Chapter 13
The headlights of my car slice through the dark, carving out a tunnel I’m barely managing to drive through.
My hands grip the steering wheel tighter than they should as the dashboard lights blur, bleeding together like wet paint.
The empty road stretched before me grows more narrow with every mile that passes.
Whiskey sloshes, heavy and warm in my gut, dragging my muscles and thoughts to a speed half a second slower than they should be.
“What am I even doing?” I slur to myself. I shouldn’t be here. I know that. Every rational part of my brain is screaming at me—pull over, stop, don’t fucking do this—but I’m so close to home. I just need to get into my bed to sleep this off.
I cling to the low and steady hum of the engine as the tires hiss against the asphalt. Dust churns up along the passenger side as I drift onto the shoulder. The crunch of gravel is loud and startling in the silence, vibrating through the floorboard and into my bones as my pulse roars in my ears.
I blink and then shut my eyes for a second to steady myself.
When I open them, the gate of my house is nearer than I expect.
Too close. Way too close. “Oh, fuck!” I wrench the wheel to the left, my drunk reflexes slow and sloppy as I grossly overcorrect.
The tires spin uselessly on the loose gravel, and the screech of metal-on-metal tears through the night as I crash into the iron bars with a thump that steals the air from my lungs and rattles my teeth.
The engine grumbles as I sit there frozen, my hands still locked around the wheel and my heart hammering like it’s trying to punch its way out of my ribcage. I don’t get out. I don’t do anything but stare at the wreckage before me. The wreckage I know could have had much more dire consequences.
Headlights flare behind me, bright and blinding as they flood the cabin of my SUV.
I squint, disoriented, my head already throbbing.
“Easton!” My name detonates through the night, punctuated with the slamming of a car door.
I flinch at the furious tone enough that my shoulders jerk.
Squinting into the rearview mirror, I find Mason in front of his truck, framed by its headlights.
My brake lights glow across his face, making the anger on his face appear unmistakably sharper.
His jaw is clenched, and his hands ball into fists as he stalks toward me.
“Jesus Christ, Easton. What the fuck are you doing?”
The air in the car suddenly feels heavy enough to choke me. I try to answer, but nothing comes out. My sluggish thoughts slide away before my mouth can form them. I swallow hard, wringing my hands around the wheel.
“Fucking, look at you,” Mason snarls as he reaches my shattered driver’s side window. “Open the fucking door.” He doesn’t wait for me to obey his command. He yanks it wide, and his hands are immediately on me. There is nothing gentle about the way he fists my jacket and hauls me from my seat.
“Easy…” I mutter, my legs not cooperating when my feet hit the ground. The driveway shifts under my boots, and I stumble.
“Easy?” Mason catches me. “You’re fucking unbelievable. You could’ve killed someone.”
Anger radiates off him as he tightens his hold on me. He doesn’t ask if I can walk. He drags me—half-carrying, and half-pulling—through the gate and up the drive toward the house.
“You think this is what she’d want?” he snarls, shoving the front door hard enough that it bangs against the wall. “You think Rosie would want you drowning yourself in booze?”
“Don’t…” My voice sounds sour. “Don’t say her name.”
My warning does nothing to stop him. He doesn’t soften at all. If anything, it only enrages him further.
“Rosie would hate what you’re doing to yourself.” My feet tangle as the too-bright house blurs past. I barely register him hauling down the hall and into the bathroom until he shoves me into the shower and turns on the water. “Drinking like this… Driving your car like this…”
I hiss as the shocking blast rains over my chest and steals the breath from my lungs. I gasp, my body jerking violently as the ice-cold droplets bite down to the bone. “Fuck!” I futilely try to shove past him to get from under the frigid spray.
“Good,” Mason snaps over the roar of the water. “Wake the fuck up. You’re no better than the man who took her from you”—he shoves me back beneath the frigid water with enough force that I fall to the tile floor—“from all of us.”
The chill is brutal and relentless. It soaks through my clothes and burns over my skin as my teeth chatter uncontrollably.
My heart races, and clarity practically slaps me across the face.
I try to form words, but they die in my throat.
I can’t explain. I can’t apologize. I can’t even fight back, because he’s right.
“You don’t get to check out like this,” he shouts, climbing into the stall with me. Fisting the front of my shirt, he holds me steady under the spray. “You don’t get to drink and drive, pretending you’re the only one who’d pay for it.”
“I… I get it,” I choke out through the cascade of water raining over my face.
“No, you don’t,” he fires back. “Because if you did, we wouldn’t be here. You don’t get to be the reason someone else loses their future.”
The water keeps coming, cold and cruel. Mason exhales hard as he steps back.
He lets the shower run a second longer before reaching past me to shut it off.
Silence washes over the room, broken only by my sputtered breathing.
I slump against the tile surround, soaked, shaking, and sober enough for unrelenting shame to hit me hard.
Mason slides down the wall and sits across from me in the shower stall. “East… You need to stop. You need to get help, man. You got lucky tonight. Lucky that you didn’t hurt yourself or worse, someone else.”
I stare back at him, the words floating past my understanding. Lucky? Nothing about my life since that fateful day feels lucky.
“You don’t get it, do you? You can’t keep spiraling like this. You need help. Real help. I’m here, and I’ll be with you, but you have to want it.”
“I…” I swallow so hard that my throat hurts. “I can’t… I—”
“Yes, you can,” Mason interrupts. “You just have to decide you’re done letting grief run you over.
Done letting that bottle be your out. Done letting the memory of Rosie”—he pauses to take a deep breath—“define your life. She’d want you to fight, East. She’d want you to live.
She’d want you to be the man she fell in love with. ”
I close my eyes, wrapping my arms around myself, as his words strike something inside me that’s been hidden under layers of numbness. “You’re right,” I whisper, almost to myself. “I… I just… don’t know how.”
“You don’t have to. You just have to want it.” Mason pushes to his feet and extends his hand toward me. “One step at a time. You can be like the man who ruined your life, or choose to live in a way she’d be proud of. Starting right now.”
I stare up at him and give an uncertain nod before slapping my hand into his. He pulls me to my feet and into an embrace. For the first time in months, I don’t feel numb as I cry on his shoulder. “I’m sorry…”
Mason doesn’t let me go, but he doesn’t say another word. He doesn’t need to. His presence is enough. Proof that I’m not alone, and I don’t have to carry this by myself.