Or someone who looks like him.
But not the way I remember.
There’s a scar now—jagged and raw, cutting down the left side of his face. One eye is clouded, milky white, it almost resembles a ghost.
He looks older. Harder. Like he’s been through hell.
But it’s him.
It’s really him.
And for the first time in what feels like forever, I don’t know whether to cry… or collapse.
“Cam?”
His name slips from my lips, but my brain is still playing catch up.
There are tense lines carved into his face—grief, exhaustion, guilt—but it’s him.
He’s real.
He’s really here.
“I’ve got you, baby,” he chokes, voice thick with emotion as he eases onto the bed beside me.
His arms wrap around me with the gentlest care, like he’s afraid I’ll break if he holds too tight.
Maybe I will.
But I don’t care. I just need him close.
“I’m never letting you go again. You hear me?” His voice cracks. “I’m so sorry, Nell. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I clutch him back, my fingers digging into the flesh of his arms, desperate to feel something solid. Something real.
I need to be sure this isn’t another illusion. That I won’t blink and find myself back in that cold, airless room where everything went wrong. My chest is tight with doubt, lungs barely moving, every breath whispering the same question—is this real or some cruel trick stitched together by my own broken mind? The light feels too soft. The warmth of his body too steady. I breathe it in like it might vanish.
“Is it really you?” I whisper, my voice barely registering above the thud of my pulse.
He answers without words—just presses his lips to my forehead and holds them there, like he can seal every fracture in my soul with that one quiet touch.
His arms don’t loosen. His grip doesn’t falter. I sink into him, afraid to lean too hard in case this all shatters. But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t let me fall alone.
And I never want him to. Not now. Not after everything.
Still, a part of me is bracing. Begging the universe not to tear this from me. Because if this fades into a dream—if I open my eyes and he’s gone again—there won’t be anything left of me to survive it.
“I’m here, Nell,” he murmurs against my skin. “I got you out. You’re safe now. You don’t have to worry anymore. They’re never going to take you again.”
His words wrap around me like a promise.
“I don’t understand…” My voice is hoarse, barely more than a whisper. “How did you get me out?”
An escape like that—surely I’d remember it.
But I don’t.
Everything after Lea is fuzzy, a grey cloud blurring my mind, like something’s taken root and won’t let go.
