“I don’t know,” he growled. “Away from here. I can’t—I can’t be here right now.”
Panic rose in me as he walked away from me. At the cave mouth, he looked back at me. Betrayal flashed through his eyes, and I went to call out to him, to beg him to stay the way I’d always wished he had begged me all those years ago.
But Mason only turned his back on me and ran away.
Once again, I was left alone in the cave, the memories of how he had touched me all that I had to keep me warm.
***
As soon as I got through the front door, June sat in the living room, wine glass in hand. She took one look at me, and her pinched.
“You look like you need this more than I do.”
Sighing, she picked up the wine bottle on my coffee table as I collapsed onto the sofa next to
her. She grabbed a spare wine glass from the kitchen and returned to me.
Everything hurt. My chest hurt from the sobs, my eyes felt dry and gritty from how much I had cried in that cave after Mason had left, and my body was just weak from everything.
“I want to curl up into a ball,” I mumbled. “I just… I can’t endure all of this. Mason, Honeycreek… everything.”
“Come here.” June held out her arms. “Let me hug you like we used to do when the other was too stressed to cope.”
And, as if we were teenagers again, I let myself flop against her. Her arms went around me, and I sighed at the familiarity of it.
“Cassie is Mason’s daughter.”
There was no point in hiding it anymore. June had never been one to push, and she had been patient with me. The silence in the room was deafening, and I anxiously clenched my hand around the glass stem before drinking deeply.
“Well, shit.” June’s bark of laughter surprised me, and I turned to her.
“Shit?” I repeated. “That’s all—”
“Not all, but… honestly, I suspected something. You’ve been so cagey about your life, and
you glared at Mason as if he were evil incarnate whenever he entered a room. Plus, there was the way you’d look at him. I knew you had a crush on him, but… well, I can’t deny I’m a little hurt that I didn’t know you slept together, let alone that Cassie is his, but I’m not going to chew you out about it.”
I welled up, hugging June tighter. “God,” I muttered. “I’ve messed up everything.”
“Does Jackson know?”
I nodded. “I made him swear to secrecy. I told him that Mason wasn’t abandoning me, though, that he could never, under any circumstances, know. He was furious when I told him, wanted to hunt Mason down there and then, but I couldn’t let him. I told him this was between Mason and me, not him and Mason.”
“Good point.”
“I don’t want to face any of it,” I whispered, pulling back and sitting facing my best friend. “But at the same time, I’m relieved. It's been so goddamn lonely out there, June. I’ve missed you; I’ve missed my brother. In a way, I’ve missed a pack. Not them, of course, but the belonging. White Bay was a place I could focus on Cassie to forget how much I felt emptiness within myself. If I just pieced her life perfectly together, then what I felt wouldn’t matter.”
“It will always matter.” June squeezed my hand, offering me a small wince of a smile.
“And,” I hesitated, “Mason and I slept together again. In the, um, the same place as the first—and only—time.”
“Do you want any more complications added to your life, girl?” June laughed, shaking her head. “Like, are you actively seeking them?”
I snorted, her humor already making me feel slightly lighter. Or, at least, distracted. “The only thing I’m seeking is knowing that somehow things are going to be okay, and maybe a pizza and wine.”
“Just like old times.”
“God, I missed you,” I groaned, almost crying all over again. “I don’t even know how I went without you for all theseyears. How did I even do that? I’m sorry that I caused it for both of us.”
