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Not even close.
Mason knocks back the rest of the whiskey and places his tumbler down before picking up the thick piece of paper on his desk, scanning it. “I guess sometimes the guilt gets too much, and it’s impossible to let go of.”
“That’s because we’re not supposed to let it go.” I pull back, desperately searching her face. “We learn to accept that people make shitty decisions, Lance, and that they’re not ours.”
“What if it’s not something you can just accept and drop? What if it’s family?”
She shifts her attention to the other side of the dance floor toward her brother. “Then we carry as much as our hands can hold. And we don’t feel guilty about anything that spills over.”
God, she’s so fucking beyond me.
“What is that?” I finally ask, lifting my chin at the paper in Mason’s hands.
He stares at it, the pain in his eyes making my heart beat a little faster. “The deed to the house,” he says softly. “It’s hers now.”
Rage boils inside of me, and I barely contain it, my teeth cracking as my jaw locks into place. He’s not going home. He’s never going back there. She’ll be alone, and Mason knows it.
And it kills me inside.
“I want to be better. I know I have to be.” He drops the deed and looks down at where I sit on the other side of his desk. “For Scar, Nina, Ellis—everyone. But I can’t do it all. Not all at once, at least.”
He’s trying. I can see he is. Iknowhe is. But it doesn’t make it any easier to let go of the fact his actions, signing over the deed, will hurt Scarlet. It’s Scarlet who will suffer the most. She’s the one who ends up alone in all this.
And if I tell Mason the truth, she loses me too.
“You know, your sister once told me that when you’re carrying all that you can in your hands, you can’t allow yourself to feel guilty about anything that spills over.”
His jaw turns to stone. “When did she tell you that?”
I stand, buttoning my jacket. “A long time ago.”
I’ve always known Mason cares, no matter what he’s done. He might’ve pissed me off at times, might even be pissing me off right now with his actions, but he’d never intentionally hurt Scarlet. Hecan’tgo home. Not with the memories he’s harbouring inside of him.
He’s broken, just like the rest of us.
“Is Charlie holding it for you?” I pick up the deed on his desk, clearing it away, so he doesn’t have to rip himself to shreds staring at it.
Mason nods in answer.
“I’ll take it,” I tell him.
“Where are you going?” he asks as I step back, heading for the door, my hands full and spilling in waves at my feet.
A tidal wave of mistakes to wade through.
“I’m going home.”
Scarlet
It’s late when I roll down the lane at Lowerwick. It’s a Saturday night, and I’ve just worked my last shift of the week and won’t return for eight days. I still have assignments that need to be handed in for uni, but I decided to request the week off so that I could handle the preparations for next Saturday. I’m exhausted to the bone. The planning’s been a welcomed distraction at times, but the work that’s gone into the one night has completely worn me out.
Nina’s tried to slow me down. Elliot and Charlie too. But they’re busy themselves, and I know that if I don’t get the jobs done, it won’t happen.
I’m easing closer to the house, my head resting back against the seat, when I spot Lance’s black bike parked at the bottom of the steps. I sit forward, my heart kicking up a beat as I near.
I sit and wonder if he’s let himself in. I don’t lock the house. We never have. The lane’s so narrow that there’s not many who’d attempted it at the risk of meeting another car, and it’s a dead end to anyone who doesn’t know what’s down here.
But Lance isn’t in the house. I realise it as I climb from my car and spot the gate to my mum’s garden half-open.
