The Secret (Magnolia Grove #4) - SERIES COMPLETE

Chapter 4 - {Cammie}

NINE YEARS AGO

DRIVING BY HOLDEN'S house on my way out of the neighborhood, I've found that I do it every day no matter where I'm going. There's this secret hope he'll see me, he'll smile at me, he'll motion for me to pull over, and we'll just go back to the way we were before Violet got sick. But as my car passes his place, there's no sign of him. I know what time he used to leave, but like everything else, I think that's changed. In fact, I'd be willing to bet he's leaving at a different time in an effort to avoid me.

My chest is so heavy, like something's stuck in my wind pipe. No matter how many times I try to swallow, it remains unmoved. I cough. Nothing. The farther I get away from his house, the easier it is to breathe again, but my stomach is now tumultuous like our relationship, or lack thereof, like I just puked—that little bit of time where the nausea sets back in, but the next bout is inevitable and there's no way to stop it.

It's been four months since Violet's diagnosis, since that day in the hospital, and one month since she passed away. I understood Holden ignoring all his friends during her last days. That made perfect sense that he'd want to spend all the available hours in the day with her, with his family. When my loved ones have been sick or passed away, the only people I've wanted to be around were those who understood my anguish, my grief.

Despite my brain understanding it, it's like my heart was being squeezed too tight, like a balloon that was on the verge of popping if the grip tightened just a little more. And once a balloon pops, it can never go back to what it was.

Three weeks ago when I marched into the boys' bathroom to try to get through to him, to let him know he didn't have to go through this alone any longer, the fingernails dug into my heart, and it finally popped the moment he acted like he didn't need me, that I didn't know him.

That moment has made me question everything. Maybe he's right. Despite having grown up together our entire lives, I suppose there's a chance I only saw what I chose, what I wanted—the opposite of what I always heard Father talking about where Holden and his dad were concerned. Holden is excellent at sending me mixed messages, confusing me, making me wonder what's real and what isn't. Like that day in my bathroom. I just keep replaying it over and over, wondering if we'd kissed would things be different. Or maybe if we had, I'd just be more heartbroken than I am right now.

I've never understood how our families could be so close, yet Father resent Mr. Masters so much. The older I've gotten, the clearer it's become. It's our mothers holding everything together, refusing to allow interference. I've often pondered whether Mr. Masters knows how my father feels about him. They act cordial enough when we're together. Our families go on trips together. How could they do all this when Father holds such animosity for Mr. Masters? Maybe Father just talks behind his back, and Mr. Masters has no clue how Father feels about him. Regardless, at sixteen, I'm being groomed every day to tolerate people no matter how I feel in regards to them because people are always watching how I react. I've heard repeatedly from my mother that we all have to get along in public for the good of the company and the family name.

That leads me to one conclusion. Joint family dinners, trips, shared cabanas, they are all for show. I never thought Father seemed to mind too much that Holden and I ran in the same circles, the same groups, because essentially that's how we were raised. It almost felt as if they were waiting for us to grow up and fall in love, to finally join the business and carry on its legacy.

Up until about a year ago.

Even though Holden and I can't ever seem to get our timing right, that's when our friendship started turning into something more, but not something I could ever label as anything more. All I know is that's when the flirtation started. Or maybe when I noticed it? When Father started to notice.