She shot me a puzzled look.
“You stood up in front of the entire town, and you took my side when you didn’t have to. When you knew it was going to cost you. I may have taken a bullet for you, but you took on your dad for me. I’d say that counts us as even for this go-round.” A side of my mouth drifted up.
“This go-round?”
“Well, if we were keeping score.” I raised my eyebrows. “I can remember a certain episode where you took out my dad’s baseball bat and charged Scott Malone to come to my rescue.” It was one of my favorite memories of her.
“That hardly counts! You were in a fight with him because of me. Yet another example of you coming to my rescue.”
“You were a twelve-year-old girl with a bat. I didn’t rescue you; I just gave you time to choose your weapon wisely. Man, you were pissed.” I grinned at the memory. The next day I’d broken into her locker and left the knight—the first of our chess pieces.
“Well, yeah, he’d called me an ugly boy and asked why I didn’t look more like Charity, and it wasn’t the first time. But when he put all that mud in my backpack, I was done.” Her cheeks flushed. “Then you flew at him, and what was I supposed to do? Let you take him on? Not with those other boys joining in.”
“Exactly. You didn’t need saving. You just needed a head start.” I laughed.
“Fine, what about that time I got stuck in the pine tree up on your dad’s land? You had to climb up for me,” she challenged.
“Doesn’t count. You were getting the Frisbee I’d thrown, and man, you’d scrambled up there so fast, I didn’t even have time to beat you to the tree.” I shook my head. “You would have made it if you hadn’t gotten your braid caught.”
“Fair point. I almost chopped it all off that summer.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.” Shit, I hadn’t meant to say that.
Her eyes widened.
I could either back down or own it. What the hell.
“Your hair is beautiful, and I know you like it long. You would have regretted it. Now, when you got gum stuck in it, that’s when I thought the scissors were coming out.”
She huffed. “I didn’t get gum stuck in it. Sullivan dropped it in my hair.” Her forehead puckered. “What were we? Ten?”
I nodded. “It was the summer Mom died, so yeah, you were ten.”
“She spent an hour getting it out so I wouldn’t have to tell my mom,” she said softly, a wistful smile sweeping across her face.
“She was pretty amazing like that. Plus, she knew it was my fault, so she was quick to cover for me.” I looked up to the picture on the mantel, in which Mom stood smiling with the three of us decked out in ties for her last Mother’s Day. Except she hadn’t known it was her last.
“How can you possibly blame Sullivan’s choice on yourself?” She flat-out glared at me.
“Oh come on, you didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
“He only did it because he was mad that we were going out to the hot springs without him. Remember? He didn’t finish his chores, so he wasn’t allowed to go, and he sure as hell didn’t want you going with me.” Man, he’d been so jealous, already staking his claim on the girl who hadn’t noticed that she was his world.
“Are you serious?” Her nose scrunched. “Oh my God, and you finished his chores while your mom got the gum out,” she remembered, looking up at the same picture.
“Yep.” Should have seen that as the foreshadowing that it was.
“You were so good to him, Cam. You always put him first, even when I know you missed out on some of the things you wanted.” Her eyes met mine, and I knew she wasn’t thinking the same thing I was, simply because I’d never told her and she’d never caught on. “That’s how I know you never could have set fire to the bunkhouse, you know.”
I looked away, scared she’d see right through me to the truth of that day.
“What? Don’t think I’m a bored arsonist?” I stared into the fire, remembering the one that had almost consumed her that night. I’d been so damned lucky to find her through the smoke and flames.
“No. I never did. It’s not in your nature. Besides, you never would have done anything that put Sully in danger. The torch got knocked over. Accidents happen. I can’t believe everyone blamed you, let alone still blames you.”
“People need to place blame when things go to shit. Makes them feel like they have control over things they don’t. And of course they blamed me.” I tossed a smirk at her. “I was there, and therefore it was my fault.”
“You were there for me,” she said softly. “I lost Sullivan’s hand when the beam came down. I thought I was going to…” She paused, taking a deep breath. “I was pretty sure I was hallucinating when I saw you jump the flames, and yet…part of me knew you’d come. Must have been the oxygen deprivation, right?”
“It was just luck that I stumbled onto you.” I’d been so fucking scared. Sullivan had come out of the bunkhouse without her, sputtering from the smoke, and my only thought had been to get to Willow.
“It wasn’t.”
My gaze slowly slid back to hers.
“You weren’t in the back like we were, Cam. You weren’t finding your way out and happened to come across me. That door led out, and you came through it. You came back in to find me. You saved my life.” Her expression softened, and everything in me rebelled. She couldn’t look at me like that, like I was some kind of fucking hero for doing the decent thing, the selfish thing when push came to shove.
I hadn’t gone after her because it was the right thing to do. I’d gone after her because I couldn’t bear the thought of her not existing. I didn’t deserve an ounce of her hero worship, not when my motive was pure terror. I wasn’t anyone’s hero.
“I wasn’t there when it mattered.” My hands curled into fists. “None of the rest matters when you think about that. I let him down in Afghanistan. I let you down.”
She blinked rapidly and looked away for a handful of heartbeats, but she returned, sadness coming off her in nearly palpable waves. “You didn’t let me down,” she whispered.
My jaw ticked.
“You didn’t,” she repeated, leaning toward me but leaving a good foot between us. “It wasn’t your fault. Sullivan’s death was not your fault.”
“You don’t know that,” I snapped, refusing to even entertain the notion. “You weren’t there. You have no clue.”