Reclaim - Aly Martinez Page 0,74

our goal. And over the three years I’d been heading up the program, the money never stopped. I spent almost every Friday night during the summer in the school cafeteria surrounded by volunteers packing those bags until almost midnight, but seeing those kids’ faces when they picked them up meant more to me than I ever could have imagined.

Camden’s words from all those years earlier when I was lying in a hospital bed after having attempted to take my own life filled my thoughts on a daily basis. “Something good has to come from this.” I'd never bought into his theory that I could be the something good.

But those kids. That was enough for me.

Camden and I had spoken exactly zero times over the last five years. I didn’t have his number at school, but I knew that Joe did. He was the keeper of all secrets in our family. If he’d been able to find Camden when I had been in the hospital, I ventured to say he had probably kept in touch with him through the years too. But reaching out to him when I was still piecing my life back together wasn’t fair. He’d told me not to let him off my hook, but constantly reeling him in just to toss him back out because I wasn’t ready for more seemed cruel. If and when I reached out to Camden Cole again, I wanted to be the woman he deserved. Though, as time passed without so much as a peep from Camden, either, I started to wonder if maybe he'd let himself off the hook.

Around the three-year mark, I got tipsy with Thea one night and decided to look him up on Instagram. I found an account for him, complete with a profile picture of him in a suit, sexy as ever and smiling at the camera, but there were no photos uploaded to his grid. There were, however, a handful of photos other people had tagged him in.

One on a snowy mountaintop, his hair a tousled mess beneath a pair of ski goggles. There were six grinning men all huddled around him, and it made me smile to know that Camden had finally found his tribe of friends.

Someone else had tagged a picture of him at what appeared to be a restaurant, a cake with sparkling candles lit in front of him. It had been posted four months after his birthday, so I wasn’t sure what he was celebrating, but I just liked knowing he had something to celebrate at all.

But the picture that hit me the hardest was an image of him standing beside a gorgeous blonde. They looked like Ken and Barbie. He was in chinos and a baby-blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows—pure Camden Cole preppy. She was in a white silk blouse tucked into a high-waisted black pencil skirt and capped off with black stiletto pumps. She was taller than I was. Classier than I was. Prettier than I was. But most of all, she was standing in what should have been my spot at his side, and he was smiling ear to ear with his arm draped around her hips.

The caption read: Nothing better than a night out with this guy.

And she wasn’t wrong.

I cried myself to sleep that night, simultaneously mourning the loss of a man who had never truly been mine and hoping he’d finally found someone who could make him happy.

Stalking Camden Cole quickly became my favorite guilty pleasure. He never added any pictures of his own, but every few months, one of his friends would tag him in something. As far as I could tell, Pencil Skirt Barbie hadn't lasted long, but as the years passed, it wasn't unusual for other girls to appear in photos with him.

What had I expected though? He was a gorgeous man in his twenties. Honestly, it was more surprising I hadn’t run across engagement or wedding photos yet.

Deciding to follow Camden’s lead, I allowed some of the teachers at school to set me up on a few dates. Most were dumpster fires, though a guy named Noah earned a second date. He was nice enough, funny enough, kind enough.

He just wasn’t Cam.

So I threw myself back into work and swore men off for good. Well, all men except for my secret late-night rendezvous with whatever picture of @CamdenCole1019 had been recently added.

Between working on myself, working for the kids, and working toward keeping Thea from becoming a