Regrets - Chapter Thirty Seven
Nicole and Cam face off in the desert night in "Dead Reckoning"
Thursday - Week 3
(part 4 of 4)
Dead Reckoning – Nicole/Cam
NICOLE
Nicole couldn’t speak. Too much grief. Too much failure. Cam had laid it all out in the dirt, and she was standing in boots that suddenly felt too heavy to wear.
“It worked.” That line had carved her open.
Devereaux hadn’t just pressured her. She’d targeted her. Used the one thing Nicole didn’t know how to protect.
Cam.
She remembered the meetings. The way Devereaux always stood just a little too close. How her praise felt like ownership. Nicole had filed it under duty. She hadn’t realized it was a move.
She hadn’t known Cam knew. Had tracked her down. Confronted her. Fought for the truth that Nicole never even asked for.
Robert had tried to shield her. Of course he had. But she hadn’t been strong enough to face what really happened, and she never asked what it cost Cam.
And Stanford? God. It had felt like a lifeline. A way to vanish in plain sight. She wore the lab coats and built a future on silence, while Cam was burying her father.
She finally managed a breath, but it caught halfway through.
Cam had moved. Not far. Just to the edge of the saddle. Arms crossed tight.
Nicole took a step forward. Stopped.
Her voice was quiet, ruined. “I didn’t know. Not about Devereaux. Or your dad. Or how far it all went. But I should have.”
Nicole sat down, slowly in the dirt. “I told myself you were safer without me. That leaving was noble.” She exhaled. “It wasn’t. It was cowardice. And you deserved more.” She picked up the bourbon but didn’t drink it. “I’ve spent years pretending I was fine. Choosing safety. Clean lines. Contained love. But I wasn’t. Not really.”
The wind picked up—just enough to notice.
“I loved you,” she said softly. “And I left. And I’m sorry. For all of it.”
She stopped. Started again, quieter. “And then I did it again. I disappeared on Alexis. Same way. Different woman. I just…I just went somewhere she couldn’t follow. I told myself it was grief. But I know what it was. I learned how to leave people before they could see what I’d done. I started it with you.”
The silence stretched between them.
“I didn’t come here for a fix. Just truth. With someone who actually mattered.” She wiped her face quickly. “I’m tired of pretending what I did to you wasn’t the moment everything else broke both of us.”
CAM
Cam heard every word. But she didn’t move. Not because she didn’t hear it. Because she did. All of it. Her throat was raw. Her head buzzing with heat. But her chest? Her chest felt hollowed.
Nicole had dropped the match. And it hadn’t lit rage. It lit something Cam hadn’t named in years.
Grief. For what they were. For what they weren’t. For what they would never be again. She sat in it, the feelings filling her chest like shrapnel. The desert night was still, and Cam looked to the clear sky before she turned slowly, arms crossed, shoulders high and stiff like body armor.
Nicole sat there, like an exposed nerve.
Cam looked at her for a long time. Then finally asked quietly: “Did you move on?”
Nicole’s head snapped up.
“Not the career. Not the engagement. I mean you.” Cam stepped closer. “Did you really move on? Or did you just bury it deep enough that no one could tell?”
Nicole didn’t answer, just sat in the dirt, staring at the darkness of the ridge.
Cam exhaled slowly. “You love Alexis?”
Nicole hesitated. Then nodded. “Yes.”
Cam nodded too. Almost absently. “And she loves you?”
Another nod.
“Then why are we still here?” Cam asked, her voice cracking. She wasn’t yelling now. She was tired. She stared hard at Nicole. “I never stopped circling it. Like if I stayed in motion, I’d outrun the ache. But it never went away. Because I never really knew why.”
She glanced at the dirt like it was a map. “Now I do.” Then, quietly, almost to herself, “And I don’t know what the hell to do with that.”
Nicole’s breath broke. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, trying to keep herself from making sound.
Cam didn’t soften. Not yet.
She just shifted, slow, and lowered herself onto the ground across from Nicole, like she didn’t trust her own legs anymore either.
They sat there with the broken glass behind them and the stars beginning to show.
“I love you,” Nicole said quietly. “But our time was another life. And I think it died when I let you believe I was whole.”
Cam looked back. Eyes steady. “You were brave enough to come here and say it all. So now I have to be brave enough to let it be past tense.”
The words hung there.
Heavy.
And finally real.
NICOLE
Nicole didn’t know what to say.
It should have felt like closure. Instead, it cracked something deeper.
“I miss everything,” she whispered. “All of it.”
Her chest heaved, but the words wouldn’t stop. “But I found something. With Alexis. And I almost lost it for the same reason I lost you. Because I stopped telling the truth.”
She pressed her hand against her chest. “You deserve that. Someone who sees you. All of you, and doesn’t run, like I did.” Her voice broke again. “I don’t know how to release you to go do that. I wish I could just…rewrite all of this. Take the hit instead of you.” She looked at Cam, eyes full of everything she hadn’t known how to say. “But we are where we are. And I’m lost on what to do with that.”
A tear hit her knee. Then another.
“I miss the version of me that didn’t know how bad it could get. The one who looked at you like maybe we had a chance. Before I got good at pretending.”
CAM
Nicole broke.
And for once, Cam didn’t pull away from it. She let the grief settle. Let it join hers in the dirt. She watched Nicole cry, not for show, just real. Just honest.
It gutted her. Because she still loved her. But love wasn’t a lever you could pull to make the timeline shift.
Cam let a long breath move through her chest. Then she said, softly: “I looked for you.”
Nicole’s head snapped up.
Cam nodded, staring past her at the sky. “For a while. After my record got wiped cleaner than it should’ve. I waited. Then I searched. Quietly. Even drove to Palo Alto once.” Nicole didn’t move. Like if she did, it would shatter something else.“I saw you on a bench near the quad. You looked… steady. Happy.” Her voice dipped. “I didn’t say anything. Just watched for a minute. Then I turned around and left.”
Cam looked down at her hands. “I told myself if you looked miserable, I’d step in. But you didn’t. And I couldn’t tell if that meant you were okay… or just better at pretending.” She paused, looking at the sky. “I kept searching. Not just for you. For… something. For a version of me that didn’t feel like half a lock with no key.”
Cam reached for the bourbon, took one swig, and passed it gently to Nicole.
She took it.
They didn’t toast.
They didn’t speak.
They just sat.
Nicole blinked once. A slow, full-body breath followed. “That part of me that lived… with you. And I think I needed you to come back to see it clearly…so I could stop lying to myself about what I did.”
Cam’s eyes stayed on her. No approval. Just recognition.
Nicole breathed out, shaking. “I don’t want to carry it like a secret anymore.”
Cam swallowed once. “Then don’t.” The tension in her shoulders loosened. “Then maybe it’s time we both stop carrying it.”
The desert cooled as the sky deepened, and they sat there in the dark, listening to the wind and the sounds of the distant desert around them.
Eventually, Nicole stood. “We should go.”
Cam rose, joints stiff but lighter.
They walked back in silence. Not awkward. Just… settled.
NICOLE
They came down the last slope in silence, boots scuffing over gravel, the glow of the resort lights stretching closer. The air smelled faintly of mesquite smoke and chlorine, the ordinary world waiting.
Nicole’s chest ached, but not from the climb. She had carried the past up there. Spilled it. And now, walking down beside Cam, she carried something else, something she had no right to ask. She almost swallowed it. Almost let it rot like every other selfish want. But if tonight meant anything, she had to risk it.
Halfway down the ridge, she spoke, quiet, but clear. “Tomorrow… before the vote. I need you to meet Alexis.”
Cam glanced sideways. “Alexis?”
Nicole nodded. Her pulse jumped, but she forced the words out, steady. “She knows about you now...finally. And if I’m going to stand in front of her tomorrow, I need her to see me fully. No shadows. No lies.” Her throat tightened. “I know I don’t have the right to ask. But I’m asking anyway.”
Cam walked a few more steps. Her jaw flexed, silence stretched. Nicole braced herself for refusal, for the clean line she deserved.
Instead, Cam gave a single nod. “I’ll meet with her.”
A beat passed. “Can’t promise I won’t say something about your type,” she added.
Nicole laughed, soft, and real. Relief broke through her chest like breath after surfacing. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”
They walked a few more yards before Nicole spoke again. “Private investigations, huh?”
Cam shook her head. “Shadow runs most of that now. I help with ops.”
Nicole nodded. “And the rest of the time?”
Cam shrugged. “I fly.”
Nicole looked over.
Cam gave a half-smile. “Pilot now. Private runs. Some charter. Some solo contract stuff.”
Nicole smiled, quiet. “I’m sure you’re good at it, like everything else.”
Cam didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
And Nicole knew. Cam wasn’t agreeing for herself. She was doing it for her.
Author Note: Is this the way you thought this would go, or did you expect something else? Let me know in the comments.