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I don’t know what it was that did it. A little bit of the weight had lifted after Jase had talked to me, but the massive gorilla with an overeating problem finally got the hell off my chest. Pure, sweet relief crashed through me, and it was like being tossed in the middle of a storm. Tears crawled up my throat and built behind my eyes.
“Teresa, don’t cry.” Cam frowned. “I didn’t—”
“I won’t.” I sniffed a couple of times, forcing the waterworks to stop. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.”
I didn’t say anything, because he didn’t need to hear it but I knew it. Cam saying those words was equal to being tossed a lifeline. I grabbed it and held it close. “I love you like I love cupcakes.”
A wide and real smile raced across his face. “You dork, I love you too.”
It wasn’t long before Mom and Dad arrived in the room. Dad looked murderous. So did Mom, but she hid it better. They all but pushed Cam out of the way and clucked over me until the police showed and I gave them my statement. Retelling the time spent in that room with Erik wasn’t easy. I liked to think I was a strong person, but a fine series of quakes had taken hold of me when I got to the part of him admitting that he’d killed Debbie and staged it as a suicide. The shudders increased as I told them how he hadn’t planned on walking out of the room.
Erik had planned to kill me and then himself. He’d said her death was my fault, but he had to have felt guilt if he planned to off himself. He might have buried it deep, but it was there. It had to be. I refused to believe that he’d live the rest of his life feeling completely guiltless.
Dad picked up my uninjured hand, tucking it under his chin as a young deputy closed a small notebook. “That’s all we’ll need for right now,” he said, backing away from the bed. “Get some rest and we’ll call you if we have any more questions.”
“You’ll call me if you have any more questions.” Dad straightened, eyeing the officer as he slipped into lawyers-are-the-devil mode.
The deputy nodded and left, quickly replaced by a doctor and a nurse who looked younger than me. I was poked and prodded and endured a bright light in my eyeballs. Light pain meds were pumped through the IV, and by the time they’d kicked in, my tummy grumbled and I was feeling sort of normal as Mom tucked the thin blanket around my chest. “You’ll be out of here tomorrow, and your father and I were thinking it would be best for you to come home with us instead of waiting on Cam.”
Sitting in the corner, Cam made a face at me.
“We would feel more comfortable,” Dad added, squeezing my hand. “We really would.”
“You’d feel more comfortable if she dropped out of school and lived with you for the rest of her life,” Cam said.
Mom cast him a sharp look over her shoulder. “After what just happened? Yes. I want her under my roof for the next three decades.”
“Only three?” I murmured.
She pressed her lips together. “There is no reason for her to stay down here until you come up on Christmas Eve.”
There was a huge part of me that wanted to let my parents gather me up and take me home. It had been easier there when I’d visited, and I could seriously hole up in my room until Christmas Eve. It sounded really nice, but I knew if I went home with them now, there’d be a good chance I wouldn’t come back to Shepherdstown. I’d want to stay where it was safe and things were familiar in a good way, but I had a life here now—college, the possibility of a career that I would enjoy. I had a future and I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I couldn’t rely on my parents to swoop in and coddle me whenever something bad happened. As much as this sucked to think about, they wouldn’t always be there for me.
“I don’t know, Mom. Let me think about it,” I said finally, knowing that would be better than telling them no flat-out. Neither she nor Dad looked happy about it, but then Cam suddenly stood.
My gaze followed his just as my dad turned, and I swore my heart might’ve stopped right then, if only for a second.
Jase stood in the doorway, his russet waves going in every direction and his bronze skin paler than normal. The dark blue V-neck sweater he wore was askew, showing more of the white shirt underneath than it hid. Everything about him was wrinkled, but in my eyes, he was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen.
In his hands was a square, pink box.
Our gazes locked from across the room, and he stopped midstep, as if he was frozen. His eyes were a fierce silver as relief and something else, something I couldn’t name, etched its way onto his striking features.
Air leaked out of my lungs as my mom stood and gently cleared her throat. “Well, she’s got some company, so let’s get out of their hair.”
Dad arched a brow as he looked from Jase to me and then back to Mom. “Maybe we—”
“We’ll come back tomorrow morning, fresh and early.” Mom shot Dad a look before she bent over and kissed my cheek. “I love you, honey.”
“I love you, too.”
Dad kissed my other cheek and reluctantly relinquished his claim to the side of my bed. As he passed Jase, he leaned in and said something that Jase nodded to. God only knew what had just come out of my dad’s mouth.
Cam patted Jase’s back at he strolled past, surprising me with the fact that he didn’t do something immature like fist bump him or knock his shoulders.
Shit was serious when Cam was acting his age.
