Beautiful Soul - cash au -

Wake Up Alone

Cameron is awake early the next day, he barely got 2 hours of sleep. He intends to visit the elementary school that Hayes and Skylynn attend, he prays that they're there and that Hayes will be able to tell him where they're staying and he can find Nash and talk to him. He's hoping desperately that by the end of the night Nash is back in his arms and Hayes and Sky are comfortable in their bed. Nash didn't take much with them when they left. Most of their new clothes were left in the closet and Cameron is going to leave it that way until they return.

He's early to the school, he's parked in his car when the buses start to arrive. He gets out and leans against his car, he's wearing sunglasses that mask his red, swollen eyes. His eyes scan the courtyard searching for Hayes and Skylynn. The buses empty out and neither of the younger siblings step out. Cameron let's out a stressed sigh as he tries to think of his next step. He returns to the farm and attempts to get some work done until the school is close to being let out.

He heads back to the school and again he scans the courtyard for Hayes or Skylynn, hoping that maybe they arrived late. When he doesn't see them in the sea of young students he goes inside and finds Skylynn's class room. He enters and he see's Skylynn's teacher cleaning up.

"Excuse me? Can you tell me if Skylynn was in class today?" Cameron asks her quietly, he's still wearing his glasses.

"No, she wasn't here today," she replies as she recognizes Cameron.

"Did anyone call to let the school know they wouldn't be in today?" He questions, he fights hard to keep it together. This was basically his last hope,Cameron knows how important school is to Nash so if they didn't come to school today it's because they're gone.

"No, I'm sorry. No one called," she tells him. He leaves before she can say anything else. Cameron feels distraught, he can't cope with the possibility that Nash could be gone forever. He sits in his car outside the school and the panic threatens to overwhelm him again. He lays his forehead on his wheel and he takes deep breaths.

He starts to feel afraid, he fears a future without Nash. Without his kisses or his touch, without his cuddles or his smile. He's afraid of never seeing Skylynn's smiling face again or Hayes shy, quiet happiness. There's no future that he pictures without them, they are in each one no matter what it is.

Cameron falls into a deep depression, he declines to spend time with any of his friends, he ignores all of the messages from them, including some from Johnson regarding Nash and why he hasn't replied to his messages. Every morning he goes to the school, and every morning he leaves disappointed. Every afternoon he passes by the trailer park and every afternoon he leaves heartbroken.

Every night he flicks through his photo gallery, each picture a reminder of the happiness that they had and that they could have continued to have together. There's one that he loves, it was taken by Matthew on New Years eve and it's of him and Nash giving each other their New Years kiss.

Even though he's depressed he still attends to his responsibilities of the farm. His parents stayed until Cameron forced them to move to their new farm as they had planned. The news that this farm was his and only his would have made him ecstatic, he would have celebrated the news with Nash but without him, it meant nothing.

So he pours himself into his work, he makes sure that everything is run in tiptop shape. Aaron asks him about Nash a few times, but Cameron couldn't bring himself to answer his questions and eventually Aaron stopped asking.

There's a small part of Cameron that clings to the hope that someday Nash and his siblings will be back and that small part leads him to start working on the second floor of his house. He separates Skylynn's clothes and Hayes' clothes, he takes Sky's clothes and places it in the closet of another room, each day he does something different until her room is complete. He builds an indoor swing that she can use in her room, all the walls are pink and the carpet is pink. He buys plush horse toys and decorates the wall with it. Her bed is a beautiful canopy bed shaped like Cinderella's castle. It becomes a labor of love, an obsession that it has to be perfect for when Sky returns with Nash and Hayes.