Next to Never (Fall Away #4.5)

He was silent for a moment, and all I could feel was despair. I didn’t know if it was him, me, or both of us, but the tale had become too twisted to set right anymore. We knew that much.

“I’d hurt you so much,” he admitted. “I used you and tore you apart and made you unhappy, and . . . I thought if I stayed away you’d be better off. I thought if I married someone else, I’d forget you and what I did to you and Maddie and my son, and my fucking heart wouldn’t hurt so much. I should’ve come for you, but why would you want me anymore? You had to hate me, right? I could barely stand the sight of myself.”

I clenched my lips tightly to keep from crying out loud.

“That’s my greatest regret,” he went on, his voice cracking with sadness. “I regret cheating on my wife. I regret never being there for Madoc when I should be, but you . . .” He drifted off. “I wish I could go back to that day at the garage and see you again with your messy ponytail and your warm, beautiful eyes, with that grease stain on your neck that I kept wanting to touch . . . and I wish I would’ve left when you told me to leave.”

I hugged myself, pressing the phone to my ear and letting the tears fall as I listened.

“I wish I could’ve left you like that and never taken your life from you and never hurt you. Just left, because I’d be happy knowing you were going to be better off for it. That the fire in your eyes would never have died.”

My chin trembled, and my chest shook. A sob escaped, and I brought my hand to my mouth, covering it to muffle the noise.

“I wish I could do that,” he continued. “But that’s the fucking thing, you know? If I went back to that day, saw you in that thin white T-shirt, and your breathing so nervous, because you were afraid of me but still had the courage to fight back . . . No matter how much I’d want to, I’d do nothing differently.” His voice grew stronger. “Nothing. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I’d dive right back in, even knowing how badly everything would end, because you’re the only life I’ve ever had, and I couldn’t not have you.” His voice shook, thick with tears he wasn’t letting out. “I’d crash and burn a thousand times just to have you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and broke down, hanging up the phone and finally letting it all go.

I still loved him, and it was so difficult to figure out why, if we could be so good together, why were we so terrible together, too? How could something be so right and so toxic at the same time?

But as I sat in my dark house, the buzz of the alcohol making my limbs heavy, I realized that maybe I was my own worst enemy. And maybe Jase was his. We weren’t toxic together, because even apart we were miserable.

And we weren’t a mistake. Maybe it was everything keeping us apart that was a mistake.

Jase Caruthers couldn’t fix me, and I couldn’t fix him. Plain and simple.

We just weren’t right for each other yet.

Maybe in another life . . .

• • •

“Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Can it wait until we get to the track?” Jared asks, sounding stressed. And then he raises his eyes from James’s shoes, making sure they’re double knotted. “Are you riding with me?”

“No, she’s with me.” Madoc grins. “I’m making her drive.”

He and Kade pick up the cooler and plop it down on the porch, heading back in to gather the GoPros and camera bag.

“Dylan!” Jared bellows to her somewhere in the house. “You need to leave! Jax wants you to do more practice runs before you’re up!”

“Ugh,” she groans, walking in from the dining room. “I’ve been doing practice runs since I was twelve. I think I got it.”

Madoc tosses something to Kade, nearly hitting me in the face, and Tate, Fallon, and Juliet all rush back down the stairs, one of them kissing me on the forehead as they pass.

I close my eyes and ball my fists. “Can you just stop for a minute?” I bark. “I have something I need to show you.”

“Well, then, hurry,” Jared snaps, finishing James’s shoe.

“I found this book,” I tell him. “Or it was sent to me, I mean. I’m pretty sure it’s about Mom and Dad. It’s like their love story or something.”

“What?” Tate asks, scrunching up her face in confusion as she puts on her sunglasses and Fallon sprays sunscreen on Madoc’s and Kade’s necks as they walk by.

“Look.” I take out the hardcover and hand it to Jared, opening to the bookmarked page so that I can point to the names that are eerily close to my parents’. “Kat and Jase.”

Tate comes over to look at it, but Jared couldn’t look less interested. He hands the book back and pats his jeans, probably for his keys and wallet.

“And they have sons, Jared and Madoc,” I point out. “They live in a small town in Illinois, she had a baby with some asshole, he’s married, their sons are friends, and Jared is in love with the girl next door who he picks on every day at school.” I glance at Tate and then back to Jared. “Did you really do that?”

Jared just laughs to himself, pulling his phone off the charger in the nearby living room and sliding it into his back pocket. “Who would write a book about our parents? It doesn’t mean anything.”

Everyone gathers the rest of their things, pulls on shoes, and heads for the front door.

“Let’s go!” Jared yells.