“I’m not a replacement for Sullivan!” I shouted at her. At the world. At God. At whoever cared enough to listen.

The breeze carried the steam away just long enough to see her stricken face. “No,” she whispered, but it carried. “Sullivan was the replacement for you.”

What did she just say? I stopped treading water and immediately sank as she turned her back on me and swam toward the other side.

I dove underwater and shot across the pool, coming up in front of her. We both gasped. Me for air and her with surprise.

“Say it again,” I demanded.

“Do you hate me?” She flattened her lips between her teeth as tiny droplets of water slipped down her face. “It would fit, since I hated myself. You were home for the summer after your freshman year of college, and I saw the girls hanging all over you in Julie’s hot tub, and you didn’t push them away, and it hit me that you never would. Not for me. You didn’t see me like that.”

But I did. I’d just never acted on it.

“Sullivan found me crying, and he kissed me, and I let him because it dulled the pain. I used him, and he let me, and I grew to love him for it, and eventually for everything else, but I knew I couldn’t love him like he loved me. Not when I didn’t have a whole heart to give him.” Her mouth trembled. “Not so bright and shiny now, am I?”

How could she not see that her vulnerability, her honesty, made her that much brighter?

“Say it again,” I repeated, my tone bordering on a plea. I needed to hear it more than I needed my next meal or my next breath. Her words could sustain or destroy me.

She looked away, waging an internal battle I couldn’t fight for her. When she brought her eyes back to mine, the fear there was laced with a resolve that had me holding my breath.

“It was always you, Cam.” She closed the inches between us, resting her hands on my chest, on the heart she didn’t realize only beat because hers did. “I’ve loved you since forever. I’ve been in love with you since I was old enough to understand what that meant. No one else ever had a shot of getting close. How could they, when you took my heart with you?”

She loved me. She’d always loved me. She’d wanted me, and I’d been too scared to put myself out there for her, to risk her rejection or her acceptance. I had the strength not to act on my own feelings, but I could never reject hers.