Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,88
panic darting in his eyes. Sometimes there was so much to say about something, there was nothing really to say at all. “The girl that you fell in love with – she’s gone. I’m not her, and I’m never going to be her again. You don’t want me, Cam. You want her.”
“We are meant to be together. It’s the closest thing to soul mates I’ve ever seen.” He grasped my forearms viciously, moving close to my face. His voice was strong, unwavering, unquestionable. “Tell me it would be easy for you to watch me move on – to fall in love with someone else.”
It would have been miserable. The impulse confused me because he was right. It would be one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, watching him fall in love with someone else. Could I really be that selfish? I didn’t want to be with him, but I didn’t want him finding happiness somewhere else? That didn’t seem right.
“Do you even know what you’re fighting for, Cam?” I deflected, using the irritation I felt towards myself to power the accusations rallying in my head. “You wrote this book for the girl in the yellow dress, but that girl never even existed. You romanticized our relationship. There was nothing grand or epic about it. I was a seventeen-year-old girl who got knocked up and couldn’t deal. All I’ve seen in this movie is you making me into something better, braver, purer than I ever really was.”
“If seeing you as pure and brave, and if seeing the best in you, are the wrong things to see, then what does he see in you? What am I supposed to see?”
The answers rushed into my cheeks where I trapped them, fighting to swallow them all back down. Declan saw me as imperfect. He knew I wasn’t brave, but he found the good intentions behind my cowardice. He saw all of my faults. I was different, unique to him, but he saw me as more than that too. When he looked at me, he saw me for exactly who I was, someone worth chasing, even when they walked away.
I might not have uttered a word, but I knew it was written all over my face from the betrayal shining in Cam’s russet irises.
“He’s wrong for you, Adley. At the end of this, you’re going to be left even more broken than before, looking like an idiot. It’s not the best thing for you, and you know it.”
Embarrassment burned me. He wasn’t saying anything I didn’t already know, but hearing the words come out of his mouth made me want to refute them. I wanted him to be wrong. I wanted to challenge him.
“Who are you to say what’s best for me?”
Rage struck his body rigid as he shot up, towering over me.
“I’m the person whose life has been defined by choices that you made because you decided they were right.”
It felt like a slap in the face. I think I actually would have preferred that he had hit me instead of saying those indisputable words. The pain didn’t fuel my anger; it couldn’t, not when he was right.
I’d been making decisions for Cam since that day in the park, when I’d decided we all deserved a better life than we could have with each other. I’m the one who got to say what was best.
When we’d laid in the hospital bed together, only moments after bringing a new life into the world, and he’d been shaking with the effort not to move, not to leave me, not to stand up and go to the only other person in the world that was completely his; I’d labeled him as weak. I was convinced if he saw her then he’d want to keep her.
I’d always decided what was best for him. He hadn’t agreed because he thought it was for the best; he’d agreed for me.
In that moment, Cam was telling me what was best for me, and I couldn’t do him the same courtesy. My rebellious heart hammered against the notion. It told me he was wrong. I knew what was best for me.
Something horrible and ugly, like a festering blister, bubbled up inside of me. What if I had been wrong about all the things I’d been so sure were best for Cam? The strong foundation of conviction I’d always stood on grumbled beneath my feet, warning me of its collapse. What if I’d destroyed all our lives?