Page 73 of Forged in Peril

She couldn’t just keep sitting here, letting him wonder what he’d done wrong, and she couldn’t run away, either, no matter how badly she wanted to.

She cleared her throat and looked up at him, leaning in closer, until only a few stacks of messy papers separated them across the desk. His eyes caught hers, filled with a swirling tempest of emotion that she couldn’t hope to read.

“I talked to Grace today,” she said, unable to think of a better opening line.

“Oh?”

“She said something that made me think. About the last couple of weeks, and about how things have been.”

Cameron nodded, his expression revealing nothing as he relaxed in his chair.

Bristol forced her hands to remain still against the desk.

If she wasn’t brave now, she would never be able to forgive herself.

She had to at least try.

“I wanted to leave FBS because I wanted to keep you and everyone else safe,” she started. “And I wanted to step back from you because I knew you’d only end up getting hurt. That was true–thatistrue–but it isn’t the whole truth.”

She paused again, wishing that Cameron would say whatever it was he was thinking, but he only waited, his arms crossed over his muscled chest.

“I–I guess I’ve had to think about the fact that my fears aren’t really about you as much as they are about me.”

“Ah,” Cameron said, a smile teasing at the corner of his lips. “So you came to tell me that it’s not you, it’s me?”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. I was right about what I said, before–I haven’t changed since coming back to Silver Grove. I haven’t become the person that I told myself I needed to be.”

Cam ran a hand through his hair.

“But?”

“But maybe that person–that girl I’ve been trying to become for as long as I can remember–maybe that’s not who I really am.”

She let out a nervous laugh, hating the way she stumbled over the words.

“I know that doesn’t even make sense. I’m sorry. Maybe I should just–”

“Bristol,” Cameron said, shaking his head. “It makes perfect sense. And I’m glad you’re talking to me about how you’re feeling instead of holding it in.”

She paused as her eyes met his, drawing several breaths as she waited for the knots in her stomach to subside.

She was safe with him.

She could talk to him. Even after everything that had happened, he had promised to listen, and he was.

“I think I was afraid to marry you back then because it would make me into this person that I didn’t want to be. But the person I was? I never really gave myself a chance to figure that out. I just…chose. I chose not to be my mother, abandoned and alone and powerless. I chose to be strong. I chose to succeed.”

The words were coming quickly now, and her voice no longer shook.

The bandage had been torn free, and now, all she wanted was to release every last bit of poison that was trapped within her heart.

“I chose to not need love, because love makes you vulnerable. Love opens you up to the possibility of getting hurt. I believed I would be better off without it. And for a long time, I was able to convince myself that it was true.

“But what Dillon Warrington did to me changed all of that. I was forcibly reminded that no matter how much I tried to guard myself against pain, we live in a fallen world. Evil and the suffering it brings are inevitable. All we can do is decide if we are going to try and choose our own crosses, or let God choose them for us.”

Cameron smiled. “Your mom used to say that all the time.”

Bristol smiled back.

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