Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 98264 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98264 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
I slapped a hand over my mouth. Of course it had been Camden looking out for me even when he was fifteen years old and I’d told him to love someone better. He had no idea how many nights I’d wanted to end it all, and the ten with his chicken scratches across the back was the only thing that had kept me alive. The very thought of Camden was a flicker of peace to my tumultuous soul.
“He calls every so often to check on you, I thought you might need your friend.”
“I don’t deserve him,” I choked out around the lump in my throat. “It’s been years since we saw each other, and he dropped everything to fly across the country just to be here. Who does that?”
Joe gave my hand a squeeze. “Someone who loves you. Someone who was scared out of their mind by the idea of losing you. Someone who sees all the incredible things about you even if you can’t see them yourself. Nora, you are a beautiful, smart, funny woman with a heart so big it swallows you sometimes. Camden is exactly the kind of man you deserve. But he and I can both tell you that until we’re blue in the face and it won’t matter until you can look in the mirror and feel like you deserve him too.”
God, what I wouldn’t have given to be that woman—the one who was good enough for a man like Camden. A woman who was more than just his true friend. But the very idea of her was so far in the future that she was barely visible on the horizon.
Different day, same negative Nora.
That stopped here. In this hospital bed. Camden was right. I had to be the good in all of this mess.
Hell, at least the woman I aspired to become was on the horizon now. Barely was still progress, and even if I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get there, I wouldn’t stop until I did.
Closing my eyes, I rested my head on Joe’s shoulder. “Help me. Please.”
He put his chin to my forehead and sighed. “That’s all you ever have to say, sweet girl.”
As if he’d been summoned, that gorgeous man came strutting back into the room, holding three bottles of Coke and a fist full of candy bars.
His grin was so infectious my mouth had no other option but to follow suit.
“I brought us a snack,” he announced. “You still a Snickers girl, or have we moved on to Twix?”
Fuck the candy. I was a Camden Cole girl, any and every way he came.
Or at least I wanted to be.
Camden stayed with me that night, wedged in the bed beside me, holding me close and prattling on about anything and everything that had happened to him over the last few years. He missed his prom because of his appendix, which was an awful story but got me a great shot of his abs when he showed me the scar. He laughed through the entire story of how he used Stewart and Cole Worm Farm as the basis for his accounting class project. Camden was valedictorian of his senior class and had been granted so many scholarships that his full first year at college was practically paid for. I smiled more in that time than I had in all the years he’d been gone combined.
Joe worked his magic and found a two-week inpatient program for me that was going to cost him a small fortune, but he’d just smiled and told me it was a small price to pay to get his second daughter happy and healthy.
Have I mentioned that Joe Hull was the absolute best? I didn't deserve him, either.
But I was hell-bent on getting there.
When it came time for Camden to leave the next day, it felt like I was losing an integral part of myself. He made me swear to call if I ever needed anything, but with renewed hope and a second chance at life, I prayed I wouldn’t have to. I wanted to be able to call him when I wasn’t a burden.
It was the first time we’d ever been together and didn’t exchange the ten-dollar bill, but if I was going to get through the next few months and years, I needed as many reminders of what I was fighting for as I could get.
I couldn’t expect, nor would I ever ask, Camden to wait on me. We’d shared one kiss and immeasurable love in the seven years we’d known each other; however, he had a life to live too. I wanted the world for Camden Cole even if I wasn’t the one who could give it to him.
I needed to find the real Nora Stewart again, and while leaning on him for support would have been easy to do, it wouldn’t have been fair or healthy for either one of us. We agreed that if he ever passed through Clovert, he was bound by pinky promise law to find me immediately. And if I ever found myself in New York—yeah, right—I was required to do the same.