“I had a relapse,” he admits in a whisper and then clears his throat, meeting my eyes. “I didn’t go to see her, because I couldn’t. I know one of your dirty secrets. Now you know one of mine.”
“A relapse?” The leather armrest tightens under my grasp. Kamden stands up and shrugs off his jacket. He’s wearing a heather gray shirt underneath with his jeans. He’d look comfortable here if he weren’t trying to suppress so much emotion. He tosses the jacket onto one of the other chairs and sits down again.
“I overdosed.” Kamden’s mouth curves down, his cheeks reddening again, and I’d know that expression anywhere. I’ve seen it on my own face in the mirror enough times. He settles back into the chair and he’s joined by guilt.
Guilt. Real, pained guilt.
That heat I felt before dims instead as I watch him, finding no trace of deception.
Kamden clears his throat. “Fuck you for judging me.” His eyes are hard on mine now. He looks like this hurts to say even more than admitting the relapse. “I found her. I’m the one who found her. She’d jumped out of a window. Not this place. I can’t go back to her southern home. I thought she was dead. Lying there like a corpse, there was so much blood by her head. I thought she was dead.”
The image slams into me like a long-haul truck. Ella, lying lifeless and still on the ground outside some featureless window. The horrified feeling of coming upon her that way. The slow realization. Kamden wouldn’t have wanted to believe it was true. Reality would have forced its way in anyway. She had lived. Obviously she had lived. But there would have been a moment when his heart was in his throat, when his mind was screaming for her not to have done what she did. My own heart pounds to imagine it. I have to keep my face neutral with every bit of restraint I have.
It’s far more serious than I thought with Ella. I thought she had a moment of weakness once. Only once. “She tried to kill herself more than once?”
“Twice now,” Kamden answers and swallows hard. “She was admitted after she jumped out the window. The only thing that saved her that time was the railing. Her ankle caught it on the way down and prevented her from landing on concrete stairs.” He readjusts again in his seat, this time opting to sit back, his gaze focusing on the blanket. Like all he wants to do is hide beneath it. As if it could all be written off as a bad dream. “I couldn’t do anything about it. The police came. I was in shock. She’d jumped. It was obvious. I wasn’t there when they spoke to her when she woke up, they wouldn’t let me. They admitted her before I could do a damn thing to help her.”
A chill settles between us, dragging the tension down to the ground until it’s subdued entirely. All I can wonder is if Damon knows. My mind drifts to the file. Kamden’s quiet for another long stretch until he tells me, “And then, at the center, she drank drain cleaner. I’ve been—” He stops, putting a fist to his mouth, and takes a deep breath. Putting his hands in his lap before he continues. “I’ve been clean for a decade, but I couldn’t stop blaming myself.”
“For what? What did you do?”
“I’m the one who left her alone in the first place.” His eyes find mine. “She was losing it. Crying, which I expected. But she was angry and hysterical.”
This wouldn’t have been in the file. Even if I’d read it, this statement from Kamden wouldn’t have been in there. He wouldn’t be telling me now if he assumed I already knew about it. It comes back to me then—Ella telling me that everything in the file was carefully curated. I thought she meant she did it all by herself, but Kamden must have had a hand too. He must have kept out certain details.
“You left her alone because she was upset?” I shake my head, my own guilt rising again. I did the same thing. I let Quincy walk through the city by herself. I want to convince Kamden it wasn’t his fault as much as I want to convince myself, but lies don’t help a damn soul.
“No. I left her alone, and I took her phone. So she had no one. I took her phone,” he repeats as if the phone is what did her in. “She couldn’t call anyone … but she couldn’t have it. It was driving her mad.”
None of this makes any sense. “Why the hell would you take her phone?”
He’s looking into the fireplace again, and I almost wish I’d turned the damn thing on so he wouldn’t look so desolate while he stares into nothing. Kamden takes a trip back into his memories and resurfaces with a shake of his head. “They kept posting it. The video. It was all over her social. They kept tagging her, over and over again. Every time she saw one pop up, she lost it.”
“Posting the video?”
“Ella kept watching it over and over. Someone would tag her and the whole cycle would start again. She couldn’t stop herself. She’d play the video and cry. Gut-wrenching sobs. All day. After a few hours she’d manage to collect herself, but it would only be for a few minutes. An hour at most. And then she went back to the video. Back and back and back. When it was at its worst she would beg people to stop posting, but they wouldn’t. Asking them to take it down only made more people share the link. It was vicious. She had nowhere to go. Maybe you don’t get it, but sharing everything with them … she couldn’t back away and they wouldn’t let her.”
I’m missing a crucial piece of information, and for the first time I feel a real, genuine regret that I haven’t read her file. I haven’t done everything in my power to learn about Ella. I’m against it in general because I think people need the chance to tell their own stories, but this is a part of it that she’s yet to confide in me.
I didn’t know about the suicide attempt at her old place. I didn’t know she jumped out of a fucking window. And Kamden thinks she did that because of some people posting about her. No—posting a video. I’ve seen some videos, but—
“What were they posting?”
Kamden meets my eyes with deep disappointment. Somehow, the tables have turned since he walked into this room. “You want to make me the villain in all this because you’re pissed off at me, but I’m not the villain. You might be, though.”
“What got to her—” I stop and take a deep breath. I won’t let my anger get the best of me. I won’t even talk myself up into thinking I haven’t made any mistakes. “What did they post that made her that upset?” It has to do with James. It’s the only thing I can imagine. The realization is suffocating.
Kamden looks down at his hands in his lap, then back up to me. “You should ask her.” He shakes his head then adds, “No. You should already know.”