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Greasy stuff.

Chicken tenders and fries.

He doesn’t ask questions. He’s made this kind of food run for his sister before.

She stays the night.

Sleeps in bed with me—the same bed where Mason slept with me the night before.

“We have to change the sheets.”

Then his scent will be gone.

“We need his scent gone,” she continues.

“Right.”

She winks at me. “Told you, I’ve done this before.”

The hangover the next day is epic.

It does make me forget Mason Brooks for a good half hour as my head pounds and nausea replaces heartache.

CHAPTER 28

mason

The flight to JFK had a layover in Denver.

The flight to San Francisco was direct.

I used that as an excuse and ended up in the Mission District at my sister’s townhouse.

Lana lives there with two cats and a rotating collection of houseplants—she kills them at a steady rate and replaces them with the same optimism, which is either admirable or delusional depending on your perspective.

She’s been at it for years.

I call it her vanity project. She calls it a work in progress. The plants have no opinion, being dead.

“You?” She stares at me like I’ve grown a second head—which I feel like I have after drinking half a bottle of whiskey on a two-and-a-half-hour flight.

“Me.”

She opens the door wide. “Either you’re running from the law, or”—she pauses, glares at my duffel bag, catches the whiskey coming off me—“my word, Mason. This might be a matter of the heart.” She delivers the last part with considerable sarcasm.

I hug her and lean into it.

I’m close to both my siblings, but Lana is different. She has some of my moral flexibility, which makes us allies against Jamie, who is straight as an arrow and takes his job shaping young minds with a seriousness that has always baffled me.

Lana is thirty-seven, two years younger than me, and has had the advantage over me her entire life of being able to see through people she loves before they’ve said anything useful.

It’s infuriating.

It’s probably why I don’t visit more often.

“You know where the guest room is.” She waves to the hallway. “Food or coffee?”

“You got anything stronger?”