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I search his gaze. “Will you promise me the same?”
A slight frown forms between his eyes.
“You’ll stop. Get clean. If not for you, then do it for me.”
He presses his lips together, bleaching them of color. His jaw trembles something fierce, just like the fingers that still trail my wrists, and he nods jerkily.
“Say it.”
“I promise,” he rasps.
I nod, resisting the sudden intruding impulse to make him pinky swear—spit on it.
We haven’t done that since we were kids… Izzy, me, Mason, Waylon…
“Jer…did you mean it? What you said that night, in your kitchen. Did you…are you sure?”
I stare at him for a long beat. “I don’t feel her. I feel nothing.”
His fingers retreat, and he thrusts his head back in the pillow, glaring fiercely at the ceiling like he could ward off the impending tears through sheer force of will alone.
“Mason,” I say quietly, but firmly.
He shakes his head.
“Look at me.”
His jaw ticks, and I can practically hear his teeth mashing behind his hollowed cheeks. Finally, he does as I say.
“Maybe…maybe it’s for a reason.” My chest spasms, and I take a deep breath, giving myself one last chance to debate whether or not this is the right thing to do. I spent hours in the waiting room, replaying through these last couple years, wondering how we went from two seventeen year old kids sharing doubts about the future…
To this.
“If she was dead, I’d feel that, right?” I blurt, my voice hitching.
His eyes widen, flaring brightly.
“I’ve never felt her.” I press a hand to my chest. “My entire life. Not like how she said she could feel me—sense me.” I shake my head. “Why would that change now, when she’s the furthest away from me she’s ever been?”
He sits up a little straighter, and while a piece of me withers at the hope rounding his eyes, the rest of me?
Well the rest of me is also clinging to every word that falls from my lips, because up until this moment, I never let myself even consider just why I’ve been so numb. And yeah, it’s…irrational, and maybe a little convoluted. Hell, selfish.
But if this is what Mason needs…
I lift a shoulder. “If she really did die, I think I would’ve felt that.”
This time, a tear manages to escape, spilling down his cheek. “Y-yeah?”
I nod. “I mean, it makes more sense than this…this emptiness I feel. If she was dead, I’d be in fucking agony, right?” My voice cracks as a sad, shaky smile breaks across my face
The sound that bursts out of him is half-sob, half-laugh.
Shaking his head, he tips it back, blinking rapidly up at the ceiling as his breathing quickens, growing more unsteady by the second. I dart my gaze between him and the heart monitor that starts beeping faster, and say, “Hey, it’s okay.”
“I-I know. I j-just?—”
Scooting forward, I grab his wrist, being mindful of the tubes and wires, and say, “Hold your breath.”
