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“You make it impossible to win,” he grumbles into my hair.
“Weak competition.”
I peer up at him when he stays quiet, finding him gazing out across the lake.
“What are you thinking?” I ask, hoping he’ll let go of everything he carried with him up the hill and enjoy the next week away with us all.
Lance shrugs. “How I never felt like I had a home until you showed me this place.”
I swallow the wave of emotion inching up my throat, his honesty making my heart ache. “Hey,” I say, waiting.
When he peers down at me, I force a reassuring smile.I meant every word. “You okay?”
He doesn’t answer right away, the question answered in an unspoken understanding that passes between us.Not really, sunshine. “Yeah.”But I will be.
TWENTY-THREE
Lance
You need love? You have it.
You need family? We’re here.
Her words bounce around my mind like a rogue ping-pong ball as I watch her sleep on the chair opposite me, Waverley curled up at her side. We’ve been in the air for over six hours. When we arrived at the airport, we found out we’d be flying alone. Nina and Mason weren’t coming. Nor Elliot and Luce or Charlie and Lissie. They stood us up.
You need family? We’re here.
I shouldn’t need to be told. The fact Scarlet’s words resonate so deeply is proof enough. Because I do know. There’s not been a time since meeting the guys where I’ve not felt supported by them, that I’ve not known they’d have my back regardless of the consequences.
To ignore that fact and act like I don’t have a family is an insult to them all.
You need love? You have it.
This one I’m not so certain of. Waverley doesn’t know me. She loves me, in a way, but she doesn’t know me well enough to love me the way she one day will. And Scarlet, I can see the fear in her eyes, feel the push back every time her gaze holds for five seconds too long.
I need love, and she tells me I have it, but not in the way I want it.
I wantherlove.
All of it.
Leaning forward in the seat, I pull out the letters I stuffed into my shorts pocket. I tear into the envelope and pull out the paper.
Lance,
Whether this letter finds its way to you or not, today, sat in this bed, cut open and stitched back together, empty, I need to write the words.
Ink to paper.
There so much we think we need in life to survive, and yet I think if we stopped and truly thought about it, our list would be a lot shorter. It’s that question people ask, ‘your house is on fire, what do you save?’ It’s a stupid question. Everything you could save from a fire can be taken at the hands of something just as terrifying.
My house is on fire, what am I going to save?
Nothing. Let me walk into the flames.
I’m going to lose her, Lance.
There’s nothing I can have and love and hold that won’t leave me, and now she’s gone, too. I loved her so much, before I even knew who she was—before I’d ever know who she was, I loved her.
