CHAPTER 3:THE MAN WHO STAYED
768 Words
Dylan McCaffrey did not believe in coincidence.
So when he stood outside Cameron Boyce’s hospital room for the third time that day, watching her through the narrow glass panel, he knew fate was mocking him.
She sat on the bed, knees drawn up beneath the thin white blanket, fingers worrying the edge of the fabric as if she were holding herself together piece by fragile piece. Sunlight spilled through the window, catching in her dark hair, softening her sharp edges. She looked younger like this. Smaller. Nothing like the ghost that had haunted his nightmares for years.
And yet—she was her.
The girl who had walked away while his parents burned.
His jaw tightened.
Dylan pushed the door open and stepped inside. Cameron looked up instantly, eyes widening just a fraction before she masked it with polite curiosity.
“You’re back,” she said.
He nodded. “I said I would be.”
Something flickered across her face—surprise, maybe. Or relief. He couldn’t tell.
“I don’t even know your name,” she admitted quietly. “You just keep… showing up.”
“Dylan,” he said after a beat. “Dylan McCaffrey.”
The name meant nothing to her. It hit him harder than he expected.
She smiled faintly. “Cameron. At least, that’s what they tell me.”
Silence stretched between them, thick and uncomfortable. Dylan moved closer, stopping at the foot of the bed. Up close, he could see the faint burns along her arm, the healing cuts, the bruises fading into yellow. Evidence of a night neither of them would ever forget—though only one of them remembered it.
“They said you have no one,” he said.
Her fingers stilled. “I guess not.”
“You don’t remember your parents?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember anything before the fire. It’s like my life started there.” She hesitated. “Is that… normal?”
“No,” Dylan said too quickly.
She noticed.
His gaze softened, and he forced his tone to steady. “The doctors said memories can return. Or they might not.”
“And if they don’t?” she asked.
Dylan thought of the truth—sharp, ugly, unforgiving. He thought of his parents’ screams, of smoke filling his lungs as he arrived too late, of the figure running from the building while everything he loved burned behind her.
He met Cameron’s eyes.
“Then you build something new,” he said.
She studied him, as if trying to see beneath the carefully controlled surface. “Why do you care?” she asked softly. “You don’t even know me.”
Oh, but he did.
“I don’t,” he agreed. “But I was there that night.”
Her breath caught. “You were?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see me?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper. “Before I—before I got hurt?”
Dylan remembered everything.
Her face streaked with soot. Her eyes wild with fear. The way she had run.
“Yes,” he said.
Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Then maybe you can help me. Maybe you can tell me who I was.”
He could tell her who she had been.
But not who she was to him.
“I can help you,” he said instead.
Cameron looked up, hope blooming cautiously in her eyes. “Why?”
Because staying close was the only way to survive this.
Because pushing her away would destroy him.
Because if she remembered before he was ready, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.
“Because,” Dylan said, “you shouldn’t be alone.”
Later that night, after she fell asleep, Dylan stood by the window and stared out at the city lights. His phone buzzed in his hand, the name on the screen pulling him back into reality.
Eleanor.
“Did you confirm it?” she asked.
“Yes,” Dylan replied coldly. “It’s her.”
“And the fire?”
“Still unresolved,” he said. “But I’m not letting this go.”
“Be careful,” Eleanor warned. “You’re crossing a line.”
Dylan ended the call and turned back toward the bed.
Cameron slept peacefully, unaware of the war unfolding around her.
He had come looking for answers.
He hadn’t expected to find temptation.
Or doubt.
Or the terrifying realization that revenge might not survive proximity.
And that loving her—even unknowingly—might be the most dangerous thing he had ever done.
- Writer
