pool with my brother, doing God knows what, while you were still with Hayden. And Hayden swears you weren’t together this summer. I don’t know much about you, but I think you’re lying.”

“I’m not,” she defended. “And I don’t owe you any explanation of how I spent my summer. I’m not interrogating you about
your
summer with
my
boyfriend.”

“What do you want to know?” Ella Jane fired back. “That he lied to me all summer? Never mentioned you and is still denying you were together even now? That enough information to get you to start talking about my brother?”

The wounded look on Ella Jane’s face almost had Cami confessing to everything. She apparently wasn’t the only one who’d spent her summer in love, and a little piece of Cami felt for her interrogator. And God, the freaking desperation in the girl’s eyes would have a criminal confessing.

Her voice was softer when she spoke again. “Look, Hayden aside, Kyle was my brother. I don’t need every detail, but I would like to know what happened between you this summer. I need to know that the last few months of his life weren’t pointless.”

Ella Jane bit her lip, and Cami studied her. Clearly the girl didn’t give a care in the world to her appearance, and yet, like Kyle, she was naturally gorgeous. It was both a painful reminder and infuriating.

“I—”

“Did you love him? Were you in love?”

The question was practically a whisper. But it hit her the hardest. “We... It was...” she hesitated, the painful playback of memories hitting her in her most sensitive places. “I can’t give you what you want,” Cami said softly before turning to leave. “I’m sorry.”

“No. Please. Wait a second.” Ella Jane grabbed her elbow, spinning her around.

The two locked eyes. Cami wondered if Ella Jane was going to beat it out of her. She wasn’t giving up without some answers and Cami wasn’t about to give her any, beating or not.

“Whoa, ladies.” Brantley’s voice cut the tension as he removed Ella Jane’s hand from Cami’s arm. “How about we all take a deep breath and a step back,” he recommended, nodding at the passing school administrator. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “I don’t think either of you really want to spend the day in the principal’s office. Trust me.”

Cami didn’t even bother to look over and see who it was. She knew that she had the capacity at this school to cry wolf and send Ella Jane straight to detention for putting her hands on her, but that wasn’t going to get her to ease up about asking about Kyle. She dropped her head, unable to look Brantley in the eye either.

“What exactly is going on here?” he asked. “I hope the two of you aren’t wasting your time and energy arguing over Prescott.”

Cami waited for Ella Jane to out her. To tell her buddy—or whatever he was—what she’d been up to her with her brother last summer. The walls felt as if they were closing in on her. Everyone in the entire school was about to find out how she lied about her summer abroad. And, even worse, they were about to infiltrate all the memories she was trying to keep to herself.

But Ella Jane surprised her. “It’s nothing.”

Cami’s gaze lifted to Ella Jane’s, which was laced with a warning.
We are not finished here.

She didn’t tell him. She didn’t even mention Kyle’s name.

“Sure didn’t look like nothing,” he continued, pressing for information. “Cameron, you all right?”

Well…that was unexpected.

First, because he’d just referred to her by her full name—whereas the rest of the student population always called her Cami. The way he said it and the way he was looking at her—like she was delicate and beautiful—seemed to stop time. She hadn’t had a guy look at her like that since Kyle. Maybe there was something in the Hope’s Grove water that made guys see her differently than the rest. Or maybe they just hadn’t witnessed the years of braces and baby fat or didn’t realize she’d been property of Hayden Prescott for the last three years.

More than that, she was startled by the fact that he was genuinely concerned with her. Here he was with his gal pal, Ella Jane. The two of them were practically joined at the hip. He pretty much pissed a circle around her when Hayden was present, but now he was asking Cami for her side of the story instead of just taking Ella Jane’s word as the gospel.

Interesting.

“I’m fine. It was nothing,” Cami confirmed, quickly turning to leave before Ella Jane’s eyes burned a hole in her or Brantley’s saw something she was trying to hide. “I need to get to class.”

Leaving them behind, she headed straight to the place she’d had in mind before her run-in with EJ. There might not have been a storm in town yet, but the way she was feeling—like she’d had the wind knocked out of her—there might as well have been.

She couldn’t stand the idea of having to fight back the tears she’d been holding in anymore—of having to stave off the memories she’d made with Kyle Mason another second. At least in the basement, alone, she could let it out. A crack of thunder echoed off in the distance, and she couldn’t get to the basement fast enough.

Nothing like having your two biggest fears intersect.

Cami checked around the deserted basement hallway, making sure that no one saw her, before opening the door of the utility room and slipping inside. The room was cluttered with overstock cleaning supplies and boxes that the maintenance staff had stored. She shuffled a stack of printer paper aside before collapsing on the top of a box and burying her face in her hands.

Ella Jane would never understand what they shared and why Cami refused to share the details. She’d had him for sixteen years. Sixteen years of photographs, inside jokes, and memories. Sixteen years of his smile, his laugh, and the sweet-natured warmth he’d exuded. Cami had just shy of three months and what? One photograph taken on a sunny afternoon with a cell phone. A handful of kisses. One night in each other’s arms.

One. That was all she would ever have of him.

Ella Jane might not understand her reasoning, but Cami was keeping that small window of time to herself, tucking it away like a secret treasure she’d cherish for as long as she lived.

She could see him so clearly, the way he’d grinned sheepishly when she’d run out of her pool house half-naked, the way he’d scratched his head and averted his eyes when she’d confronted him.

The memories were so…
vivid
. She couldn’t get her head completely around the fact that he was gone. Not gone to college. Not gone because she’d blown him off.

No longer on this Earth breathing the same air as her.

Her head refused to accept it.

Not my head,
she almost said out loud to herself.
My heart.

She glanced around the cramped utility closet, realizing this was the safest she’d felt since he’d wrapped his arms around her—or she’d imagined he had—in that damn cellar.

In the hospital, she’d felt like a medical experiment on display, and at home, her parents seemed to document her every move. The familiar faces at school weren’t even comforting because she knew that, when they looked at her, they expected to see someone else. Someone smiling, laughing, and gossiping right along with the rest of them.

Impersonating the person she’d once been was exhausting.

And the worst part? She had no idea who she was now. A girl who hid in closets, apparently.

How had she had become this? This girl that hid herself away because it hurt too much to look people in the eye and tell the truth about how she was hurting. No one would understand. Not really.

Because no one would ever love her the way Kyle Mason did.

“Y
ou trying to get yourself kicked out of this place or what?” Coop asked Ella Jane as they watched Cameron rush down the hallway away from them.

The last thing he’d expected that morning was to walk in and see the two girls staring each other down in the hallway. But it was really only a matter of time before they crossed paths. The firm grip Ella Jane had on Cami’s arm led him to believe that he needed to intervene before a catfight broke out. Even if a little part of him would have enjoyed watching the two of them tussle on the floor, he didn’t want either of them ending up in trouble. Especially when he figured the root of it all was Hayden Prescott.

“You just got a warning for ditching class last week. It will kill your mom if you get into trouble, you know that right? She’s been through enough without having to worry about you getting kicked out of school.”

“Just handling things like you would,” Ella Jane responded, her eyes narrowed in on his. “Isn’t that what we country folks do? Kick ass and ask questions later?”

She might not have been very vocal over the past couple weeks, but he could hear the contempt in her voice loud and clear. Maybe it was a bad idea for him to bring up her mother’s disappointment.

“Maybe here, in this place, we should think things through a bit more than usual,” Cooper said gently.

“It’s not like you really thought things through before shoving Hayden.”

He should have known that her attitude had nothing to do with her mom.

“Are you seriously pissed at me for roughing up Prescott in the parking lot?” Coop scoffed. “I barely touched him. And, from what I recall, you were telling him to kick rocks before I got there.”

“Whatever,” she said. He didn’t miss the eye roll she added for effect. “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.”

“Maybe you do, ‘cause from what I can tell, you’ve got some pretty crap judgment lately.”

“For your information, what happened back there had nothing to do with Hayden.”

“What else would you have to discuss with Cameron Nickelson?” he asked. He highly doubted that Cameron was lecturing her about the latest fall fashions or that Ella Jane was giving her tips for pruning a rose bush. The only common denominator between them was Prescott. For the life of him he couldn’t figure out what either girl saw in him.

“It’s... She’s...” Ella Jane stumbled through her words like a flat stone skipping across the lake before she finally gave up. “Maybe you should go ask her. You seemed awfully concerned with her well-being a few minutes ago.”

“To be fair,” Coop began, “I was only concerned because I thought you were going to kick her ass.”

The last thing he wanted to admit to Ella Jane was that he actually liked Cameron Nickelson—she was different than he’d imagined the Summit Bluffs’ girls would be. Witty and engaging, way less shallow than he’d pegged her for. And there was something in her, deep down, that he could relate to, even if he didn’t know what it was. Nope. He could never tell Ella Jane any of that. It would go over about as well as giving a barn cat a bath.

“I might have.” She smiled, pulling the strap of her backpack up on her shoulder. “I’ve got to get to class. They’ve already called my parents twice about me ditching. And for the record, my judgment is just fine,” she added, almost convincing Coop and, from what he could tell by the look on her face, herself.

P
hysics was the last class he felt like attending, so he took Ella Jane’s advice—even if she hadn’t literally meant it—and went to check on Cameron. He’d seen her go into the stairwell leading to the basement only to find an empty hallway when he made it down. The muffled sound of crying disclosed her location. A location she obviously didn’t want to be found in, but he went in anyway. There were only a few things in life that could get him to drop his tough-as-nails farm-boy facade and a pretty girl crying was one of them.