Pat leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. “Hall asked your dad if he’d hold it against Cam that he was dating you. Except he didn’t use the word…‘date.’”

I cringed. “He said no, right? Please tell me he said no.”

“He said that dating you didn’t exactly show the kind of sound judgment he’d need to win the case. Especially given that Cam is prone to violence around you.”

My blood turned to ice, then flash-boiled. “He said what?”

“Shh!” Pat looked to see that no one heard me. “They can’t know I told you. We have a what-happens-in-Vegas disclosure. I’ll lose my council seat.”

Cam was going to lose his case…because of me.

“I have to go.” I grabbed Cam’s burger and my shake, then paused at the foot of the table. “Thank you, Pat. Both of you.”

Rage and disbelief spun in my brain like a pinwheel, the emotions overlapping each other. I put Cam’s lunch on the passenger seat and my milkshake in the cupholder. Then I stared out the windshield with my hands on the steering wheel.

I could break up with Cam. That was obviously what Dad wanted. But maybe it was deeper than that. Maybe he honestly thought that being with me showed a lack of character. Why? Because I was his dead brother’s ex-girlfriend? Heck, that would have been the simplest label to slap on us.

The thought of losing Cam shredded my soul.

There was no chance he’d let me go, anyway. Or would he? If being with me meant seeing his dad on a ventilator, would he let me walk away? Would I even want him to? This was Art, not some hypothetical dilemma.

Cam loved me.

I’m not going anywhere. I’d promised him. I’d bullied my way into his heart, and now it was going to cost him the very thing he’d come back here for.

I yanked my phone out of my purse.

Willow: Where are you right now?

I held my breath as the three dots coursed across the screen.

Cam: Just got to the mine. Dad’s appointment cut short because his brain no-showed.

Willow: I’m on my way.

Cam: Everything okay?

Willow: Physically, yeah. I’ll be there in fifteen.

I made it in ten, my 4Runner skidding to a halt in the newly packed gravel lot in front of the construction trailers.

I grabbed everything and skirted around the construction crew as they moved steel beams meant for the tunnels. I made it through the door to Cam’s trailer as a small group of workers came out, only a couple of whom I recognized, since I mostly worked with the foremen when it came to preservation.