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I turn, finding him removing the now warm plates from the oven.
Should I send Mase up?
“Scar?”
I blink, focusing back on Mason. “I’m not sure. Nina might have…” I should go back up there. I have to.
“You okay?”
I nod, toying with the ring on my right hand. “Everyone’s home?”
“Elliot just turned up.” He eyes me warily, but I step past him.
“I’ll bring the food out.” Then I can check on Lance. Give him time then go back up.
I remove the food from the oven and call everyone to the table. Mason is just finishing laying down the cutlery as I carry in the jugs of juice for the children.
My brows rise in surprise when I find Lance sitting at the table.
He’s talking to Ave, his smile… full.
I stand in the middle of the room, holding the jugs, watching as they interact. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I see the way Ave laughs at whatever he’s saying. The way she shuffles impossibly closer. The need to know one another. There’s no other feeling quite like the feeling in my heart. It’s not happy or sad or angry or jealous. It’s… I don’t know what it is. But watching them, seeing his smile after the way I found him just now… Ave can heal him.
The realisation hits me like a slap to the face.
Lance doesn’t need me.
“Auntie Scar,” Ellis calls, and I drag my gaze to him. He holds up his cup, gesturing toward the jugs of juice in my hands.
Shaking myself out of my trance, I walk the rest of the way to the table, reaching over to fill Ellis’s cup. My hand shakes, the juice splashing over his wrist and then the tablecloth.
“Shit,” I mutter. I look up into Ellis’s surprised face. “Sorry, Ellis.”
“I can do that,” Mason tells me, taking the jug from my hands. “Go and sit down,” he adds so gently no one else hears.
There’s a seat at the end of the table, right beside Ave, and I make my way to it, doing my best to calm down and ease my trembling hands.
As I pull my chair in, I look up and lock eyes with Lance. He’s watching me, his face questioning but soft.
A silent plea.Are you okay?
It’s the only tell that he’d been the way he was upstairs half an hour ago, and no one else at the dinner table would even know it.
Nina said he was putting on a brave face, but this, this is more than that. So much more.
I can’t help but wonder if giving him more of Ave, the parts he missed, would maybe help him heal. Could it distract him? Give him something to think about away from his time in prison?
He could have damaged his leg tonight jumping out of the bed.
God, he had no recollection of where he was when I pushed open the bedroom door. His face was so pale, so lost. He was somewhere else.
How often does this happen?
“Mummy, you aren’t eating.”
I shift my gaze from Ave to my empty plate, and then to everyone else’s full ones. I reach forward and scoop up the chicken, not making eye contact with a single person at the table.
Still, I feel every eye in the room on me.
