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“I don’t need a nurse to hover around and watch me.” The movement of the SUV, combined with the painkillers, makes me feel like I’m on a carousel inside of a fishbowl.
Mason looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Youdoneed a nurse. You’re leaving against medical advice, not because anyone thinks you’re fine.”
“I’ll tell you if I start to die.”
“The nurse will tell me if you’ve started dying when we get home, and if you have, we’re coming back. Don’t think I can’t make you.”
“You can’t.” I lean my head against the window. Do tips for car sickness work for a concussion? I’m not much of a carsick person. “I know your weaknesses.” This, at least, I manage to sing in something close to my normal voice.
“I’m stronger than you think, jackass.”
He probably is. I’m a fucking mess. Mason’s graciously pretending that I didn’t blurt out a bunch of horrible stuff and then cry all over him and then ask to go home to a place I moved out of as soon as humanly possible.
I know he hasn’t forgotten. I know it’ll come back to haunt me in the form of another painful conversation.
I can’t bring myself to be that worried about it. Those things can’t be locked away again. I’ve tried. I can’t make it happen.
At Mason’s, he ensconces me on his living room couch, where family photos smile at me from the shelves on either side of the TV. One of them is from when Remy was little, three, maybe, by the front door of our house. The other is from Mason and Charlotte’s wedding. It’s the four of us and Charlotte. All of us are laughing.
We need an updated photo.
Ifall of this works out.Ifloving Elise is enough to save us from her asshole father.If…
I want that. So much. It just feels uncertain. Not the love, although if I think about it too hard, I start to wonder if she wants to spend the rest of her life with a person like me. A person who spends half his time forgetting the past and the other half stuck in it.
I have to get us out.
Instead, I fall asleep on the couch.
I wake up to hushed voices and someone kneeling down in front of my face. My eyelids are heavy as they’ve ever been, and—fuck. The painkillers have started to wear off.
My own eyes won’t trap me in the dark. I force them open and find Nate’s face about a foot from mine, his hand hovering a few inches from my arm. He has green eyes, too. Lighter than mine and Jameson’s and Mason’s. A little silver in them. The bruising on his face looks worse, and the way he’s crouched down in front of the couch cannot be comfortable.
Noneof this can be comfortable. Fuck. This isn’t how I wanted him to meet my brothers, or at least Mason, for the first time. I can hear Remy in the next room talking to Charlotte. Mason, too. Lydia.
They’re used to places like this. Mason would never have a place that was ostentatious, but it’s a penthouse, for Christ’s sake. Everything’s fresh and has a new-build gleam, though the building isn’t actually new.
Nate looks like he’s not sure what to say.
I’ll start the conversation, then.
“Hey.” Relief flashes in his eyes. That’s good, since I don’t sound great. My voice is still raspy from the coughing. “Sorry about all this. Mason thought it would be better to be in one place.”
He shakes his head a little, as if he hasn’t noticed the drive or the penthouse or my brother and doesn’t care. “Are you ever—” Nate’s eyes dart away, then return. “Are you ever coming back? To your place. Because if you’re not, I can head out, and—”
My heart falls from the building onto the sidewalk again. “I’m coming home. Don’t worry about that for another second.”
“I don’t have to be here. I was okay by myself.” The words sound terse, irritated, but his eyebrows are drawn together like he’s afraid.
“I want you here. So does my brother, and Remy, and everybody else.”
The corner of his mouth turns down. “Not Lydia.”
“Why? What happened with Lydia?”
“Doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t know you.”
