Pieces of Camden (Hole-Hearted #1) (5 page)

But I like the quiet, like the quiet padded room where I’ve locked away all my thoughts.

Just as I told Yanelys years before, one day, I’d disappear, and no one would ever find me. Not even myself.

“I lost my job.” I avert my eyes because that’s not the reason I’m homeless.

The truth is, I can afford to stay anywhere I want to. I can also buy the abandoned building that was just recently brought to ashes, tear it down, build a new building, refurnish every apartment, and then live in a different apartment without any other occupants for the rest of my life.

The truth is, I don’t have to work or go without.

But I do it anyway.

Because I’d rather have an infinite amount of days of strenuous labor, followed by sleepless nights on hard concrete floors, than take the money my father left for me when he died. I’d rather live my life as a recluse and an outcast than see my mom’s bloodshot eyes threatening me and demanding me to give her that money.

As it is, I see her too often.

Her breath, immersed with the smell of alcohol, curls in the air, polluting everything around her. Including me.

There are days though, when she’ll pass me on the street, too lost in her drunken stupor to see me or recognize me. Those are the days I crave. The days I’m not her son. The days I don’t have to see myself in her.

It isn’t until the words are out that I realize I’ve even spoken of my mom out loud. I backtrack, trying to remember if I’ve made any mention of the money my father left me, but Santiago only looks back at me through his concerned eyes. He doesn’t know about the money. If he knew about the money, there’d be confusion entwined in there as well.

“How can you see yourself in a woman who is nothing like you?” he asks, his voice laced with the harshness he reserves only for when he speaks about my parents.

“We’re related.” I shrug, not able to meet his eyes.

He doesn’t know just how alike she and I really are. I hope he never does.

“Her blood and my blood—it’s all the same,” I continue.

“You share nothing with that woman!” He hits his thigh with his fist.

I fight back a smile. There’s a reason I always wanted to call this man my dad, and it isn’t simply because he took me in when it felt like the whole world had turned its back on me. He’s always seen the good in me, even when the good isn’t much of anything.

“Right.” I rub my bandaged hands over my face again. When the bandage moves, revealing the burn marks on my hand, I pull back the dressing even more and flinch in pain when I touch the area just before the real damage.

My hand’s swollen and black.

Angry and ugly. Permanently scarred.

Need chokes me, numbing me from the effects of living and feeling.

“Considering the size of the fire, you got lucky,” Santiago reveals.

Not wanting to assess the damage any further, I close my eyes.

Too much. The emotions of the past seven years build up inside me, suffocating me with the tendrils of memories I can’t wish away.

“Actually, you got off real lucky. You have some minor burns. You will have to take pain medicine for a bit and keep it clean, but overall, you’re a lucky man.”

Santiago glares at me, his eyes daring me to counter him, but I can’t. I can’t fathom the idea of disappointing him again, so I silently agree with him, and he pats my ankle in approval. The boy in me who still worships him smiles up at him, and I begin to unload everything.

I leave out the nights before I left when Yanelys and I slept together, our bodies entangled. For three nights, I defied the one rule Santiago and Carmen had set, and I showed Yanelys how much I loved her. Those nights, she claimed me, making my soul forever hers.

The first night, Yanelys’s doe eyes met mine, and without me uttering a word, she knew. When I leaned over her on the bed we shared, her eyes grew with wonder and anticipation. She brushed a finger over my mouth and then replaced it with her lips, kissing me so softly that all I felt was her breath dancing over my mouth, but the intensity grew with my desperation. Simultaneously, she eased the agony raging inside me while she fed my scalding need for her. I bathed in her, our love moving down my spine, and for a moment, she removed the hatred my heart had latched on to.

Our tongues swirled together in an exotic dance, and when I placed my palm against her breast, Yanelys quivered beneath me as she threaded her fingers through my hair.

“So beautiful,” I murmured, coming up for air.

I bent down and kissed her neck, my lips trailing down her sleek flesh. I licked and tasted while she panted my name. Her body shook when I traced two fingers around her swollen clitoris, making me throb painfully as I hardened. When she arched her back, I experimented with my tongue, savoring her. When she moaned, my length pulsed, and I pulled away, knowing I’d orgasm before I could have my fill.

Her eyes were bright, her face glistening from raw passion. She was mine, if only for that night. So, I took what she offered without remorse.

I kissed her slowly, and my heart raced. I brought my hips down to her, and she pressed against me. Sighing softly into her mouth, I moved inside her.

“Cam,” she whispered, raking her hands over my back.

Needing to make sure she wanted to do this, I pulled back but her grip on me hardened, bringing me back, and I chuckled lightly into her neck. I kissed her as I slowly move inside her and then kissed her again. Our bodies connected, we continued to kiss, feverish in our ecstasy. Her rapid hot breaths urged me, and I pulled her closer. With each push, she moaned louder, freeing us both. When she locked her lips once again with mine, chills ran down my spine when I thrust a final time inside her.

Sated, she caressed my nose with a lazy finger, and through the pale moonlight, I saw her smile.

Sleep came quickly after that. Her hand found mine, and our fingers stayed interlaced as we slept, bringing me comfort, showing me she found me worthy of love. I was afraid of all the tomorrows before me, but her simple touch gave me the safety I sought. She was beautiful and pure.

I would survive without her because of the quiet moments we shared as well as the passion we experienced while wrapped around each other.

My cheeks heat up as I lie in front of her dad, remembering our night. Knowing he doesn’t need to hear any of that, I cough into the uncomfortable silence, making my chest and throat hurt. I press on and tell him how I left Yanelys at the door to her first period class and walked away, my heart deadening with every step I took away from her.

My heart stutters in despair when I realize I want to tell him why. Without thinking it through, I grasp on to my bed’s handrail and stare at the peach-colored walls while I speak for the first time about what happened when I was seventeen years old and decided to run away from the only family I’d ever had.

My father visited me a couple of days before I left Yanelys so I could dredge through this world alone, and while we stood outside the restroom of the local mall, he told me he was dying. I wanted to celebrate his words and hoped my smile would bring him to his knees. Instead, he smiled back with the same ruthless smile he’d give me before he hit me. I braced myself, and as usual, he brought me to my own knees.

“I’m leaving you all my money,” he told me.

I shook my head at him, not wanting any part of him. “I don’t want your money.”

Of all the things I’d wanted from my parents, money was never one of them. Of course, money was the only issue they never had.

My father’s smile grew sad. “Camden”—he inched forward, and when I stepped away from him, he threw his hands up in a sign of retreat—“you have a lot to hate me for, but your mom…” His eyes met mine, and I tightened my hands into fists. “She wasn’t always like this. The woman I’d married was happy and loving. I’m the reason she turned bad.”

“Leave her the money then.” The plea in my voice was transparent and I hated myself for showing a sign of weakness.

“I can’t.” His voice came out rough and raw. “She’s doing heroin. If I leave her the money, she’ll kill herself with it.”

“If you leave me the money, she’ll find me,” I said, each word searing itself like a brand on my heart. “I just want peace from both of you.”

“Camden—”

I grabbed him by the collar and threw him against the wall. Through clenched teeth, I repeated, “I don’t want your money.”

“You’ll kill her then.”

My grip on him loosened. While I hated my parents, wanted them dead, the reality of what he’d said still hurt.

“Save her,” he pleaded.

Confused, angry, disappointed, I reared back and punched him in the face, making him go down hard. Blood fell from his nose while he looked back at me, stunned. I’d only fought back once, and I had nearly died when he retaliated.

“Fuck you,” I spit at him.

He scrambled to his feet, wiping the blood with the back of his long-sleeved shirt. His hands gripped my wrist and he pulled me to him. I felt him slip something in my jacket pocket as I turned away from him. Once I turned the corner, my hand slipped into my pocket where I found a piece of paper.

I didn’t pull it out to see what it was. I already knew whatever it was would change me. At that moment, I knew I had to leave. Four years of peace, that’s what they’d given me. Foolishly, I’d actually thought I could start anew, that I could bury my parents before their deaths.

But life had never been easy for me.

My mom would come for the money. Her poison would spread, suffocating and destroying me as her venom seeped inside me. Like a spreading disease, it would affect Yanelys, and she would suffer right along with me.

Not this time though.

Her heart was already too scarred because of me, because of the suffering I’d put her through every time I crawled through her window with yet another bruise.

I’d hurt her when I left, but the pain would be manageable.

It had to be better than the alternative. Watching me die on the inside as my mother inevitably clawed her way back into my life…that would be far worse.

Santiago’s warm hand clasps on to mine while I struggle for my next breath. I never cried about my decision. I know I did the right thing.

But, right now, with Santiago sitting on my bed, it’s all too real.

My past and my decisions—they’re too much.

I close my tired eyes and tell Santiago about the purpose that once filled me. I’d wake up, knowing the truth—I mattered. I’d hold on to that tiny shred of realization, not wanting the moment to slip away to the real truth. The ugly truth that still leaves me clasping for nothing but air. The truth that screams at me, telling me no one cares about me.

There’s nothing I can really do to make the world better. God is indifferent, a faraway fairy tale.

“I don’t know your story,” Pastor Floyd told me seven years ago after my third day of sleeping in his church.

With a plateful of spaghetti and meatballs, he sat down next to me and offered me his plate, his weathered hands steady as I took it from him.

Three days had passed since I saw Yanelys. Since I saw Santiago and Carmen. Since I left my family.

In doing so, I’d left a gaping hole in my heart. That stupid little bleeding thing that belonged to Yanelys, with Yanelys.

“But your story isn’t over yet,” Pastor Floyd continued.

I took my first bite into the spaghetti he’d offered. Red sauce dripped down my chin, and I quickly wiped it with the back of my hand.

He then told me about a trip to Haiti that his church was organizing, and he asked if I’d want to join. I originally scoffed at the idea, but his words rooted itself into my rotting heart, and hope began to bloom.

I’d have a purpose, a life worth living. Maybe, just maybe, I’d make Santiago proud of me. He’d always seen more in me than I would ever be able to accomplish, and this was the only way I had to prove him right.

Knowing I’d have to be over eighteen years old, I contacted the son of one of my parents’ friends and had him make me a fake ID and passport. The following two months, I learned Creole and immersed myself in their culture, needing to be an actual asset on the trip.

Haiti wasn’t what I’d expected. I knew of hunger pains but not of famine. I knew nothing of poverty, growing up a slave to wealth. I knew of family, of love, of hate and aguish. But nothing could have prepared me for Haiti.

I lived in Haiti for seven months, most of which I spent at an orphanage, giving babies and kids love that I never knew to dream about. Within the first few months, I fell irrevocably in love with a little girl named Jocelyn Marie and her older brother, Yvon. And while I knew I was too young to adopt them, they became my purpose. They became my truth that kept all the other truths at bay.

When I turned eighteen, I would claim my inheritance and give them a better life. I’d do for them what Santiago and Carmen had done for me. I’d give them a family.

I spoke to Pastor Floyd, who already knew I had lied about my name and age but decided to take me on anyway, and he agreed to help me adopt Jocelyn Marie and Yvon.

My story with Yanelys had ended, but I wasn’t over. Suddenly, that realization filled me. I had a new beginning, a new story.

Then, the earthquake hit. And total devastation came upon us.

It measured a magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale with fifty-two aftershocks recorded. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. Houses and schools were destroyed. Families disappeared while even more fell ill to cholera.

Death surrounded us. Choked us.

I should have died in the orphanage.

The last bit of me died that day, and I should have died with it.

But I didn’t. Instead, I woke up in a hospital room, much like this one. No longer in Haiti, I learned I had been unconscious for three months.

Pastor Floyd visited me hours after I’d awoken, and I hated him for being there with me instead of Jocelyn Marie and Yvon. And the other kids.

When he told me they were gone, my hatred spread and imprinted itself within me.

The boys and girls I loved as my own, including Jocelyn Marie and Yvon, were gone.