Page 61 of Gamebreaker

The elevator doors opened, and there she was.

Addie hadn't been exaggerating.

Cam stood near the entrance looking like she'd been hit by a truck and then backed over for good measure. She wore dark jeans and a fitted black henley that looked slept in, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail that was missing several strands. Dark circles shadowed her eyes—deep purple-gray bruises that spoke of nights without sleep. Her eyes were red-rimmed and slightly swollen, unmistakable evidence of crying. She looked thinner somehow, like she'd forgotten to eat, and her usually perfect posture was hunched, defeated.

She was holding two coffee cups from the good coffee place three blocks over, but her hands were shaking slightly. And her knuckles were—Jesus. Had she gotten into a physical fight?

She saw me and straightened, and I watched raw, uncontrolled panic flash across her face before she seemed to remember she was supposed to have composure.

"Harper," she said, and her vocal cords sounded like they’d been massaged violently with coarse salt.

"Cam." I stopped a careful distance away, arms crossed, trying to ignore the way my chest tightened at seeing her like this. "How did you find where I work?"

"Isla." She swallowed hard, and I watched her throat work. “Can we talk? Please? I know I don't deserve it. I know you have every right to tell me to fuck off and never speak to me again. But I need—" Her voice cracked. "I need to apologize. Properly. Not just with words, but—I need you to understand how sorry I am."

The coffee cups in her badly bruised hands were shaking worse now.

"I remembered you liked oat milk lattes," she continued, holding one out to me. "You posted about it. Multiple times. With captions about how oat milk foam is spiritually superior to regular milk. I didn't know if you'd even accept it, but I wanted—I needed to bring you something. Anything. To show I was thinking about you. That I've been thinking about nothing but you since Saturday and how badly I—"

She stopped. Closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were wet.

Oh.

Oh god, she was about to cry.

I looked at the coffee. Looked at her. Looked at the exit and considered just walking out, going home, calling in sick for the rest of the week.

Instead, I took the coffee.

"Not here," I said quietly. "Let's walk."

We ended up walking toward the waterfront, the Monday morning chaos of Downtown Fashion City gradually giving way to the quieter streets near the harbor. Cam adjusted her stride to match mine, and we moved in tense silence, sipping our coffees, both of us trying to figure out how to start this conversation.

The coffee was perfect. Exactly the right temperature, exactly the right amount of foam. She'd paid attention. That somehow made everything worse.

Finally, when we reached a bench overlooking the water, I stopped.

"Sit," I said. "You look like you're about to fall over."

Cam sat heavily, like her legs had been waiting for permission to give out. She set down her coffee with trembling hands, hunched forward with her elbows on her knees, staring at the ground.

"I haven't slept," she said quietly. "Since Saturday. I keep trying, but every time I close my eyes, I see your face. The way you looked when I said those words. The way you—" Her voice broke. "The way I made you feel."

I sat down beside her, keeping distance, watching her carefully.

"I've hurt people before," Cam continued, her voice shaking. "I've been cruel because I was scared. But what I did to you, Harper, what I said to you…" She pressed her hands to her face. "I can't stop thinking about it. About how casual I was. How I dismissed everything you've been through like it was nothing. Like you were nothing."

A tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away angrily, like crying was a failure of control.

"You lost your entire family for being brave enough to be yourself. And I… I’m so deep in the closet I can't even imagine that kind of courage. So instead of admiring it, instead of learning from it, I weaponized it. I took the worst thing that ever happened to you and used it to make myself feel better. To make you go away because you scared me."

"Cam—"

"No, please. Let me. I need to say this." She looked at me finally, and her eyes were streaming now, tears running down her face that she wasn't bothering to hide anymore. "I'm so sorry, Harper. I'm so fucking sorry. What I said was unconscionable. It was cruel and calculated and exactly the kind of thing that makes you unable to trust people. I became your shitty ex. I became your parents. I became every person who's ever hurt you for being authentic."

Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to clasp them together.

"I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to make it right. I've been sitting in my house for two days trying to figure out what to say, how to apologize in a way that actually means anything, and I keep coming back to the fact that there's nothing I can say. No words that make what I did okay. No apology that erases the damage."