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“Not true.”
“It’s the only truth I know. You didn’t deserve to be cut off the way you were.” She stares at my chest. “I’m sorry for that.”
I push her hair off her face, stepping into her again as I cup her cheeks, lifting her head back up. “Enough. Don’t do that.”
Not knowing my own limits and losing a battle against myself, I smooth my hand gently from her jaw down her neck, then over her chest before roaming back up to weave my fingers through her lavender hair. She melts into the touch, and my body only craves more. I lean in, an ache dancing all the way to my fingertips as I bury my face in her neck, inhaling.Fuck. My lips search, hungry and desperate until I find her racing pulse. I dust over it twice before caressing the skin with a light kiss.
Scarlet whimpers, making my cock stir in my shorts.
A door clicks open somewhere down the hallway, and I pull back in a rush, eyes wide. Scarlet doesn’t so much as flinch, her stare locked on me.
“Jesus Christ,” I rasp, scrubbing at my face.
“You should find yourself a nice girl, Lance. Someone less twisted up inside. Someone who wouldn’t hurt you… like I did,” she whispers the words with a sad smile, meaning every one of them.
I shake my head, barely able to look at her as her eyes shine. I swallow the lump in my throat, hating that I’ve just denied her but knowing she isn’t ready. “She wouldn’t be you.”
She tilts her head, a tear sliding down her cheek. “Exactly.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Scarlet
“I feel disgusting.”
Nina chuckles as she hands me a bottle of water and lies down next to me on the lounger. The two of us decided against going with the others down to the shops on the island. Or I decided against going, and Nina felt sorry for me and my hungover ass and said she’d stay with me.
I was drunk last night, probably the drunkest I’ve been since university and yet I haven’t been able to shake every word that left my mouth while I stood practically begging Lance to kiss me.
“I’m in heaven,” Nina says, and I can sense the smile on her face without the need to open my eyes. “I didn’t realise how badly I needed to be away from city life.”
“I think we all needed the break,” I murmur, letting my body sink further into the lounger.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen my brother as relaxed as he has been the past two days. He’s slowly becoming the person I knew when we were young, and although a part of me wishes he’d found his way back on his own, for other reasons, I can’t help but love Nina for making him so happy. She’s got to be a saint to put up with his shit. But then I’ve heard enough stories to know that Nina can be her own breed of stubborn at times. I guess both of them have been shaped by the lives they’ve been handed.
I look across at Nina and purse my lips. Her dark-chocolate hair hangs in soft waves over her shoulder, partially covering her arm. She has her eyes closed, a smile curling her glossed lips as if she’s happy and content just to lie quietly in the sun. I’ve not known her long, a matter of months, but it was Nina who brought my brother back to me. And it was Nina who stood at my side as I picked out a coffin for Dad’s burial. I never thought Mason falling in love would be a benefit to my life. And yet I have the girls now. Genuine, incredible friends who I know would drop anything to be there for me.
“I can feel your eyes on me, weirdo.”
I chuckle and wait. She lifts her hand to shield her eyes as her head tilts to the side. “I’m just thinking about how nice it is to have friends. I sometimes wonder how long I would’ve hidden away at the estate if Mason had never met you.”
Her smile is warm, gentle. “You’d have gone back to uni eventually, Scar. And you’re an easy person to love. Friendships would’ve come easy.” She looks out over the cliff’s edge, rearranging her legs on the lounger. “But I get it. For years—even now, on the bad days—I find myself thinking about what life would have been like if Lucy and her mum never took me under their wings. Like, where would I have ended up? Would I be like she was?”
Her mum, she means.
“Have you spoken to her recently?”
Nina shakes her head, her face a little harsher than it was moments ago. “No. Not for a few weeks, and I don’t want to. I used to help her out from time to time, but I think for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I need her. She’s an addict, which is hard because I tend to feed her addiction while chasing my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“She calls, I give her money, she buys her drugs, and then I wait, desperate for the next call to land.” She swallows, her gaze permanently lost to the horizon. “I think when I was little, I craved affection from her so badly I’d end up doing anything to get it. It made for a really unhealthy relationship. Like this one client of hers used to come back time and time again, and I hated him. I hated him so much. But when he was done with her, leaving her money on the kitchen counter, I wouldn’t want him to go. She was only happy when she had money in her back pocket.” She turns to look at me, her face softening. “I didn’t realise how fucked up that was until it was too late.”
I think back to my birthday and how Nina chose to pay for her own treatments. “I’m sorry, Nina.”
She waves me off along with her threatening tears. “Don’t be. You’ve met Lucy. And her parents, Maggie and John, are the most incredible people on earth. If there’s any good left inside of me, they’re the reason for it.”
“There’s plenty of good,” I tell her, smiling as my throat goes tight.
