AllFreeNovel
Share Us
At that, I flinch inward like he actually punched me.
It’s the same words he said to me that night I found out my sister died.
Allegedly, a voice automatically supplies.
Shaking my head, I tug at the ends of my hair.
“Jeremy, I think it’d be best if you leave,” Gavin says not unkindly. His sad eyes meet mine, brimming with apologies.
“Yeah, leave,” Mason says. “Everyone fucking leaves.” He laughs, and it’s a rusty, cruel sound, fitting for the strange, broken boy sitting before me, the one I don’t recognize.
Sucking in my cheek, I nod. Again, my phone vibrates inside my pocket.
“Right,” I murmur, and go to turn, but pause.
Turning, I take Mason’s state in one last time—searing it to my memory. The pale, clammy skin. The ribs and bones poking out where they didn’t before. The greasy hair. The shivers.
“You know, Mason,” I say.
He lifts his head, glassy light-blue eyes meeting mine.
“She was my sister.”
Remorse flickers back at me at those four words.
And I see it—see him.
The scared, lost little boy still in there. The boy terrified of losing those closest to him. The boy now verging on manhood who’s clung to me all these months, finding comfort in something neither of us could explain. The boy who held me in the rain only a week ago, so tight, like his arms were the only thing keeping me from shattering completely.
And he’s pleading with me. Pleading for me to put him out of his misery. Pleading with me to forgive him. Pleading with me to make it all stop.
And it’s that Mason—the real Mason who is my best friend, and the boy I’ve loved for what feels like my whole life; the Mason who is my protector, my hero… the Mason who currently needs me to save him…
It’s that Mason I am utterly helpless to deny.
And it terrifies me. The lengths I’d go to preserve that version.
But then his face hardens, his eyes go cold, and the villain side of him takes over, spewing spitefully, “Yeah, well, she was the love of my life.”
And just like that, I remember.
I can’t fix this. Nothing short of bringing her back, will ever fix any of this. And God have I tried, bartering myself up to any god or devil that might be listening—anything to switch places with her.
But the truth is, she’s gone.
This is it.
I can’t fill this emptiness in either of us, any better than a stuffed animal or Polaroid could fill an empty coffin. I can’t soothe our shared, and yet polarizing pain any better than a prayer in an ancient book can.
Sure, I can tell him to hold his breath and count to five.
I can hug him like he hugged me last week—I can hold him and lie and tell him I still feel her.
But what would it change?
What good has it done?
Look at him.
