Path of Destruction (Broken Heartland, #2)(24)

“It was after the bonfire and I was drunk. I thought I was calling Hayden.”

Ella Jane’s face tightened at the mention of Hayden’s name, and for a second, it looked like she might turn around and leave.

“I don’t buy it. You mean to tell me that you spent the summer lounging by the pool with my brother, doing God knows what, while you were still with Hayden. And Hayden swears you weren’t together this summer. I don’t know much about you, but I think you’re lying.”

“I’m not,” she defended. “And I don’t owe you any explanation of how I spent my summer. I’m not interrogating you about your summer with my boyfriend.”

“What do you want to know?” Ella Jane fired back. “That he lied to me all summer? Never mentioned you and is still denying you were together even now? That enough information to get you to start talking about my brother?”

The wounded look on Ella Jane’s face almost had Cami confessing to everything. She apparently wasn’t the only one who’d spent her summer in love, and a little piece of Cami felt for her interrogator. And God, the freaking desperation in the girl’s eyes would have a criminal confessing.

Her voice was softer when she spoke again. “Look, Hayden aside, Kyle was my brother. I don’t need every detail, but I would like to know what happened between you this summer. I need to know that the last few months of his life weren’t pointless.”

Ella Jane bit her lip, and Cami studied her. Clearly the girl didn’t give a care in the world to her appearance, and yet, like Kyle, she was naturally gorgeous. It was both a painful reminder and infuriating.

“I—”

“Did you love him? Were you in love?”

The question was practically a whisper. But it hit her the hardest. “We... It was...” she hesitated, the painful playback of memories hitting her in her most sensitive places. “I can’t give you what you want,” Cami said softly before turning to leave. “I’m sorry.”

“No. Please. Wait a second.” Ella Jane grabbed her elbow, spinning her around.

The two locked eyes. Cami wondered if Ella Jane was going to beat it out of her. She wasn’t giving up without some answers and Cami wasn’t about to give her any, beating or not.

“Whoa, ladies.” Brantley’s voice cut the tension as he removed Ella Jane’s hand from Cami’s arm. “How about we all take a deep breath and a step back,” he recommended, nodding at the passing school administrator. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “I don’t think either of you really want to spend the day in the principal’s office. Trust me.”

Cami didn’t even bother to look over and see who it was. She knew that she had the capacity at this school to cry wolf and send Ella Jane straight to detention for putting her hands on her, but that wasn’t going to get her to ease up about asking about Kyle. She dropped her head, unable to look Brantley in the eye either.

“What exactly is going on here?” he asked. “I hope the two of you aren’t wasting your time and energy arguing over Prescott.”

Cami waited for Ella Jane to out her. To tell her buddy—or whatever he was—what she’d been up to her with her brother last summer. The walls felt as if they were closing in on her. Everyone in the entire school was about to find out how she lied about her summer abroad. And, even worse, they were about to infiltrate all the memories she was trying to keep to herself.

But Ella Jane surprised her. “It’s nothing.”

Cami’s gaze lifted to Ella Jane’s, which was laced with a warning. We are not finished here.

She didn’t tell him. She didn’t even mention Kyle’s name.

“Sure didn’t look like nothing,” he continued, pressing for information. “Cameron, you all right?”

Well…that was unexpected.

First, because he’d just referred to her by her full name—whereas the rest of the student population always called her Cami. The way he said it and the way he was looking at her—like she was delicate and beautiful—seemed to stop time. She hadn’t had a guy look at her like that since Kyle. Maybe there was something in the Hope’s Grove water that made guys see her differently than the rest. Or maybe they just hadn’t witnessed the years of braces and baby fat or didn’t realize she’d been property of Hayden Prescott for the last three years.

More than that, she was startled by the fact that he was genuinely concerned with her. Here he was with his gal pal, Ella Jane. The two of them were practically joined at the hip. He pretty much pissed a circle around her when Hayden was present, but now he was asking Cami for her side of the story instead of just taking Ella Jane’s word as the gospel.

Interesting.

“I’m fine. It was nothing,” Cami confirmed, quickly turning to leave before Ella Jane’s eyes burned a hole in her or Brantley’s saw something she was trying to hide. “I need to get to class.”

Leaving them behind, she headed straight to the place she’d had in mind before her run-in with EJ. There might not have been a storm in town yet, but the way she was feeling—like she’d had the wind knocked out of her—there might as well have been.

She couldn’t stand the idea of having to fight back the tears she’d been holding in anymore—of having to stave off the memories she’d made with Kyle Mason another second. At least in the basement, alone, she could let it out. A crack of thunder echoed off in the distance, and she couldn’t get to the basement fast enough.