I can’t even fathom what that’s like.

Denial was never in my cards.

Not like this.

And a part of me—a small, miniscule part of me—feels for the guy. For Mason. Not only as his friend, but as someone who would probably be in no better condition if I were in his shoes. Because if it was Waylon ...

Fuck, if it was Waylon...

Well, there’s no saying I wouldn’t burn the whole fucking world down to get to him.

So, yeah, I get it...but hypotheticals don’t just cancel out the reality. It doesn’t work like that. And the reality is that the bigger part of me—the part of me that is so far fucking gone for the guy spiraling before my very eyes, that I can’t even hope to pretend otherwise anymore...

Well, that part of me is fucking livid.

Back and forth, back and forth, Waylon continues to pace. Gone is that awful laughter—cut off as soon as the door to upstairs clicked shut behind us, as if sucked into a black hole—yet I can’t find it in me to feel relieved, not when I can’t be sure this is any better.

I’ve lost him.

Twenty-four hours, and we’re already over before we even really began.

Again.

Sure, he hasn’t come right out and said it—hell, he hasn’t said a fucking word to me since we came back downstairs. Since before Mason took his pain, wielded it like a sword aimed right for Waylon’s heart, slicing through everything he’s been trying so hard to rebuild. Everything I’ve been doing my damndest to hold together. Lift up. Support in any way I can.

“I wish it was you.”

But I felt it then. Like a crack splintering through something crucial. Something binding us together, fragile and new as it was.

I felt it the second Waylon pulled away from me. Heard it in the broken laughter crawling out of his mouth. Saw it in the vacant greens and golds of his eyes as I dragged him out of that room.

I could try and tell myself it’s just one bad night. That this doesn’t have to mean anything. Change anything. That he’ll be okay.

That we’ll be okay.

But I know better now.

I see what I’ve been missing, and I have no idea how I could have been so fucking blind.

Again.

Mason wasn’t the only one holding out hope that Izzy would come home.

Mason wasn’t the only one bottling up the bone-crushing pain of her loss.

Mason wasn’t the only one hanging on by a fucking thread.

All it took was one...

“Waylon?” I say not for the first time. Even to my own ears, my voice sounds far away.

Nothing.