God knew he kept me guessing, shifting our roles so frequently that I never knew our norm. I was never sure if that was to keep me off-balance or because he genuinely never knew, either.

“Charity did it for love. First for Gabe, then Rose. But why did you reject that path?” I asked again.

“The path rejected me,” he said quietly. “It didn’t want me, so I decided not to want it.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, my mind racing with every possible situation that he could apply that philosophy to and wondering how many times his disdain had masked longing.

“Now you. The inheritance?”

“I went to art school. It took me about six months after Sully died to realize that I didn’t, and it didn’t matter how long I waited here in Alba, he wasn’t coming home.” I broke eye contact. Would Cam see it as the betrayal my father had? “So the plans we’d made to go away to college together once his three years were up didn’t matter anymore. I had to take a really hard look at what I’d thought my future would be without him and ask myself an impossible question.”

“How much of that plan reflected your choices and how much belonged to Sullivan?” Cam’s question brought my gaze right back to his.

My heart pounded, my tongue heavy and unwilling to say the words I’d never been able to before.

“Yes,” I finally admitted, the word taking six long years of guilt with it as it left my lips. “And I realized how much of myself I’d given up in the interest of an easy relationship. And it was easy—with Sullivan, that is. I don’t want you to think it wasn’t. Or that he wasn’t good to me.”

“I don’t think that.”

“Okay. Good.” Fingers trembling faintly, I tucked my hair behind my ears. “Because we were happy, and I think I could have been happy following our plan. Going to Boulder. Then maybe law school. Then back here. I could have been happy…,” I trailed off in an unconvincing whisper.

“You just wouldn’t have been you.” The way he watched me sanded away layers of my carefully polished veneer.

“Or maybe that was really me, and this is the alternate reality where everything is messed up.”

He stood, filling the room with more than his massive frame. Cam was a presence that walls couldn’t contain. I wasn’t sure anything could.

“The girl who painted the murals on the hot springs ruins wouldn’t have been happy. Maybe content, but not happy. There’s a difference, Willow. And I’d like to think that Sullivan would have seen that eventually, and you would have gone to art school anyway.”