Chapter 28 Not His Heart
After Lane closes the door, I lie in silence for hours, staring up at the ceiling in a daze.
Great job, Mason. You chased him away. Happy now?
Hell no. I doubt I’ll ever be happy—not after seeing that broken look on his face when I shut him down. I treated him like a na?ve kid when I’m the one to blame.
Why couldn’t I have just told him the truth? That I feel the same, but that it makes me want to crawl out of my own skin or jump from the nearest rooftop, so we can’t be together. That I’m sorry.
He was just supposed to be a way for me to pass the time, but he turned out to be a lot more than that.
I started to rely on him, and that was fucking terrifying.
I tried to tone it down, dismiss him and any feelings I have, but the more I tried, the harder it got, and in the end, I ruined everything.
I don’t want to let him go. I don’t want him to find someone else—why the hell would I want that? I want him to myself, all of him. But I can’t give him all of me in return, so I don’t deserve to have him at all.
I’m too closed off and mean. Too insecure to be kind.
Lane wants me softer, but I don’t know how to be soft.
I thought I was good for him, that I knew what he needed, but I know nothing of the sort.
I still want him; I still feel for him. I just don’t know how to express it, and instead, it all comes out in possessiveness and my dominant bullshit rather than… rather than…
My throat tightens, and I suck in a shallow breath, hiding my face in the pillow.
With my one-night stands, I avoided catching feelings with no effort. I didn’t come close, not even once. At any sign of tenderness beyond a casual fuck, I ran as fast as I could, and now I know why.
Feeling like this hurts, and now I’m making someone else hurt, too. Why couldn’t I just admit what he means to me? Would that be so hard?
Yes. Yes, it would be. I can bench three hundred pounds and barely break a sweat, but I’m not strong enough to say what I truly feel, and now I’m all alone.
Maybe it’s just as well; I don’t deserve to have him.
He deserves someone who can give him all of themselves and accept all of him.
Someone who’ll bruise his body but not his heart.
What am I supposed to do tomorrow? We live together, at least for now. How am I supposed to meet his eyes if we run into each other, knowing I hurt him and made him cry? Everything that used to be fun about staying in the same house now makes me want to punch a wall. I can’t stay here.
Groaning, I turn to my side and unlock my phone. It’s two in the morning, but I text Tess anyway.
“Hey, you up?”
“Yeah, why?” she replies.
“Can I crash at your place tonight?”
There’s a pause, and I imagine her rolling her eyes as she types, “Fine. Just got off my shift.”
I sigh in relief. Problem solved, at least for now.
When I get up and try to look for something to wear, I feel like I’m moving through mud. Everything feels shitty, like I don’t even know the point of it all anymore, and I have no one to blame but myself.
I take a couple of deep breaths and steel myself before I open the door to Tess’s apartment.
She’s always had a knack for making me say stuff I didn’t plan, and just this once, I want to hang out as if nothing’s wrong.
Like the good old days, before I laid ruin to my life and landed in prison.
Before I met Lane and knew what it was like to hold him in my arms and have him smile up at me.
Before I destroyed everything we had—everything we could have had.
Shit never tends to work out that way with Tess, though. The moment I enter her tiny downtown apartment, she knows something’s up.
“Well?” she asks. “Should I find you a spare toothbrush or get you a beer?”
“You know I can’t drink.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m not gonna tell on you.”
“I can’t.”
“Fine, but I’m having a smoke, and then you’re gonna sit right there and tell me what’s happened.” She points to a patterned ottoman next to her window.
I go sit at my designated spot while Tess gets her vape out and a mason jar full of weed.
I watch her break apart the buds with mild interest. Tess and I used to smoke all the time after work.
I haven’t gotten high since before the incident, and I shouldn’t be stupid enough to use drugs when my parole officer can call me in to piss any time he feels like it.
I’m not supposed to hang around people who smoke, either, but hell, I’ve already crossed a bunch of lines. Why not one more?
Tess sits on a window seat facing the courtyard. She gets the vape ready, and after waiting for her to take a drag, I reach for it.
She raises a brow. “That bad?”
I nod. It is that bad.
“Let me guess,” she says, and she doesn’t hand me the vape. “It’s about that cute little goth boy, isn’t it?”
I shrug and shift my gaze. If I try to lie, she’ll see through it, but if I stay silent, she’ll figure it out either way.
“What was his name again? Lane, right?”
I nod, saying nothing.
Tess rolls her eyes. “You’re not giving me much to work with. Go on, tell me what’s up.”
“Do I have to?” I mutter.
“That depends.” She smiles knowingly. “Did he steal your words as well as your heart?”
My mind tries to push back against her words, the implication too uncomfortable. Lane hasn’t stolen anything… has he? Except for my ability to stay in control.
I heave a heavy sigh. “It wasn’t supposed to be anything serious. Just some fun.”
Tess nods and stays silent, letting me continue.
“He was cute,” I grumble. “I wanted him.”
“Naturally,” she says with a roll of her eyes.
More than cute. He checked every single one of my boxes.
Made me rock hard just at the thought of kissing him, just by being near him.
I like sex, sure—I’ve always liked sex. But with him, I was present in a way I’ve never been before, and even that was unsettling.
I’ve fucked dozens of guys like him, but Lane…
I don’t know. He’s different. He always has been.
I’d like to say it blindsided me, but the truth is I always knew. I just ignored it.
“But I guess I…” Scowling, I avert my gaze. “I…”
“You wanted him too much?”
I nod.
“And it scared you.”
I nod again. Fucking Tess. Always knows exactly how I feel.
“So what happened?” she asks. “Did you tell him?”
I squirm in discomfort. “More like… the other way around.”
“He told you how he feels, and you shut him down?”
I wince. “Pretty much.”
“Well. I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“It’s fine, though. He’s better off.”
“Better off without you?”
“Yeah. With someone else. Someone better.”
Tess scoots closer and lays a hand on my arm. “Hey. You think I’ve forgotten what you did? How you saved me?”
I close my eyes.
Blood splattering the pavement.
A voice screaming “stop!”
“I know what kind of guy you are, Mason,” Tess continues.
“Yeah?” I ask in a thick voice. “And what kind is that?”
“A good one.”
“Lane wouldn’t agree.” I wouldn’t agree.
“Well, that’s because you haven’t shown him who you are yet.”
I fidget uncomfortably, trying to come up with some kind of humorous deflection, a sarcastic way out, but it doesn’t come. It doesn’t work. Something inside me has softened, and I’m not sure how to harden it back up.
Tess doesn’t help. She’d have me crying in her lap if I let her.
“Hey, how about this?” she says, perking up. “You pretend I’m Lane, and you tell me what you’d like to tell him.”
I huff out a laugh. “No way.”
“Come on! It’s nothing serious. Just for fun, like you said.”
“But this isn’t fun.” This is terrifying.
“Opening up to someone can be ‘fun’ if you let it, or at least it can lead to something fun. If the other person feels the same way, that is. And you know Lane does, don’t you? So just humor me here for a second. What would you say if he were here right now?”
“I would…” I sigh, shoulders slumping. “I’d want to touch him.”
“Okay, but what would you want to say to him?”
“Um…” I’ve lost all ability to speak, but then… Oh! “I’m sorry. I’d say I’m sorry.”
Tess nods encouragingly. “Okay, that’s good. What else?”
“Um… That I guess… When you asked me what would happen with us when Oliver leaves, I sort of freaked out.”
“Yes?” Tess gestures for me to continue.
“Because I don’t want to let you go, but I don’t know how to be with you any other way than how we are now.”
Tess nods. “Keep going, that’s good.”
Fuck it. I’m just gonna tell her. I stare across her tiny apartment without really seeing it as I dig for what’s buried in the depths of me.
“Fucking you is easy. It’s the best thing ever. Ordering you around is easy, too. But talking about other shit, like how much I miss you when you’re not with me, or how I feel when you smile at me, or how I want to spend hours just kissing you, or what I did to land me in prison—”
“Wait a minute,” Tess interrupts. “He still doesn’t know what you did?”
I shake my head.
She gives me the biggest eye roll yet. “Oh, come on! It’s not like you killed someone.”
“But it was close.”
Tess waves a hand. “I bet he’ll get all excited when you tell him. I bet he’ll think it’s hot.”
It’s my turn to roll my eyes this time. “Shut up.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t feel at least a little like a hero.”
“Do you…” I bite the words off.
“Do I see you as a hero?”
I nod, terrified to hear the answer.
“Of course I do,” she says.
I look down at my lap, heart racing. “But… you looked so scared when it happened.”
We’ve never talked about it like this. When she visited me in prison, I couldn’t tell her about how I feared our friendship was over. How terrifying it was to lose control like that.
Tess frowns and says, “Maybe I haven’t told you clearly enough, and if so, you have every right to be mad at me, but here it is: thank you for what you did.
I hate how it got you locked up, and I hate to think it’ll affect you your whole life.
” She looks me straight in the eye. “But yeah, I was scared when it happened. Not because of what you did, but because of how into it you were. I couldn’t get you to stop. I tried—maybe you don’t remember.”
“I remember,” I mutter. “They talked about getting me into anger management and shit, but it fell through.”
“Do you feel you need something like that?”
“As long as I can work out and get laid as often as I want, I’m okay.”
She grimaces. “Maybe that’s still something to look into.”
“I’m not talking to some shrink.”
“Maybe for Lane, you could do it.”
For Lane, I’d do anything.
The thought invades my mind, taking me by surprise. I know it’s true. At least, anything I can do, I’d do for him. I’m just not sure it’s enough.
Tess puts the vape down and turns all matter-of-fact again. “So, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, what are you going to do about Lane?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do; I fucked up.”
She rolls her eyes for the umpteenth time tonight, sighing, “Boys.” She spreads her fingers and tucks them down one by one.
“Okay, I guess I’ll have to spell it out for you: first, you need to apologize.
Get on your knees if you have to. Then, you tell him you were an idiot, that you’re head over heels for him, and then you smooch and have make-up sex. Easy.”
“You don’t get it,” I mutter.
“What don’t I get? That you can’t be vulnerable with him like you are with me? What’s the difference between us, except that I’m not a cute goth twink?”
Uh… The differences between Tess and Lane are too many to name. One comes to mind above all others, though. I open my mouth, but Tess beats me to it.
“Is it because you’re not in love with me?”
“I’m not in love with him,” I say automatically, before I even have time to think.
Tess laughs. “If you’re not in love with him, then why are we even having this conversation?”
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
Is she right? Am I really… in love? Is that what this is?
I’ve never felt like this, so how would I know?
And as much as I don’t want to believe it, what else could make me want to look into his eyes as I hold his cheeks and kiss him deeply?
What else could make the world feel wrong and dull when he’s not with me?
I guess it’s true. I guess I really am in love.
I’ve gone beyond a crush and into obsession territory, and now everything reminds me of him and makes me want to see him.
He holds that power over me. He makes me feel out of control.
But maybe that’s not as bad as I thought.
In fact, I feel kind of good now that I know—now that I’ve accepted it.
He’s more than just a puppy. He’s more than just a fuck toy, but that must be how he thinks I see him.
I suppose part of me wanted to see him that way, because it was easier than seeing him as a fully realized human with all that entails.
It would be easier if he were just a fuck toy with no will or feelings of his own, but that wouldn’t be as fun, would it?
Maybe Tess is right. Maybe there’s relief in being vulnerable with someone. With him.
I’m in love with him, and I can only hope he’s in love with me too, even if I might have ruined it and made him think I’m an emotionless asshole. I need to show him otherwise.
Suddenly, I feel pumped and full of adrenaline, and I jump off the ottoman with renewed vigor. “Should I go right now?”
“It’s 3 AM, Mace.”
“So what?”
She raises a brow. “He’s asleep.”
“But I want to see him. I want to apologize. Now.”
“Look,” Tess says with a sigh. “It can wait until tomorrow. For now, let him sleep. You look like you need some shuteye yourself.”
I guess she’s right. I feel wired but exhausted at the same time. Part of me wants to get this over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid, but Lane deserves better than a rushed, half-assed apology.
If I wait until tomorrow, I can work out what I’m going to say beforehand so I don’t screw it up a second time. I doubt I’ll get any more chances. Lane’s sweet, but he’s not that sweet, and he shouldn’t be. He should put himself first, like a complete human being, like I am.
I just wish I hadn’t made him cry.
Ten minutes later, I lie on Tess’s couch, and despite thinking I’ll have to toss and turn for hours before falling asleep, I barely shut my eyes before I sink into dreamland—worried, sure, frightened, absolutely, but full of tentative hope as I imagine Lane in front of me.
Tomorrow, I’ll see him. Tomorrow, I’ll apologize. He can accept my apology or not—that’s his right—but I at least need to see him and try.