AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Except she won’t let us.
“She’s gone, Mason. She left.” The words curdle with each breath.
“Gone?! What do you mean she’s–”
“She left a note, she–” My body lurches out of my control down the hall to Laney’s room.
I open the door and, indeed, this is no bluff. Her stuff is gone. It looks spotless. But bare. Empty of her.. “She’s resigned. She’s gone. All her stuff is gone.”
“No.”
“She says she’s leaving the city.” One tear rushes out of the corner of my eye. I wick it away with expediency.
I’ll be damned if I’ll sit back and let my emotions take over. “Where did she go? I don’t even know where she–”
“She’s still got the apartment. Right?”
My knees knock together, unbalanced.
Of course. I’m an idiot.
She’s been living with us, but she still has the apartment. It was something my dad threw into her contract, that her rent would be covered in the meantime when she was staying with us.
She’s gone back several times to fetch things, clothes for the winter, then clothes for the spring, for our trip. “You think that’s where she is?”
Mason sighs. “Could be.” There’s a split-second pause before I hear him leap up from his desk. There’s a thudding. His chair falling back maybe? “Meet me at her place. We need to talk. The three of us.”
I couldn’t agree more. Except I can’t say that aloud. All I say is, “Okay.”
We hang up, and I’m out the door in less than ten seconds, not bothering to reply to the voices of Sonia and my father calling out after me.
I have to stop this. I won’t let Laney go.
And Mason won’t either.
32
MASON
I waituntil Nate arrives to go up to Laney’s apartment. I got here before him at the cost of my composure.
My dress shirt is completely soaked through, though I’ve slung my suit jacket over my arm and rolled up the cuffs.
I ran as much of the way as I could except for when I had to wait on the train as it headed down from Midtown to the East Village.
It wouldn’t be right to do this without him. In fact, it’s imperative we both be there to tell Laney what’s been on our minds. How we both want her. How she doesn’t have to choose because she’s so utterly worth putting aside all conventions and throwing cares to the wind about what people might think.
That wewantto share her.
Nate and I ascend the stairs of her apartment building without speaking.
I’m almost compelled to grab his hand and hold it forstrength, for comfort, but as two grown men, that feels too out of the ordinary, too against what’s expected of us.
Still, I feel that pull.
It’s clear Nate is shaken up. I am too, but not like he is.
I can’t blame him. I’m not the one who found that fucking note. In fact, it doesn’t feel real to me yet. A part of me is praying this is some elongated prank. A shitty prank, but still, a prank.
