Chapter 13 - Landon Asked About the Roses
There was one thing Landon still wanted answered.
Not medically.
Emotionally.
“Why humiliate me at the restaurant?”
Camille looked ashamed now.
“Because I panicked.”
“You were already cheating. You could have just told me.”
“I saw you with flowers.”
He waited.
Camille explained.
She had been telling Travis for weeks that Landon was emotionally dependent, that he would never leave, that he had accepted the relationship as companionship rather than romance.
Then Landon appeared carrying red roses.
A direct contradiction.
Travis suddenly saw Camille had lied to him too.
The cruelty that followed was not confidence.
It was containment.
Camille needed to sever the romantic gesture immediately.
Turn Landon into someone pathetic.
Make Travis see him as weak.
Make Landon too humiliated to ask questions.
So she reached for the most visible vulnerability.
His wheelchair.
“A cripple like you isn’t worthy of me.”
Landon repeated the sentence calmly.
Camille cried harder.
“That wasn’t true.”
“No.”
“I knew it wasn’t.”
“I know.”
That made it worse.
She had not spoken from belief.
She had spoken strategically.
Then Landon asked:
“And Nora?”
Camille wiped her face.
“She got in the way.”
“So you hit her.”
“Yes.”
“And Travis attacked me because?”
“He thought you were going to hurt me.”
Landon considered that.
Possible.
Travis was aggressive and complicit, but not every bad act needed one enormous master plan.
Sometimes a room simply fills with people making selfish choices at once.
“What about the roses?”
Camille looked confused.
“What?”
“Why stomp on them?”
Her answer came after a long pause.
“Because I wanted you to stop looking like someone who could still choose.”
Landon felt that sentence deeply.
Not because it wounded him.
Because it explained her.
She needed his love to look like dependency.
A bouquet said otherwise.
A man in a wheelchair arriving unexpectedly with roses was still a man acting freely.
She destroyed the symbol before anyone else could interpret it differently.
Landon nodded once.
Now he understood.
Understanding was not forgiveness.
May you like
But it meant there was nothing left inside the restaurant scene that Camille controlled through mystery anymore.
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