Cole didn’t know any such thing, but he didn’t have a chance to say so before Mason said, “How do you not let things go? They eat away at you if you don’t.”

Shit. Cole realized he’d picked the wrong guy to try to talk to. Talking was stupid anyway. It wasn’t going to fix anything, as much as he was dying to fix things, fix himself. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said, resigned to getting another glass of Johnnie the next time Winona had a second.

“You talking about your fight with Dad the night before he died?” Mason asked, and Cole felt like the oxygen had been sucked right out of his lungs and all the blood froze in his veins.

“How do you know about that?” Nobody knew about it, except Sierra, of course. He’d never spoken a word of it to anyone else.

“I was there. I overheard it.”

The whole family had been out that night. Their mom had been somewhere with Zane and Drake, who were still in middle school, and Gabe and Mason had already moved out. When Cole had stormed out, he hadn’t run into anyone, had no idea Mason was close.

Cole eyed the whiskey bottle on the shelf, glanced around for Winona. She probably wouldn’t be mad at him for too long if he went behind the counter—

“Don’t you dare,” Winona said as she appeared in front of him. She reached up, took the bottle down, refilled his glass.

Cole, still shell-shocked as fuck, simply nodded his thanks and then took a healthy gulp as she disappeared into the kitchen.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You regret it?” Mason said. “Have regretted it for all these years?”

“It was ugly,” Cole admitted. “But then you know that if you heard it all.”

“You were a teenager, Cole. Teenagers fight with their parents. They say bad shit to their parents. Dad knew that.”

“When did you ever say anything contrary to Dad?” Cole distinctly remembered all the poison that had come out of his own mouth that night. Hateful words, things he wouldn’t allow himself to admit out loud today.

“I fought with Dad plenty. Gabe fought with Dad. I guarantee you if Dad had been alive when the twins hit high school, they would’ve fought with him too, probably an exponential amount, knowing those two.”

Cole tried to imagine the golden brother being cross with their dad. “What’d you argue about? Did you get a B on your report card?”

“Don’t be an ass. It’s not important what I did. Just know that Dad and I butted heads plenty of times. We all did.”