Reclaim - Aly Martinez Page 0,62
had been ricocheting inside me ever since I’d promised my brother not to say anything. All of it, every single bit, right down to the moment I’d swallowed the bottle of pills.
As to be expected, Joe was shocked.
He cried.
I cried.
Camden held me tight.
When it was all said and done, nothing was better and everyone was still caught in my web of lies, but the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders.
The only time Camden left my side was when Joe pulled me into his arms, apologizing for things he had no control over. With a proud smile on his face, Camden winked at me before he stepped outside under the pretense of making a phone call. Joe immediately filled the gaping hole he’d left behind and perched on the edge of my bed, his hand wrapped around mine.
“We’re going to get this sorted,” he said, looking far older than his forty-five years. The room fell silent and Joe stared off into space, thought crinkling his forehead.
“How’d you know to call him? How did you have his number?” I asked.
“Who? Camden?”
I twisted my lips and leveled him with a glare. “No, the mouse in your pocket.”
He grinned. “You aren’t the only one who can keep a secret.”
“Good, then you owe me a confession too. Spill.”
He chuckled. “He showed up on my doorstep a few years back. Right after Ramsey went to jail. I opened the door and Camden barely introduced himself before falling into a long, drawn-out dissertation about how I needed to let you move in with us.”
My brows shot up. “What?”
“The boy didn’t let me get a single word in for five solid minutes.”
Yeah, that sounded like Camden, but he’d gone to Joe? About letting me move in? “Why would he do that?”
Joe shrugged. “He didn’t think it’d be safe for you at your dad’s without Ramsey around, so he all but dropped to his knees, begging me to let you move in and be close to Thea. I thought about it for a few days, but he was right.”
I slapped a hand over my mouth. Of course it had been Camden looking out for me even when he was fifteen years old and I’d told him to love someone better. He had no idea how many nights I’d wanted to end it all, and the ten with his chicken scratches across the back was the only thing that had kept me alive. The very thought of Camden was a flicker of peace to my tumultuous soul.
“He calls every so often to check on you, I thought you might need your friend.”
“I don’t deserve him,” I choked out around the lump in my throat. “It’s been years since we saw each other, and he dropped everything to fly across the country just to be here. Who does that?”
Joe gave my hand a squeeze. “Someone who loves you. Someone who was scared out of their mind by the idea of losing you. Someone who sees all the incredible things about you even if you can’t see them yourself. Nora, you are a beautiful, smart, funny woman with a heart so big it swallows you sometimes. Camden is exactly the kind of man you deserve. But he and I can both tell you that until we’re blue in the face and it won’t matter until you can look in the mirror and feel like you deserve him too.”
God, what I wouldn’t have given to be that woman—the one who was good enough for a man like Camden. A woman who was more than just his true friend. But the very idea of her was so far in the future that she was barely visible on the horizon.
Different day, same negative Nora.
That stopped here. In this hospital bed. Camden was right. I had to be the good in all of this mess.
Hell, at least the woman I aspired to become was on the horizon now. Barely was still progress, and even if I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get there, I wouldn’t stop until I did.
Closing my eyes, I rested my head on Joe’s shoulder. “Help me. Please.”
He put his chin to my forehead and sighed. “That’s all you ever have to say, sweet girl.”
As if he’d been summoned, that gorgeous man came strutting back into the room, holding three bottles of Coke and a fist full of candy bars.
His grin was so infectious my mouth had no other option but to follow suit.
“I brought