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“Jackass,” I huff, reaching for the edge of the fitted sheet and tucking it under Ellis’s mattress.
I move around the bed and start on the other side. After a moment, I’m bumped to the side, and Mason bends to take my place, tucking in the last corner himself. He picks up the quilt and lays it across the bed, smoothing out the creases.
“Have you heard anything?”
I pull my lip between my teeth and shake my head.
Mason’s nostrils flare as he plants his hands on his hips. I cut him off before he can speak. “He didn’t want to hear from me when he was in prison, Mase. We were fools to think it would be any different now.”
“He doesn’t get to do this to you.”
I sigh and drop down to the bed, sitting on the edge. “I need you to stay out of this.” I look up at my brother, a small, helpless smile forming as I catch the hard mask he’s pulled into place. “He’s going to need you, Mase. I don’t think this works otherwise. Let me and Charlie handle the messy stuff, and you just be there for your friend.”
Lance didn’t show up on Friday. It’s now Monday, and I know that Mason is on the verge of exploding. I also know that I’m on the verge of exploding, but I don’t dare tell my brother that.
Mason’s been back at Lowerwick for nearly seven years now. He turned up one day with Nina and his family and told me exactly how it was going to go. He was home and had no plans of ever leaving again.
I needed my brother, and he was here. Within a heartbeat.
That wasn’t—hasn’t been—easy for him.
“He’s a fucking fool. I’m going over there.”
“Mase,” I warn.
“How can you be so calm, Scarlet?”
I huff out a laugh and drop my eyes to the ground, tamping down the fire growing inside me. “Don’t do that,” I tell him. “It’s not fair when you know how hard this is for me—for all of us. I understand you’re mad, and despite how I might be handling things right now, I can promise you I’m far from calm. But getting angry and doing something stupid isn’t going to help.”
His jaw ticks, and then he lets out a long exhale, scrubbing at his face. “I don’t even know what I’d say to him.”
“Exactly.” I stand and gather up the dirty sheets from the floor, knowing I have no idea what I’d say to Lance either. I said all I had to say in my letters.
The letters that lay unopened on my doormat when I eventually stepped outside on Wednesday.
“Promise me you won’t go over there,” I say, loosing a breath and steeling myself all over again when a flicker of pain ebbs through me.
And I know my brother doesn’t catch it.
At some point, I guess the pain became a part of me. It goes where I go now. Laces my every breath. Speaks for me in some moments and keeps me quiet in others. It’s my constant in a world of unknowns. A pain that flows so deep within, just a spark of it has me reaching out a hand, desperate to hold on to it so that I can be reminded that it’s still in there somewhere and that so am I. I’m unsure of the woman I am without it anymore, and if I’m honest with myself, that terrifies me.
Mason tucks his hands behind his back, nodding. “I promise.”
I shake my head and turn to walk out of the room, grabbing up the washing basket as I go. “I know you just crossed your fingers, asshole.”
“He has until the weekend,” he calls after me.
I pause for a moment and then swallow, staring through the window at the end of the hallway and across the meadow.
I nod despite Mason not being able to see.
TWO
Lance
Ishould go and see my mum. She is, after all, the third person on my list of people I need to apologise to. But something stopped me from making the drive out to my childhood home this afternoon, and now I’m three beers deep at the bar closest to Elliot’s house.
Elliot’s house. Not mine.
