Deception. Betrayal. Mistrust.
It seems the closer Rayne gets to the truth, the more she finds herself wanting to run away from it. It's complex and terrifying-more than she ever fathomed.
New family members, good and bad, pop out at her like a br...
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𝗜t was just a door.
His favorite line, his favorite lie.
Mason's hand twitched in his arm sling as the urge to grip the handle and shove into the room lay across the entirety of his mind like a blanket. Except this one was cold. There was no warmth in it, no welcome. A fallen-short greeting, just like the one he'd receive should he take a step forward and close the small space between his shoes and the threshold of Isaac's room.
The first few weeks after his passing, no one could pull him out of it, out of the bed—from underneath that freezing comforter. And now that the funeral has passed, now that his friend was forever hidden under six feet of dirt, gone until their reunion in the afterlife, he couldn't bring himself to step through the doorway, scared that the preservation of him will welter under his touch.
No one ever tells you the truth about grief.
—that it is a ball bouncing around the innards of your brain, casually colliding with the bright red button of pain and reception. The tears, they talk about. The lack of motivation, they discuss. But never do they speak of the fear. The dread. The inevitability of that person slipping from you, more than they already have in death.
He was already forgetting his scent.
The sound of his voice.
His way with words—his booming laughter.
Greif robbed him of his presence, but returned every day for more.
Mason yearned to enter his room—he cursed his mind every second of every hour for not allowing it. For blocking the pathogens to his body parts, his extremities, to bypass the mental wards he subconsciously put in place to allow Isaac to continue living, just without a body.
Selfish had been his middle name since the day he was born.
But he refused to allow his best friend and savior to be the latest victim of it.
Turning on the heel of his Vans, knowing that if he didn't right now, he never would, Mason gripped the cold metal in his good hand and sauntered down the hallway, feeling the weight of Isaac's former existence with every step he took away from that room. His eyes burned with lingering tears, but he refused to let them drop.
He'd spent the better half of the day submitting to them already—Isaac wouldn't want any more of it.
Not today, at least.
Passing through the kitchen, then the hall to the party room, and finally the glass door leading to the deck outside, he gave attention to no one, garnered a voice or action to nothing. The hot wind of July smacked him across the face, ripping strands of black into his vision and over his ears as he descended the small staircase to the beach.
He didn't stop until the toe of his shoes met the gentle waves of the ocean.
Only then did he tilt his head back and acknowledge the brightness of the sky. Only then did he allow himself to bask in the ambiance of the sun left over by his friend saying hi from wherever he now rested. A corner of his mouth slipped ever-so-slightly up at the kiss on his cheeks, at the embrace of the air and the tug of the seawater up his nose.
