She backs up and raises her hand. “No, don’t you try to comfort me now!” she shouts as tears fill her beautiful green eyes, making them appear brighter. “You took my control from me and left me to fend for myself. I had no money, you shut down the accounts, and I didn’t even have a phone! You left me with that psycho.”
“That’s not how it was supposed to go down,” I hiss, pissed off at the series of events that followed. “Frank couldn’t find you.” I bridge the gap between us and thankfully, this time she lets me. “He’s had guys scouring everywhere in search of you. He even put a call in to your dad.”
“I haven’t seen or talked to him,” she admits with a shake of her head. “I was so out of it, I lost my grip on reality. And then, when I finally started to come around, I realized my phone was shut off and Noah said he would take care of it, but he never did. I’ve been with him this entire time.”
“Yeah, I know,” I growl, pissed at the world for fucking me over.
Her eyes go wide and she takes a step back. “Don’t you dare go there. You did this. You chose to keep me on the outside. You knew how much it hurt when my parents hid my mom’s cancer, and when my dad got arrested, I was blindsided.”
She shoves my chest and stalks around me. “You promised, Isaac!” she cries and her broken voice damn near breaks my heart. “Noah locked me in the room and was going to force me to marry him,” she says softly through her tears. “And this whole time you’ve been living here safe and sound!”
“Meu amor…”
“No! Don’t you ‘Meu amor’ me! If you hadn’t gotten me today, I’d be Camilla fucking Reynolds!”
“That was never going to happen,” I bark, the thought of that fucker staking any kind of claim on Camilla making me see red. “Why do you think I came to get you? One of Frank’s contacts tipped him off that Noah and you applied for a marriage license a few days ago. He told me to let him handle it, but I wasn’t letting it happen. I know you’re upset, but I did what I did to protect you.”
“Yeah, like leaving me for months with your psycho friend?”
I lean back against the cushion and sigh, mentally drained. “I don’t understand what’s gotten into him. We’ve been friends for years. I want to ask him what the fuck he was thinking”—and then ring his neck with my bare hands for what he’s put Camilla through—“but I still have someone out there who’s after me, so I can’t make it known I’m alive. Everyone needs to think I’m still dead, including Noah.”
Mentioning my fake death was probably a mistake because as soon as I do, Cam’s entire body tenses and her eyes go hard.
“Cam…”
“Damn it, Isaac. I’m so freaking happy and relieved you’re alive, and I know I shouldn’t be mad and hurt, but I am. In the beginning, every time Noah said you were dead, I argued with him. I searched everywhere for you. I even went to the country club and attacked James. When I found out I was pregnant, all I could think about was that this baby we created together was never going to know his father.” Her words crack and she has to take a calming breath before she can continue.
Fresh tears well in her eyes and my hands twitch to hold her. “Baby, please, I know you’re mad and hurt, and you have every right to be, but aside from carrying you out of that house, I haven’t held you in my arms in months, so can you please just let me hold you?”
She looks at me, struggling with whether or not to give in, and I wait with bated breath to see which she decides. When she nods once, my entire body deflates, and before she can change her mind, I pull her gently into my arms and onto my lap, taking a moment to smell her sweet scent.
“I’m sorry for keeping you in the dark, and for thinking you moved on quickly after my death. I misread the situation. When I found out you and Noah were getting married only a few months after my death, yeah, I jumped to that conclusion. I was thinking with my head instead of my heart. Or maybe it was my heart… Fuck! I don’t know. In my world, everything revolves around money. And since I left you everything in my will—”
“You left me what?” she asks, her brows furrowing in confusion.
“Noah didn’t tell you?” This doesn’t make sense.
“Tell me what?”
“I had my will redone so you were my sole beneficiary. Aside from my life insurance policy, which you couldn’t file because I wasn’t really dead and it would be illegal, you were supposed to have access to all my accounts. Frank said he tried to approach you at the funeral, but Noah told him you were grieving and he would speak to you.”