Pieces of Camden (Hole-Hearted #1) (13 page)

CAMDEN

Sweat gathered on the palm of my hand when I stood in front of Yanelys’s door with Carmen and Santiago beside me. Words I wanted to tell her jumbled on my swollen tongue, but I was unable to get them out so I could speak. But when Yanelys and then Olivia wrapped their arms around me, I exhaled the breath I’d been holding in for seven years. My heart, mind, and soul rejoiced.

It felt too real but also like a sweet fabrication. I couldn’t even remember anything but my rattled nerves from the time I got out of Santiago’s car up until the moment Yanelys was in my arms. When her arms wrapped tightly around my body, my reality stopped feeling like the ill-fated nightmare I’d been living through most of my life. My mind became overcrowded, but I thought of nothing. Needing more, I kissed her. My heart thumped erratically. I felt peace.

Our emotions run so thick in the air, we can touch it. So, we touch each other. A stray hair pushed behind her ear. A tender caress over my battered face. Worn knuckles over her delicate skin.

I touch her, needing a reminder that I’m loved. I touch her again to soothe the wounded part of me that’ll always believe there’s nothing left in me worthy of love. Worthy of saving.

When we sit on the couch in her living room and our knees knock against one another, I kiss her again, loving her with the same ease I’ve loved her with my whole life.

“My beautiful Yan.”

My forehead meets hers, and I breathe her in.

“Am I yours, Cam?” she whispers, her voice laced with anguish.

“If you’ll let me back in. Please let me back in.” My lips press to her tear-stained cheek as my throat burns with emotion.

Yanelys pulls away and bites her bottom lip when it trembles. “What if you leave again?”

“I won’t,” I promise. “Even if you don’t love me anymore, if you don’t want me…” My voice breaks at the thought of her not wanting me.

She backs away a couple of inches, anger crossing over her features. “Why would you say that? I’m not the one who left. You did.”

“And I left you with a daughter to raise on your own. I’ve given you the perfect reason to hate me.” The palms of my hands itch, so I close them into tight fists. “I don’t blame you if you do, Yan. Every day, I hate myself a little more,” I admit.

Yanelys takes my face in her hands, and although her lips still form a thin line, her eyes reveal how she really feels, and I’m met with a love I’ve longed for, starved myself of.

“I love you. I want you,” she says.

She wants me. After a lifetime of knowing what it is not to be loved, not to be wanted, her unrequited devotion glows like a beacon signaling me home.

“I always will,” she admits, her eyes filling with tears.

“I’m sorry. Forgive me. Please forgive me,” I plead.

She rests her forehead on mine.

“I’m here. I’m not going away, not ever again.” I kiss her tears as they fall. “I have a daughter I want to get to know and a woman I’ve missed every second of every day for seven long years.”

She breathes in the words I exhaled.

“You have a little girl.” Yanelys’s lips turn up into a radiant smile that I return.

“She looks just like you. Beautiful like her mommy.”

My hands trace over her face, and Yanelys does the same, bringing her fingers to my cheek. Skin on skin, she restores my empty soul. The pills rush through my system, and it gasps for more as her fiery touch ignites my skin. Rough and healing.

“She looks like you,” she counters. “Her eyes are dark like mine, but they have your shape. Her hair is as crazy as mine, but it’s dark like yours.”

The tips of her fingers wander over me as she describes our daughter. Each caress leaves a trail of the love I turned away from. Of the love I never lost.

Already, Olivia knows of life’s imperfections. Already, I’m one of those imperfections. But I’ll right my biggest mistake and slowly become her dad. In an instant, my life no longer belongs to me but to her. And to her mom.

Always to her mom.

“Tell me something about yourself,” I say.

Yanelys tilts her head in question.

“Where do you work?”

“I’m the volunteer coordinator at our local animal shelter,” she answers.

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah.” She nods, her eyes glowing in their excitement. “It’s hard, seeing all those animals without a home, but it’s also rewarding.” Her lips spread into a smile. “Even on the crappiest days, I get to go inside a dog’s kennel and play with him or her, and my day immediately gets better.”

My eyes trace her face, taking her in. Her eyes, her lips. My fingers run through her hair, playing with the soft tips.

“Your hair’s darker.”

She looks down, all self-conscious, and when her eyes meet mine once again, she bites her bottom lip.

“I colored it a few months ago.” She shrugs. “I wanted something different.”

“I like it.”

Red tints her cheeks as she blushes under the intensity of my stare. Toying with the bottom of her shirt, she looks up at me through shy eyes.

“Haiti, huh?” Yanelys asks. She pulls away so that we’re no longer touching, breaking the awkward but sweet moment between us.

Mute despair escapes my lungs, my spirit breaking at the thought of Jocelyn Marie and Yvon. Two beautiful souls that filled the void inside me.

In Haiti, my days were full of games I’d never played before. Through sticky fingers, dirty faces, tender hugs, broken toys, scraped knees, and wet kisses, we learned the basics of what being a kid meant. We became a family, a unit, and I promised them I’d take care of them, that I’d be their constant.

The weight of that broken promise crushes into itself.

Yanelys takes my hand, molding hers with mine. My heart beats wildly in my chest, calling her name with every thump.

Compassion spills from her eyes as she places our united hands to her chest where I can feel her heart beating just as hard as mine.

“I hurt when you hurt.” She brings my hand to her mouth and brushes her lips over my knuckles. “Talk to me, Cam.”

Supposedly, a person can die only once in their life. But I’ve died several times in mine. Once, when I left Yanelys. Again, when I woke up in the hospital after Haiti. And a third time, when I went back to nothing.

It’s only when I feel her heart beating for mine that I’ve come back to life.

“It’s messed up, Yan.” I comb a hand over my face, squeezing the bridge of my nose, before I continue, “I don’t even know where to start.”

Yanelys rests her head on my shoulder, and I breathe in the smell of her shampoo, it’s a delicate scent with a hint of lavender. Not quite the girl I remember, the woman sitting beside me is better. Sinfully sexy without even trying. Compassionate and caring. Beautiful, inside and out.

Rubbing my bandaged hands together, I start at the beginning. My time with Pastor Floyd, learning Creole and prayers that I’d later recite when I still held on to hope. Haiti and the secret beauty she held deep inside her. My voice catches in my throat when I get to the part about the earthquake, about the all-encompassing heartache and loss that followed.

The remnants of all the yesterdays wordlessly cut through the air. It bounces off the walls, crushing me each time it returns to me, hitting my chest.

“We’ll find them,” Yanelys whispers.

My body stiffens, and Yanelys sits up, taking my face in her hands.

“We’ll find them,” she speaks softly, slowly.

I look away, knowing she believes her lie.

“Cam…”

“I can’t do this right now, Yan.” I abruptly stand up.

Yanelys follows. “Okay”—she holds her hands up—“we’ll talk about something else. Do you want me to tell you about the day Olivia was born?”

While her words are meant to soothe me, they slice right through me. I missed my daughter’s birth, her first words, her first steps, her first birthday. I wasn’t there to hold Yanelys and assure her that everything would be okay when the idea of having a baby got too big.

Just another failure to pile on top of the others.

“Yeah”—a forced smile crosses my face—“tell me.”

Taking a seat back on the couch, I reach out to Yanelys, and when she closes her hand over mine, I pull her to me. She resists for only a moment, but inch by inch, her apprehension unravels in front of me, and I sit her on my lap. She rests her head again on my shoulder while I run lazy circles over her back, my tension easing as her breath falls on my cheek.

“I went in for a scheduled ultrasound that morning. There’d been quite a few at that point that I told my parents not to worry about going. I let my mom slept in, and I drove myself. While the technician did the scan, I knew something wasn’t right. She wasn’t her normal chatty self, but I was too scared to ask her anything.”

My hands stop tracing small circles, and I tighten my hold around Yanelys’s waist.

“Everything turned out fine, Cam.” She kisses my cheek. “You saw Olivia yourself.”

“But you were scared.” My voice comes out hoarse, so I cough to clear it. “You were alone.”

“Even when you weren’t here, you were never so far away that I couldn’t reach you. I always felt you with me. I’d talk to you.” Yanelys laughs, and a light blush creeps up her neck and stains her cheeks.

I’m reminded once again that, while our bond is strong, we’re still strangers to each other. I hate seeing her battle between her love for me and the discomfort and sadness I bring her.

“Every day, I’d talk to you and tell you about my day and about Olivia. You were never completely gone.”

“How? After everything I’ve done to you, how can you still love me?” I ask for what seems like the hundredth time.

“How can I not?” she replies, shaking her head against my shoulder. “It’d be easier if I could hate you. A part of me wants to. Anyway, back to my ultrasound.” She laughs. “After the technician finished, she patted my leg, told me to get dressed and that my doctor would be in shortly. I wanted to call my mom, but I didn’t. I didn’t know what was happening yet, and I didn’t want to worry her, so I waited. It felt like hours had passed before the doctor arrived.” She laughs again and softly kisses me on my cheek. “She told me that the amniotic fluid was low, and she was sending me to the hospital, which was thankfully right next door, to prep me for an emergency C-section. I’m not gonna lie to you. I was scared, Cam. I needed you.”

A choking breath slips through my lips, and unable to take back any of my previous decisions, I rest my head on her.

“I still need you. Don’t leave me again, or I won’t be as forgiving the second time,” she warns.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I promise, knowing Yanelys might very well kick me out of her life if she knew about my addiction.

My empty chest sighs out a millennium of pains. But with Santiago wanting to help me get clean, maybe I won’t have to tell her until I’m able to stand on my own.

“Just”—I close my eyes—“no matter what, please don’t turn away from me. I’m messed up, but I’m trying. For you and Olivia, I’m trying. I swear it.”

Yanelys turns and wraps her arms and legs around my shaking body. I try to fight the tremors, but in Yanelys’s embrace, I weaken further and further into the memories of the destructive life I’ve led. The boy Yanelys knew is gone, invisible even to myself.

“You’re strong, Cam,” she whispers into my ear.

I shake my head, denying it.

“You are.”

“And you?” I ask with wonder in my voice. “You had our daughter by yourself. You’ve raised her, loved her, given her laughter. You, my Yan, are the vision of strength. I admire you. I look up to you. I love you.”

Yanelys’s quick intake of breath makes me realize that she hasn’t heard those words from me in so long, too long.

Framing her face with my hands, I repeat them, “I love you.” Still caressing her face, I pull her down to me. “I love you for the woman you’ve become.” I kiss her lips. “I love you for loving our daughter.” I kiss her again. “I love you for how you make me feel.” Again, our lips touch. “I love you for you.”

When our lips meet once again, Yanelys opens her mouth in invitation, and my tongue slips in, tasting her.

Lost in her, I find myself. My heart. My salvation.

As she runs her hands through my hair, I deepen the kiss, telling her everything I’m not quite ready to speak of yet. I empty myself into our kiss, and when our lips part on a loud smack, I stare at her swollen lips and smile.

“So, you went to the hospital?”

Confusion crosses her face before she realizes what I’m asking.

On a breathy laugh, she starts again, “Yeah, I called my mom right after I registered at the hospital. I hadn’t shaved my legs in a couple of days, maybe weeks.” She scrunches up her nose, making me laugh. “I was huge, Cam. I couldn’t bend down to shave my own legs. When I got to my room, one of the nurses came in and shaved them and my, uh…private area.” A sweet blush spreads across her cheeks while she sucks on her bottom lip. “Anyway, that’s not important.”

“Every part is important,” I counter. “Don’t leave anything out.”

“There really isn’t much else to the story. What was supposed to be an emergency C-section got pushed back eleven hours because my doctor had another emergency. Olivia was born just before seven p.m. on July twenty-first, nine months after you left.” Her voice quakes, gripping me with urgency.

Too scared to speak, I hug her closer to me and press my lips against her temple. I’m aching as the room grows dense, the sharp edges of life whispering all the wrongs I’ve done. All the wrongs I need to make right.

Her love will carry me, make me stronger, so I can break free and finally be with them.

I swallow around the lump in my throat and sink my face into the side of Yanelys’s neck, kissing her soft skin. My unshaven jaw rubs against her, and then I pull away, so she can see me and all the promises I intend to keep.

“Never again,” I say.

Her light-brown eyes flash to mine, hope and despair intertwining with one other.

“Never again will you celebrate another birthday without me. Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Tooth Fairy—I’m gonna be here for all of that.”

“Okay.” She nods. “School functions, too.”