“We weren’t gonna let you go that easy,” Pa said with a warm smile, obviously trying to lighten the tension Chase had worked up around that day.
“What happened?” Dwayne asked.
Pa spoke up on Chase’s behalf: “Ma managed to meet with Chase’s mother and talk her into surrendering custody to her in place of the possibility of Chase winding up in some home.”
“And where are your parents now, if you don’t mind me asking?” Dwayne continued.
Chase shrugged. “I heard my stepdad ended up back in jail, and my mom, I don’t know where the hell she is. I always had this fear that one day she’d come and try to get me back, but when she got out, she disappeared. I haven’t heard from her since, and I’m kind of glad.”
“You deserved better than that,” Mason said, his words as harsh as Chase knew they could be.
“I got a lot more than I deserved,” Chase confessed.
“That’s not true. At all.”
“Mason’s right,” Pa added. “And don’t ever think any different.”
“Thank you, guys. I really don’t know what my life would have been like if you hadn’t been in it.”
“Well, ours would have been a lot less fun, that’s for sure,” Emery pointed out with a smile.
Jasper pulled her to him and held her close, her roasting stick shaking beside the fire until her marshmallow started shooting flames.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her attention shifting to it.
Mason laughed, which got everyone else going. They laughed so hard that the uneasiness that filled the air from discussing the past dissipated. Gradually, the conversation shifted to more lighthearted stories about Ma—about the good times, which lifted their spirits, but left them with the bitter reminder that they would never be able to share those moments, or any like those, with her again.
And as time passed, the party around the fire steadily dispersed until Emery and Jasper said their goodnights to Mason and Chase, who they left sitting across from one another. Chase figured Mason had stayed for the same reason he had: whether they wanted to or not, they needed to discuss that moment at the pond.
“It’s hard looking back and thinking about those bastards of parents you had,” Mason said. “I wish I would have known just how shitty they were. I wish I could have—”
“There was nothing anyone could have done, Mase. Not before they got arrested, and it all worked out in the end.”
“Just the thought of them laying a hand on you pisses me off. I wish you would have said something to me back then.”
“Being on the dairy was my escape from all that. I always felt like I was hanging on to every moment I had here—with your family and you—like it was a fucking dream. Because to a kid, that’s what it felt like. My life at home was this whole other world. And it’s not like they beat the crap out of me. Plenty of people get it a lot worse than I did. They just didn’t want me around was all. And I’m glad you didn’t know about any of it. You would have probably ended up in jail for kicking my father’s ass, is all I know.”
Mason smirked. “Probably true.” Then he blurted, “Sorry about earlier.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for. I clearly wasn’t fighting you off.”
They smiled at each other, showing some appreciation for what they shared and for what they missed—and lost.
“You mad at me?” Mason asked. “For the fights and frustration at the end there? I know we had some goes at each other, but—”
“I’m not mad, Mase. We were kids. And nothing went so wrong as that. We tried to make a really hard situation work. Me going to school at NYU, you being at UGA. We were so far away from each other. Each of us trying to pull the other in a direction the other didn’t want to go.”
“Oh, I remember.”
“We did what was right back then, didn’t we?”
“We did what was right foryou.” Mason twisted his lip, as though he wasn’t all that convinced. “I’m sorry if I held you back, Chase.”
“You didn’t hold me back. I don’t ever want you to feel like you did. It just was time.”
Mason nodded, but not like he was agreeing—like he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “That guy, Tristan, he was good to you, right? The way you talked about him, I got the feeling there was something off there. Beyond what you told me.”
“Yeah, he was good. There were some others in the mix who… well, not so much.”
