Relentless (Mason Family 4)

“If it gets weird in the office, I can have you transferred to Wade’s.”

Transferred to Wade’s. Every other time I’ve mentioned that, it’s been met with a laugh.

“Do you really fucking think that it would be easier for me to get anything done knowing you were in another office that I could just barge into?”

Oliver has drawn the line. He’s closed the door. He’s placed me on the other side, no longer within reach.

And that’s when I know—it’s over.

This is no taking time apart and seeing what happens. This is Oliver telling me he’s done.

But maybe it’s just as well. If it ends now, it can’t get worse. It’s probably better just to snip it off and not let it get to the point where he controls my life.

I should be grateful for silver linings.

I wipe my face with a napkin that I swipe off a table beside us. “Just so you know, I lied to you today too.”

He furrows his brow.

“If omitting things is a lie and we’re coming clean, then just know that today, when you told me you loved me? I hadn’t realized it at that moment, but I did later. I love you too. Loved you too.”

I don’t see his reaction. I turn and run to the kitchen.

I’m not sure what happens after that, but I know Nate darted toward the door.

Paige holds me while I cry against the freezer. Murray takes care of the dining room. I sit on the storeroom floor and tell myself that it’ll be all right.

Because it will.

I’ve survived a lot of shit before. I’ll survive this.

Thirty-One

Oliver

“Hey,” I say, closing the door behind me.

My brothers sit somber-faced around a square coffee table. The lights are low. It creates a chill, mellow ambiance that is probably good for writing music. Which is exactly what Coy uses the space for.

I’ve only seen the inside of Coy’s studio once before, and that was in the building stage. It looks markedly different now, but I’m too fucked up to really appreciate Wade’s design.

I sit in a leather chair next to Wade.

My head hurts. My heart hurts doubly bad. I think something broke inside me this evening, but I can’t put my finger on what. People say that breakups break their heart, but this feels infinitely worse than that. It’s like it broke my soul. Like it broke me.

I don’t know what I expected to happen. I’m not sure why I allowed myself to get this far into Shaye. It’s like I was falling off a ledge and I knew what hitting the bottom was like, but I chose to fall anyway.

The ground is harder and sharper than I ever imagined.

“Mom called,” Holt says. “She’s dropping Dad off at the treatment center now.”

I nod. “That’s good.”

“What the fuck happened, anyway?” Coy asks.

I take a deep breath. The burden of having to unload my conversation with our father onto my brothers is miserable. In a perfect world, we could all have joined together and had a family chat about it. Hearing this from his mouth would’ve been the best-case scenario. It just wasn’t meant to be.

“He came to see me,” I tell them. “I feel like he was probably at his breaking point, and I was probably the closest to wherever he was at that moment.”

I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but I don’t want to tell them he specifically sought me out. There’s enough pain to navigate without adding more potentially hurt feelings to the mix.

“He, uh, he basically said he had a problem and that he needed help,” I say, simplifying the situation. “He was worried he’d really screwed up with you guys and Mom … and me, for that matter. But he expressed an interest in fixing things so what was I supposed to do?”

“You called Mom?” Boone asks.

I nod. “They’re still married. And I knew she’d want to help him.”

Wade clears his throat. “How’d she take it?”

“Like Mom takes everything—with grace.” I shrug. “I called her and told her what was going on. She told me to bring him home. I guess he hadn’t been home in a couple of days.”

Coy’s face falls. He begins to tap out a rhythm on the coffee table. “Man.”

“I drove Dad over, and Mom told me she’d take care of it,” I say. “I offered to stay, but I think they had some things to say to each other.”

My head falls forward as I replay the scene in my head. The way my parents stood on the porch and looked at each other for a long two minutes. And then Mom opened her arms, and Dad fell into them, and Mom waved me off.

It’s a moment I’ll never forget. And a day I wish I could.

The drive from Mom’s to The Gold Room took entirely too long. I just wanted to see Shaye, to tell her how much I loved her. To tell her that I would be there, that I believed in us.