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Mason
Mason paced the waiting room, waiting for any news of Pippa. Of course, that would require him having to actually talk to her family. The nurses gave him looks of pity but wouldn’t share any private patient information with him after he’d admitted he wasn’t related to her.
Stupid move. I should have lied.
Pippa’s sister and father walked into the room, their gazes catching on his. Roy looked away and took a seat on the side of the waiting area farthest away from him. Sophia’s eyes burned with anger as she lifted her chin, reminding him of Pippa, before she joined her father.
Nerves swarmed him. He’d held on to this blame for so long. He’d fucked up big-time. The thought of losing her made everything else seem so insignificant. It put their situation into a whole new perspective.
And when her seizure didn’t stop, and they loaded her into that ambulance, he thought he’d lost her for good. A million regrets crashed over him, each one like a heavy boulder. How could I have been so stupid? Instead of holding on to one of the best things that had ever happened to him, Mason had let his guilt keep her and himself from happiness. Pippa was right; he had been a coward, thrusting his guilt on Roy instead of facing it. That ended now.
Mason put one leaden foot in front of the other until he stood in front of Pippa’s family. “Mr. Davis?”
Pippa’s father looked up, his jaw setting tight. “You want to know about Pippa?”
Mason motioned to the chair beside him. “May I?”
Sophia stood, moving in front of her father. “No, you may not. You almost assaulted my father and then you broke my sister’s heart and left her to deal with—”
“Sophia.” Roy’s voice cut in, halting his daughter’s speech.
She turned to him, and he gave her a pointed look. A silent conversation passed between the two of them before she sighed and took her seat once more, crossing her arms and spewing a litany of Spanish. For once, he was glad he didn’t know the language to understand the list of insults she was probably sending his way. But he deserved every single one.
“Thank you, sir.” Mason sat, angling his body to face the man he’d once hated and blamed for ruining his family’s life. “I wanted to apologize for how I acted towards you.”
Roy’s eyes widened, his mouth dropping open.
“It . . . wasn’t your . . . it wasn’t your fault.” The words left Mason with a whoosh. The tightness in his chest eased somewhat, and his shoulders lightened with the confession.
Roy blinked as his eyes grew glassy. “I’ve gone over that day a million times in my head. If I had checked the intersection better before going through, she’d still be alive.”
“My wife was drunk. She never should have been behind the wheel.”
Roy reared back. He hadn’t known. The only person hurt in the accident was his wife, and being a small town, the sheriff back then had agreed to keep that detail from public knowledge. It wasn’t relevant as fault was deemed to Amanda for the accident anyway, and Roy had been arrested for theft, not vehicular manslaughter.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Not many people do.”
Roy’s shoulders straightened as if he, too, had been relieved of a burden. “So that was your daughter I held until the EMTs got there?”
Mason flinched from the pain in his chest at the reminder of just how close he’d come to losing everything that night. “You held her?”
Roy nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I left her in the car seat, like they tell you to do for safety, but I held her hand and removed her from the car. I kept her calm until the ambulance arrived.”
Mason’s eyes blurred with tears of gratitude. “Thank you for being there for her when I couldn’t be.”
Roy laid his hand gently on Mason’s wrist. “I never got to say it before. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I appreciate it.” Mason sniffed and cleared his throat.
“Pippa doesn’t deserve to pay for our mistakes,” Roy added, looking him in the eye.
Mason shook his head. “No, she doesn’t. It was easier to blame you than take responsibility for my part in it. My wife needed help, and I didn’t recognize it until it was too late.”
Roy sighed. “I think it’s about time we both stop shouldering the blame for things we can’t change, don’t you, son?”
Mason nodded solemnly. “She chose to drink. To get into a car with our three-year-old and drive drunk. Aspen could have been killed.”
