Mason felt a familiar pain in his gut—one that reminded him of that night in the stable.
No. It can’t be over again. Not yet. Not when it was just getting started.
“Emery was just upset, so it’s upsetting you.”
“That’s not what it’s about. I mean, it is, but it’s more than that. She was… upset, and then she made a few very good points about this. What we’re doing. Why we can’t do it anymore.”
“I’d really like to hear those good reasons.”
“Because we’re right back where we started. We’re twenty and saying that we can make it work, and we just can’t. We’ve been down this road before, and we know where it leads. I’m going to be back in Los Angeles next week, and you’re going to be back here.”
“What about everything we’ve shared? You said you love me.”
“I do love you. I’ve always loved you.”
“Then what the fuck is standing in our way?”
Mason approached Chase quickly, but Chase backed up to the wall.
“Don’t do this to me,” Chase said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even started this, but I was just so selfish. I wanted it so much. I wanted you so much. But now I’ve hurt you and your family all over again… and if something happens in the future, it’ll be so much worse. I can’t. I owe everyone more than that. Emery, Pa, you… Ma.”
“So you’re just going to leave? Go back to Los Angeles and disappear out of my life again?”
“I was going to do that anyway. I think I just kept trying to lie and tell myself we could find a way, but I was being as childish as I was when I went off to college. We tried this. This isn’t a movie. What we feel is one thing, but our lives are another. Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
And there they were. The words Chase had said to him so many years earlier. The words that had shut him down the first time.
Harder than it already is, as though his feelings were just a burden, as if they were too much for Chase to handle.
He quieted, and they stood in silence.
Chase glanced around uneasily, as if looking for a way out. “I’m going to stay through the wedding, but when this all ends, and it will because it has to, I’m going back to LA, and you’ll keep your family’s business running smoothly, and…”
“And what?” Mason asked. “Live out our loveless, meaningless existences?”
“I’m sorry, Mason. This is all my fault.”
“It’s not all your fault.” Mason thought about how easily he let himself get swept away all over again. He shut down, feeling just like he had when he was in that barn all those years earlier.
He wanted to fight Chase, to convince him to fight for them, but once again, if Chase wanted out, he couldn’t stand in his way.
“I should probably go talk to Emery,” Chase said. “I owe that to her.”
The cold distance between them felt so painful to Mason, who just wanted another night where he could wrap his arms around the man he loved.
After Chase left, he slipped into the stable with Mercy and brushed her off, replaying that conversation, trying to think of what he should have said or done. How he could have made things right.
How could Chase give up on them so easily? He claimed to know just how profound what they felt was, but couldn’t they find a way?
“At least we still got each other. Right, Mercy?” But his heart sank, and he felt his longing for Chase return—the familiar emptiness he was going to have to find a way to live with all over again.
* * *
Chase stood outside the door to Emery's bedroom, his hand raised to knock, but he hesitated.
She had every right to be mad at him. He'd always known that he'd hurt Mason by breaking his heart, but he never could have imagined that he’d devastated him so much as to force him to experience anything like the pain he'd gone through when he lost Ma. The very thought that Chase could've been the one to put him through that sort of agony again horrified him. And not just because of what he did to Mason, but because Pa and Emery had been forced to watch him in that terrible state of mind again.
The very thought made Chase hate himself for the things he’d shared and done with Mason the past few months.
