Beacon in the Darkness

32. Feels Like Home

The hard stone felt cool and smooth beneath Camila's fingers. Sunlight filtered through a break in the clouds, the streams highlighting patches of grass and headstones. Carlos always used to joke that when it did that, it was actually a vision of God or angels descending from Heaven. Camila told him he was full of crap, but now she thought, maybe he was right. Before now, she'd never really taken the time to study the beam, to absorb the beauty the soft yellow light contained. She'd been a kid—even though, technically, at seventeen, she still was a kid—she felt so much older. The experiences she'd had, death, dying, love, loss, were more than most "kids" her age ever had to endure.

While others spent their Wednesday evenings attending sports practices or hanging out with friends, Camila spent hers at the cemetery, speaking to her dead brother, and then working at her mom's shop.

In the months since Shawn left, Camila had retreated. She hadn't meant to, and she tried not to, but the reminders, the pain of reliving it, became too much for her. She knew she hadn't really healed from Carlos's death—not fully—and maybe she never would, but adding Shawn leaving on top had just ... broken her. She put on a brave face, smiled, laughed, pretended to be coping, but all the while she felt it festering inside.

The hurt.

The betrayal.

The anger.

Some part of her realized it was wrong to feel that way. That Shawn had to choose his path, his life, and that was his decision to make. She just wished he'd chosen her. It was selfish, she knew, but she couldn't help how she felt.

As the days and months passed, Camila convinced herself more and more that he must have lied. He must have been confused. Because if he had loved her as he claimed he did, he wouldn't have been able to stay away. He would have called, written, something. But he didn't.

Each day met silence from him.

Not even a whisper.

She tried to call, to find some way to be with him again, but she met only dead ends. The Jaureguis had no contact information. His phone number had been disconnected. He'd just—disappeared. He was gone.

She tried to hold on for as long as she could by remembering what it was like to look into his eyes, to feel his arms around her, to taste his kiss, to breathe him in. But as time continued to tick, those sensations dulled more and more until finally, she couldn't remember it clearly at all. She had an inkling, a slight memory, but the sound of his voice and the beauty of his smile were so muddied she couldn't hear or see them properly. It was almost as if their time together had been a fairytale. One she'd been read when she was a little girl but had now been tainted and destroyed by anger and pain.

Camila didn't know how long she sat at Carlos's grave, her eyes glued to his headstone and her fingers tracing the grooves his name made in the rock. She had come a long way just being able to be there, to sit with him, to talk to him, but it had become almost an obsession now. It was as if she was coping with her other pain by forcing herself to relive the old.

Somehow, that pain was easier.

Maybe it was because she knew how to deal with it, or maybe because Carlos had never betrayed her. He hadn't turned his back. He hadn't walked away willingly, leaving her shattered and destroyed in the process. He had been taken. Not given a choice. She couldn't fault him or be angry with him for things outside of his control.