things only you know | camren au [completed]

Part One

A/N: shoutout to the amzing, multi-talented taller-smol for the kick-ass title. read her stuff if you haven't because they're great obviously

this is also my first time writing in second person and I honestly cannot gauge if it's terrible so let me know how it is

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You take a deep breath and close your eyes as you let the night breeze wash over you, the cool wind spilling over your skin as you look out into the sprawling metropolis before your tired eyes.

You haven't slept much these last few nights, the reality that she's coming back dawning closer and closer until it's finally here, and your poor, wearied heart hasn't stopped beating so erratically. Its rhythm getting lost with every memory that tries to fight its way through the seams of your mind.

The New York skyline has always been something that has given you the type of peace that you couldn't ever fully understand if you tried. It's why you chose your apartment (you try not to think about how you chose it with her), because the balcony gives you a breathtaking view that reminds you to ground yourself. Maybe it's the way it makes you feel small, a reminder that a whole world goes on with or without your troubles. That everything is temporary.

You know just how fleeting everything actually can be.

She's back. You've known it was coming for a while. Dinah and Normani are both your friends and you knew, despite your ardent pleas, that Dinah would never not invite her to the wedding, amnesia be damned. You'd reached a compromise with your best friend, however, and you've come to an agreement (not without Dinah trying her best to convince you otherwise) that she can invite Lauren as long as everyone keeps mum about your past with her.

It's the hardest decision you've ever made. Deciding that you wouldn't actively pursue Lauren, that you wouldn't try to remind her that Hey, I'm Camila. We were very much in love before you jumped in front of a bullet for me and forgot all about me.

Her mother, Clara, had begrudgingly kept in contact with you in the past two years (twenty-five months and two weeks to be exact) if only to make sure you aren't executing an elaborate plan from across the Atlantic of trying to remind Lauren of her past with you. Her mother had begged and cried and gone down a step from her self-righteousness for you to keep quiet and you couldn't really do much but agree. Lauren doesn't remember you. There's no point. She does remember, however, her mother.

You know all about her relationship with her mom. They had been best friends, closer than any mother and daughter that you know until Lauren went off to college. Until Clara found out that Lauren had no intention of marrying her childhood best friend, who is conveniently the sole heir of one of the Jaureguis' major partner companies. A marriage would have sealed the deal of the merger of the century. Lauren chose you over her inheritance. She chose you over her family. She chose you over her own mother. She chose you over and over and it tugged at your heart in the most agonizingly beautiful way.

Because as much as you saw the sincerity in her green eyes whenever she reassured you that she loved you more than anything else in the world, you also know how much it broke her heart to have such a strained relationship with her mother. She chose you, but you knew how much it hurt her.

And now, now is her chance for a new start with her mom and who are you to stand in the way when she doesn't even remember you? You don't have a claim on her anymore and that's okay. You have to be okay with that. You know how much she wanted to repair her relationship with Clara and you're finding it hard to take that chance away from her.