"Where are you? Call me ASAP!"

Cami had to give it to him, Daniel was smart. He knew that she wouldn't pick up the phone if he had called.

She was resolved to have the inevitable conversation with him that evening, but he didn't know that yet, and she wasn't ready to tell him. "All you need to know is that I'm safe. I'm coming over tonight at eight. Please don't worry about me," she texted him back.

"CAMILLE, I AM WORRIED. YOU LEFT ME A VERY CRYPTIC AND CONCERNING NOTE AND FLED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. PLEASE TALK TO ME," he responded in all caps.

She decided she wouldn't respond. She had nothing more to say that couldn't be said later on that night when she would tell him the truth. In the meantime, she could use the day to try to settle in to her sister's house, get some sleep, try not to think about things too much.

When her sister had opened the door for her six hours earlier, Cami had fallen into her arms, crying. Margaret O'Connell was surprised to see her sister, obviously in extreme emotional distress, standing on her stoop at three in the morning, but she let her in nevertheless. Cami had confessed everything to her, the crushing sadness she felt at all times, all the events from that night including her tryst with Klaus and her tantrum at the party in which she quit.

And Margaret had just sat there and listened like a good older sister, holding Cami as she cried, stroking her hair, trying to be soothing and comforting.

After Cami had cried for a while, her sister made her look at her. "Cami, you did a bad thing. But you are not a bad person, do you understand?"

Cami blinked, wiping tears away. "I'm not sure."

"Well I'm sure enough for the both of us. I think it's important that you tell Daniel sooner rather than later. That way it's not eating away at you. While you're there telling him, you can get the rest of your things, and then you can stay with me for as long as you need. Okay?"

Now Cami was sleeping on the couch. Margaret hoped that by the time her sister woke up, Cami would be sober; she had still been rather drunk when she'd showed up.

Every time Margaret went into the living room to check on her sister, Cami was still asleep. She thought surely Cami would wake up around noon, and when she didn't, then certainly she would be awake by two, and when she wasn't, then Margaret hoped by four. At seven, she became concerned. She put her hand on her sister's shoulder, shaking her awake.

"Cami? Camille?" she said quietly.

Cami's eyes fluttered open, and Margaret had to stifle as gasp. Her sister looked terrible, her eyes bloodshot, dark purple hues ringing them, her expression pained and frightened.

"Are you hungry?" Margaret said. "It's almost time to go."

Cami shook her head. "No, no, I don't think I could eat," she said as she sat up, clutching her stomach. "In fact, I might just be sick." She bolted up from the couch and made a mad dash for the bathroom, just barely getting the toilet seat up before expelling the contents of her stomach. After a minute, she heard her sister come in, felt her hair being pulled away from her face as her sister knelt beside her. Margaret patted her back, whispering soothingly to her.

When Cami was done, she sat back on her heels on the bathroom floor, wiping her mouth. Margaret continued rubbing her back, arranging her hair out of her face. "Do you want me to take you?" Margaret said.

All Cami could do was nod. "Take a minute, then," her sister said. "We'll go soon."

Cami wanted to ask, Wouldn't they be early then? But she knew it was better to get this over with, to be done, to have this weight lifted off her shoulders so that she could hopefully move on.

It only took about fifteen minutes to get from Margaret's house to her apartment. Or, more accurately, her apartment that within the hour would be no longer hers. Cami had to keep reminding herself that she would not live here anymore. Even if, after she told him the truth, Daniel still begged her to stay, she knew she would be leaving it forever.

The drive was made in silence. Cami tried to go over a script in her head, tried to rehearse what she would say, but nothing was coming to her. It was all just a jumble of anxious, racing thoughts that in every imagined scenario that she could think of, ended with both her and Daniel in hysterical tears. It was everything she could do not to throw herself from the car, to scream and fight and run away. But she had to stay, and she had to do this. The secret of what she'd done was eclipsing any fear she had about confessing it.

They pulled up in front of the apartment building. Margaret said, "I'll be waiting right here." She looked Cami once over before giving her a quick hug. "Good luck, sister."

On autopilot, Cami got out of the car, letting herself into the complex and walking up to the third floor. It was something she had done a thousand times, something that seemed so routine, and despite knowing full well that this would be the last time she ever made this journey, it felt just the same as always. She felt dissociated with herself, like her soul and her consciousness were somewhere far away, or that her brain and rational thinking had shut off, leaving her with a still-walking, hollow body.

The key turned in the lock to the apartment door as she let herself in. She quickly realized that Daniel was not there yet. She took the opportunity to quickly start packing her things. Starting in the bedroom, she began taking all her clothes out of the closet, stuffing them into a large duffel haphazardly. Next, she moved on to the kitchen, quickly realizing there wasn't much to take. Her plates, her cookware, her bowls, these things could all be replaced with new ones, all she wanted was her favorite mug. She took it, the one with the blue elephant and gold edging, down from the cupboard and carefully wrapped it in a dirty sweater, placing it in the suitcase.

Cami heard a key go into the lock and fiddle with it before the bearer of the key realized that the lock was already open. The key was withdrawn from the lock, and the bearer turned the doorknob, opening the door and stepping into the apartment.

Daniel stood in the threshold, and Cami froze, hand poised to take a pair of novelty salt and pepper shakers down from the cupboard. For a long moment, they stared at each other, and Cami's heart was seized with fear. And then Daniel was rushing toward her, taking her into his arms and holding her so tightly that she couldn't breathe. When he pulled back, she saw that tears had sprung to his eyes, his mouth in a pained, broken line.

"I was so worried," he said quietly. "What's wrong? What did you do? Where did you go?"

Cami couldn't answer him. All the words she wanted— no, she needed to say were jumbled up within her, and they all wanted to come out at once. But there seemed to be a roadblock in her throat suppressing all her desperate confessions, and every time she opened her mouth to speak, she found an involuntary silence come out instead.

"Come on, come on, let's sit down," Daniel said, ushering her into the living room and sitting her down on the couch. "Now tell me what's going on."

Cami opened her mouth to speak, but nothing would come out. She willed the words to come to her lips, she willed for herself to just start talking, to start anywhere, to just start somewhere so that she could get the ball rolling and then maybe get to the truth.

"Cami?" Daniel said, looking at her concernedly.

Lowering her eyes, she still couldn't say anything. She didn't know where to start. Start anywhere, she tried to convince herself, just start talking. Start explaining. Start something, please. And still nothing came out.

"Cami, please tell me what's going on."

Her mouth opened again, but still it felt like there was something blockading her throat, or that someone had severed her vocal cords.

"Cami, what's going on? Where have you been? You're scaring me, please just—"

"I cheated," she said. It just came out, blurted with no context, no explanation. She had hoped there could have been more build up, where she could have explained how she'd been feeling so terribly depressed lately and that she had been so desperate for a fleeting second of happiness that she had thrown away their relationship. But she didn't want to justify this, she didn't want to try to make this seem more understandable or excusable. She had cheated, there was no way around it.

Daniel sat back on the couch, his eyes widening, his face slack with a blank shock. The way he said, "What?" indicated that he had clearly heard her, but could not process her words into making any sense.

"I cheated. At the party," Cami said, her voice shaking. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over with ease, and soon she was sobbing. "I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry," she babbled over and over again.

She was watching Daniel closely, struggling to clear her vision through all the falling tears. He sat there rigidly, still trying to process the information. His eyes were welling up now, and she heard him softly say, "Why?"

Cami thought about this as she kept crying and apologizing. And she could think of all these reasons— loneliness, the creeping numbness and desperation to feel something, her overwhelming connection to Klaus, her disconnect from Daniel— but none of them were viable excuses for the terrible deed she had done. So she just said, "I don't know."

"I don't accept that," Daniel said, his tears flowing freely now, his jaw clenched. "I don't accept that. There's got to be a reason."

"Would it help you for there to be a reason? Would it make it easier on you? Because I can't think of a single reason that can justify what I did other than I'm deeply, deeply f*cked up. And I need help for that, I'm starting to realize that," Cami said, her voice breathing. "So I don't want to sit here and try to come up with excuses for what I did when really, when it comes down to it, there isn't anything I can say to make up for this monumental mistake that I've made."

They stared at each other for a long moment, both in tears. After a minute, Cami stood. "So I think I will keep packing my things, and I will go. And I want you to know that I will regret this for the rest of my life, I will always regret how…" she paused to let out a choked sob, "…how badly I've hurt you. I am so truly, deeply sorry."

With that, she went back into the bedroom that they had shared, grabbed her remaining possessions, and stuffed them into the suitcase. As she slung the bag over her shoulder, she walked towards the door, her hand turning the knob. She looked back at Daniel for a long moment, both of them still crying, hoping desperately that he might say something to her. She hoped he would try to stop her, tell her he forgave her or that he understood why she had done it, or that at least he would say goodbye or tell her he loved her one last time. But he said nothing, and she stepped out the door.

The whole way back to her sister's house, Cami was crying hysterically. She cried so hard that she hyperventilated, shaking, feeling like she might pass out. As soon as they were in the house, Cami was running for the bathroom once more, throwing up just as she had before they had left.

Margaret sat beside her on the bathroom floor again. "I'm proud of you for telling the truth," she said quietly. "It needed to be done."

Cami wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Please don't give me any bullsh*t platitudes right now," she said, her voice raw and scratchy from crying. "I don't want to feel better, I don't want to distance myself from this." The truth was that she would have given anything and everything she had to be able to distance herself from what she'd done, but she knew it wasn't right. She knew that even though the pain and shame was almost completely obliterating her, she needed to sit there and endure it because it's what she deserved. Cami knew that doing it this was the only way to have any hope of moving forward.