Chapter 19 #2
“You do?” I lean forward in my seat, invested in his every word. “I came here tonight hoping it meant maybe you’d want to come to the estate with us the next time we go?” I force my hand to stay in my lap again, annoyed with myself that I’ve even lied.
Maybe I’m not lying exactly, but I know that in about an hour’s time I’m going to ask him to the ball, and he’ll be thinking about how I prepped him for it. God, if only this was a trashy romance novel, and I could hit backspace on my stupid words.
“I’m actually looking forward to it.”
“You are?” I ask, surprised.
“Yeah. I don’t know how much of the estate you’ve shown Ellis, but I want to show him it too.”
Well, this is progress!
I nod, watching as he feeds our son another mouthful. “I could never do it justice. You should definitely do that.”
“I’m worried about Scarlet,” he admits, running his tongue across the front of his teeth.
I give him a soft pitiful smile. “Scar’s doing okay.”
He looks over his shoulder at me, his concern clear in his eyes. “I appreciate you being there for her this last year. She never would have gotten through it without you.”
“What about you? What got you through it?”
His jaw goes tight, and I know exactly what—or should I say who—got him through it. “A lot of shit happened, Mase.” I throw his words back at him as I carry on eating, giving him an out I’m not even sure he deserves.
Mase
After cleaning up the dinner dishes, I find Nina leant against the doorframe of Ellis’s room.
A frown marred across her forehead as she stands deep in thought.
I’m so glad I had the wall knocked out to join our rooms. It’s been a godsend whilst he’s been teething, and I want to keep an eye on him.
It gives us our own space without being apart.
I walk up beside her and look into the room.
Sensing her thoughts, I give her an inch, hoping it’s enough.
“I never brought women up here. Not even at my worst.” I can feel her eyes burning through the side of my face, but I don’t dare look at her. “I couldn’t.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asks, her tone much softer than I expect.
Leaning against the frame opposite her, I lift my eyes to hers. She looks devastated.
“Not to hurt you.”
She sniggers, shaking her head.
Taking her chin, I lift her face to mine. “I need to be honest with you.”
“Not with this.” Her eyes shine, and I get that feeling in my chest. The painful ache that feels like I’m breaking in two. I know we need to do this.
“I’m sorry, Nina.”
“Because you did it or because I found out?”
I let my hand fall away. “You left me.”
She nods, rolling her lips. “So you slept with a horde of women to what? Fix that?”
“Forget, Nina. I did it to forget.”
“Did it work?”
“No.” I drop my head, feeling ashamed. “But I don’t regret it.” Pushing off the frame, I step into her, crowding her. “I never would have survived you, Nina Anderson.” I push her hair off her face. “I still worry I won’t.” I shrug.
“It’s not about surviving, Mase.”
“No?” I laugh in question.
She shakes her head vehemently. “No.”
“Tell me then. What’s it about?”
She lifts her chin, her eyes sure. “Reason.”
I frown. “Reason?”
She dips her head in the direction of Ellis who’s tucked up asleep in his cot. “A reason to be good, a reason to not hurt the people you love because you hurt, and a reason to be the best version of yourself, no matter how badly we feel like we’re drowning.”
“I didn’t have Ellis when you left, I never had a reason.”
“Ellis wasn’t my reason back then, Mason, you were. I believed in you even after everything that happened.”
“Nothing happened.” I scrub my hand down over my face, stepping away from her.
“I didn’t know that then. And I never would’ve been able to get the images out of my mind if I stayed. Could you?”
Could I?
Live my life with the image of another man with her.
No. No, I fucking couldn’t.
“I needed time, Mason, and I’m sorry for that.”
“I know.” I scrub my hand over my face again, feeling agitated.
She spins around in the room that was once ours and chuckles to herself, falling back onto the bed. Her chest shakes, and I fight to keep my eyes glued to her face.
“Am I missing something?” I stand with my hands on my hips, wondering if she has lost it.
Looking up at me, she starts to laugh harder. She’s infectious, and my cheek tics. “No. I don’t think so. It’s just funny, isn’t it? Us. What a mess.”
She continues to chuckle to herself, so I bend down and scoop her up.
“Mase!” she whisper-shouts, jolting up in my arms.
“Shhh, you’ll wake Ellis.” That, and if I don’t get her off my bed and into safer territory soon, I might end up completely and utterly fucked. Literally.
I carry her out onto the terrace, dropping her onto a lounger. “I’m going to go get us some drinks. Unless you wanted to leave?”
Her eyes dart around my face and I sense that she wants to go, but something keeps her here.
“No, I’ll stay. But just one drink.”
She’s standing at the railings when I come back out to the terrace, looking out across the city.
“My son has spent more time in this penthouse than I have,” she tells me, placing one of Ellis’s lost dummies on top of the wall.
“That bothers you?” I place her wine next to it, and she turns her head to look at me.
“Only that I wasn’t with him too.”
“You’re all around us here, I made sure of it.”
“Not in the way that counts.” A tear rolls down her cheek and I reach out to swipe it. “I never wanted my children to grow up like I did. A broken home. The confusion and unanswered questions.”
I instantly regret leaving her out here. It gave her too much room to think. “Ellis won’t have that.”
“Won’t he? Because he might not understand right now, but one day he’s going to grow up, and then what?”
“We call Auntie Luce and Uncle Elliot.” I smirk, giving her a soft wink.
“You’re an idiot,” she chokes the words out with a smile, wiping at her eyes and pulling back her shoulders.
Brushing herself off, like she always does.
I open out the blanket I brought out and wrap her in it. “You know, if you count the days, months even, that you spent living inside my mind.” I reach under her top, smoothing my hand over the soft skin of her stomach. “Then I reckon you’ve both spent nearly the same amount of time here.”
Leaning against her, I whisper into her ear, “We all missed things we wish we didn’t, Nina. We can’t change the past” —I flatten my palm on her hip as my finger traces one of the thin scars at the bottom of her stomach— “but we can make right now whatever we want it to be for him.”
“I want Ellis to have more—more than we both had.”
“I know,” I tell her, dropping my head to rest on her shoulder. “I want that too.”
“Mase, there’s a memorial ball for your parents on Saturday night, it’s at the estate and everyone has been too afraid to ask you,” she blurts out.
I tense, trying to process her words but she doesn’t give me more than a second before she is firing off again.
“I’ll be there, Ellis too. Vinny is going to be watching him in the house.
” She turns in my arms. “It would mean the world to your sister if you came.” She rolls her lips.
“It would mean the world to me if you came.” She searches my face for any hint of a reaction, completely and utterly unaware that I would set the world on fire for her.
“Ellis too,” she adds, trying to hook me.
I step away from her, waiting for her to take the blanket from my grip and then letting it go.
“Okay.” I nod.
“Okay?” She rears back.
“I’ll go to the memorial thing.”
She has that look on her face. Like the time I told her I was allergic to dogs.
“You will?”