13. Lilah #2
“And that’s what a best friend does, right?” There was no edge to his voice, no biting sharpness, no dripping acid.
I tilted my head, trying to see his face. “Uh, yes?” I said uncertainly.
He dropped his head back, fingers in his hair, before looking at me. “I fucked up, Lilah.” The words tumbled out strained, pained. He dragged his hands over his face before stepping toward me.
My head banged against the door at the swiftness of my step back. A lance of pain pricked the back of my head.
Simple words I’d silently begged for in the hallway for weeks, then months after the year started. Those were the words I’d hoped to hear every time I walked past his balcony. They’d finally arrived, and a whirlwind of emotions jumbled in a knotted tangle inside my chest.
“I was wrong. And an asshole.” He stared at me, eyes shining with an agonized expression tensing his whole face.
This wasn’t how I thought this would go.
But then the voice notes and our last interaction in the sewing lab came back to me. “How did you mess up?” Shoulders high, braced for emotional impact, I peered at him, not knowing which version of Mason I was dealing with.
“I thought you and Ryker were together. After I left with my father for the weekend before school started. I thought our summer was a lie. That you were messing with me.”
“But I told you, Rye—”
“You told me about your friend Rye. Not Ryker Ferris. Even before I knew it was him, I didn’t like it, but I accepted it. And then, when I went away with my father, I saw you two when he came to the house.”
I racked my brain. Rye had come back from hockey camp, we swam in the pool after Alena had said I was welcome to on her way out the door.
I’d mostly daydreamed about her closet while Rye droned on and on about hockey camp and then he crashed on the couch while I had one solitary day in a regular bed before Kel-iza moved in.
What was there to even see? Then the question popped into my mind.
“What do you mean you saw us? Saw what? How?” The click of a stovetop burner sounded in my brain.
“Security cameras.” He gestured vaguely outside, voice tight, then shook his head, staring at the floor before looking back at me, lips twisted in torment. “I saw when he got here. He was touching you, grabbing you and you let him.”
Rye had picked me up, tossed me over his shoulder and ripped one right in my face. I’d been lucky to evade pink eye. The pilot light in my brain caught fire.
Fully facing him now, each breath I took required three times the effort.
“And then I thought about everything we talked about all summer. All I could think of was you telling him everything I’d told you. The stuff about the guys and this season. Like you made me feel things I shouldn’t have to get information or mess with my head before the season. Then you—”
I held up a hand to stop him. The flame in my head cranked even higher. “You made my life hell because you were jealous?”
“I made a mistake. I fucked up.” He pressed his hands together like he was begging before offering them to me palms up.
I’d never seen Mason so lost, so unsure. And it pissed me off even more because a part of me wanted to comfort him and tell him it was all okay. I grabbed that part by the hair, tossed her into a closet and propped a chair against the door.
How dare he look at me like his whole world was crashing down around him? Like he couldn’t sleep or eat or breathe? He didn’t get to look like he was in more pain than that first night I found him out here.
“A mistake would have been getting angry with me and confronting me when you thought I was apparently a spy set out to try to bring you down for my boyfriend, who would’ve had no issues with me cheating on him.”
“We didn’t even kiss.”
The flame behind my eyes went from red to blue, so hot it scorched the inside of my head.
“So you think all those nights lying on each other’s laps wouldn’t count?
Or when I ran my fingers through your hair?
All those times you brushed your fingers across my lips?
” I wrapped my arms around myself, hugging tight.
The boiling in my brain was short-circuiting my newly pieced-together ability to think straight.
“Lilah—” His hand brushed my shoulder.
I whipped around and glared at him. “You turned the whole school against me. You stole the sewing lab from me. You made me dread waking up every single day.”
“I know.” He slammed a clenched fist against his chest. “I hate myself for what I did. I was wrong. I see that now.”
“Because you saw Rye with his girlfriend at the game?”
The flickering reflection from the water swept across his face.
“How do you know I’m just not that good of a girlfriend? Maybe Rye and I are really good at sharing.” I added a sultry twist to my words.
“Little Byrd…” My nickname was a pained gasp on his lips, no longer a sneer, but a version that provoked warm, protected feelings.
“No! Don’t Little Byrd me. You made up that story in your mind.
You treated me like crap.” I pressed my fingertips against my forehead.
“If I hadn’t gone to the game, what would be happening?
You’d still be on your mission to—what? Make me hate every day?
Have me fail out of school? Break me?” My voice cracked.
His shoulders sagged and he dropped his gaze before dragging it back to mine. “To hurt you. For every day you walked down the hallway, for you to think of me and nothing but me. For every moment of your life to be swallowed up by nothing but me.”
I laughed, hollow and brittle. “You got your wish. You proved your point. I thought what we—you and me had—it doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. And it can be how it was.” He swooped in, palms pressed together, eyes searching mine.
“Why would I want you after what you did? I can’t trust you.
At any point, you could’ve just talked to me instead of being the biggest jerk imaginable at every turn.
” I tried to keep the steel in my voice and not think back to the tug that always appeared when he was nearby.
I was nothing to him but a toy he’d been mad someone else had.
I could never have done to him what he did to me.
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
Part of me wanted to leap into his arms, finally kiss him and forgive everything.
Wasn’t that what I’d dreamed about? Finally getting Summer Mason back.
But his switch-ups were so quick that the emotional whiplash scared me.
“No, Mason. We had the summer, but I won’t spend the rest of the year tiptoeing around, afraid I’ll do something that’ll set you off again. ”
“It will never happen again.”
“How can you know? How can I know? Thank you for telling me what happened.” I hated it. I hated all the lost time, but it was for the best. This year was about The Plan and all the preparation for my next plan. Once I got to college, there would be no time for Mason.
He’d be playing hockey and I’d be in one of the most rigorous combined degree programs in the country (if I got in anywhere). Racking up 75s though, I’d be lucky if I graduated in the top quarter of the class.
“Looks like this was all meant to be.” If things had continued like they had from the summer, leaving Mason would’ve been painful.
I could see how it would’ve felt like losing a part of me.
Instead he’d burned himself away from that part of my heart.
But the scar was still there. Buried under the hurt was a longing I’d keep pushing down until the feeling was numbed out of existence.
“I can’t accept that. We can—”
I laughed, humorless and fragile. A prickly whooshing turned to static between my ears. “Life has a way of not caring what you can and can’t accept. No, we aren’t doing anything. There is no ‘we.’”
Leaving my clothes behind, I slipped past Mason and ran back to my house.
Had I just set Mason off all over again? What awaited me tomorrow? I’d find out if what he’d said had been true, or if it was only more lies.