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“Save them?”
I frown, staring deep into the water. “Mase, Nina, Ave. I can’t keep them safe, and I know I wouldn’t survive losing them.”
“Why would you lose them?”
I look down at him, my smile barely forming as I try to pull back a little. “Everything disappears eventually, Lance. It’s a part of being. The good gives way to the bad like the day gives way to night.”
“They’re not going to go anywhere. You’re family. Mason and Nina. The kids.”
I want to argue with him. I want to tell him that he’s wrong because it’s life, and it happens, and we can’t change that.
“They’re not going anywhere, Scarlet,” he repeats.
I close my eyes in a bid to block him out, my fingers stroking lazy circles from his temples to the base of his neck. After a while he goes quiet, and I’m almost certain he’s drifted off to sleep. I lean against the bath, my hand still passing through the short dark hair at his ears as I watch him.
I want to believe Lance. I want to wake up—to fall asleep—without the constant dread that something awful is going to happen every single day. But I’ve loved and lost and broken repeatedly throughout my life. I’m not sure there’s ever been a time I’ve not lived through one of the three. And maybe it’s messed up for me to wait for it, to look around corners to see it coming, but better that than to be naive to the way of the world. To the way it can so easily humble me.
I once allowed myself to love this man. Everything that he was. He took it all from me, including my heart, but I took his, too. I bundled it up in my arms clinging on so tight, never thinking I’d have to let go—never wanting to. I thought I deserved to be happy and in love for a little while, that it was my time.
I was naive and stupid to believe that because it was all taken away from me.
As the bath threatens to lose its warmth, I wake him.
“Lance,” I whisper, my voice thick.
I’m tired.
Tired and confused.
“Lance,” I try again.
I trace his brow, my hand smoothing over his jaw, not really wanting to wake him up at all. “Lance.”
“Hmm.”
An overwhelming burn rages in my throat, and I fight to swallow it down.You don’t love this man, Scar. You don’t.“You should go to bed.”
His eyes part lazily, his neck twisting so he can look at me. His head rests in my palm, and as I go to pull back, he catches my wrist, bringing it to his mouth to kiss the centre. His nose dusts over where his lips touched, sending a shiver snaking down my spine.
God, I miss being in love with him, though.
I miss being in love with him more than I’ve ever missed anything.
His eyes flicker to mine as he effortlessly claws back the little pieces of us we lost. “If I could crawl inside of you and live there, I would,” he whispers. “I’m pretty sure it’s the safest place on earth.”
EIGHTEEN
Lance
“Bear, you bastard, you better drop it.”
I step left, but he goes right, his tail wagging as he pounces front to back on his paws, bounding around the garden.
You’d think he is a damn puppy.
I was taking my second sip of coffee this morning when a flash of beige caught my eye at the front door.
Scarlet is out, thankfully, taking Waverley to school.
