His words were starting to run together. He wasn't breathing, just sobbing. I wished that his face was in his hands, that he was making any attempt to wipe away his tears, but I saw everything, his contorted features, the fear, the loss, the pain, the overwhelming pain, my pain reflected onto his. 

My face was dry. I couldn't afford to cry any more tonight. Tonight was important. Both of us knew this. 

"Cameron look at me."

Tears were still streaming down his face. I felt the impact of his full name as immediately as he did. It was gut-wrenching for us both. He had to know the weight of what he'd done. And he wouldn't be Cam again until I could get the syllable out without choking. Resentment isn't the right word. How can I describe the weight of such a titanic loss, my whole world wrapped in a sinking rock, embodied by the man in front of me? 

"I walked in to find you making out with your nude Victoria's secret model, in the middle of a portrait. We locked eyes when her legs were around your waist and your mouth was on her neck. I picked up my purse, left, and we haven't seen each other since."

I'm not exaggerating. It was a nude Victoria's secret model named Angelina, of all things. My Cam, tall, dark, and handsome, talented, stroking another woman in the middle of our living room, when he knew I was coming home any minute. I'm never late, and I saw what he wanted me to see. 

"How can I ever forgive you? Cameron, our number one rule, the one boundary I told you that we could not get through together, our end-all-be-all, was cheating. I feel cheated, there's no other word for it."

He didn't skip a beat. I wasn't sure if it was from insincerity or despair or both. 

"Heart, you mean everything to me. If a lifetime in prison could cure me from this, I would gladly serve as much time as necessary. Heart, you're everything."

"You treated me like nothing."

It was cheesey, immediate and meant for a drugstore joke book, but his stunned silence was my cue that I had finally gotten through to him. He reached into his backpack and pulled out two notebooks, placed them in front of me gingerly. 

"The one on the bottom is the one that I started on the first day we spoke to each other. You always obsessed over how weird it was that I didn't sketch you. The truth was that I was too embarrassed to tell you that I did it with every free moment I could find. The one on the top is everything I've done since you left."

We looked at each other, long and hard. I could feel that a corner of the shattered mirror had been pieced together. The beginning of forgiveness, the beginning of reconciliation. He stood up to leave, put his hand through his hair. 

"I don't deserve a second chance, but I have to tell you on the off chance that I will never see you again that you are the love of my life and always will be. It's unbearable, what I did to you and to us. I haven't forgiven myself. I sit at our spot every day at breakfast like we used to, thinking about you, and about what I did. I've been going to an analyst. Working through everything."

He sighed. I'm surprised--he was never the type to go to a shrink, not for anything. We always just said what was on our minds, with transparency and sometimes heartache. There wasn't room for the painfulness of secrets or subversion. I stand too, take a deep breath, and pull him in for a stiff hug. 

"Thanks for meeting with me."

I let him leave first.