Page 165 of Fault Lines
I paced, needing motion. The living room felt like a cage, the furniture suddenly in the wrong places, all the familiar things made strange by the trauma of last night.
“We need to figure out what happens now,” I said. “We can’t just go back to… whatever this was before.”
Cam sat on the arm of the couch, hands clasped, staring at the floor. “What do you want to do?”
I stopped by the window, staring out at the city—traffic crawling, people scurrying with their own emergencies. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.”
He looked up, and for the first time in weeks, I saw the old Cam: confident, commanding, almost unbreakable. “You want to know what I think?”
“Not really,” I said, but he ignored me.
He crossed to where I stood and, gently, cupped my face in his hands. The touch was so careful it almost didn’t register, but it was there—warm, real, and terrifying.
“I think you’re scared,” he said. “I think you’re waiting for someone to tell you what the right move is. But there’s no right move. There’s just what you can live with.”
His thumbs brushed my cheeks, and I realized I was shaking.
He continued: “If it’s not me, that’s fine. I’ll walk away. But don’t pretend you’re better off alone if you’re not. Don’t punishyourself because you think it’s what you deserve. Or what I deserve.”
The city hummed outside, unaware of any of this.
I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that I was fine alone, that I didn’t need saving—but I didn’t.
Instead, I looked at his face, the lines of exhaustion, the dark circles under his eyes, and thought about the last ten years of our lives. The good, the bad, the endless cycling between hope and disappointment. I thought about how many times I’d chosen to stay, and how many times I’d regretted it.
But in that moment, all I could think about was how much I didn’t want to be alone.
Cam let his hands fall to his sides. “Whatever you decide, Livi, it’s your call. Just… don’t make it harder than it needs to be.”
He walked away, leaving me by the window, the glass cold against my forehead.
I stood there for a long time, watching the world move on without me, and wondered how many more decisions I could survive.
∞∞∞
That evening, the apartment was quiet enough to make my ears ring. Cam had gone for a run, or maybe just left to clear his head, and I sat in the kitchen with the lights off, working my way through a mug of microwaved tea and a pack of saltines Rachel had left behind.
The phone rang, shrill and immediate, so loud it made me jump. For a second, I just stared at it, convinced it was anotherspam call or, worse, Nate from some unknown number. When I picked up, the display read “Jackson.”
I answered, voice small. “Hey.”
He sounded tired. “Hey, Livi. You got a second?”
“Yeah. I’ve got all night.” It was only half a joke.
He cleared his throat, and the silence that followed was heavy enough to tip me off. “I just wanted to let you know…” He trailed off, then started again. “Richard passed away. It was last night. Peaceful. In his sleep.”
It shouldn’t have shocked me—he’d been on borrowed time for months—but my throat clamped shut anyway. I pressed the phone so hard to my ear it left an indent.
Jackson kept talking, his voice starting to tremble. “They said he didn’t suffer. They said he had a book in his lap when they found him. I thought you’d want to know.”
I nodded, forgetting he couldn’t see me. “Thank you,” I whispered. My hand shook so badly I had to anchor my elbow to the table.
“We’re putting together something. Small service, just the regulars. You and Cam are welcome, obviously. I know things have been… weird.”
I forced a breath. “We’ll be there. Just let me know when.”
Jackson exhaled, a long shudder that made the line crackle. “He really cared about you, Livi. You made him laugh. Not many people could do that.”
