Page 15 of Possession

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Mason said softly, a furrow between his brows.

His hair was still too long—well, longer than he liked it. Vinnie liked when he let it have a little curl. He liked tangling his fingers in it when they made out on the couch. Not that they had done that in quite a while. But considering Ollie was literally like twenty feet away, he’d assumed he’d have gotten a haircut as soon as possible.

“When are you coming back home? Why don’t we start there.”

“I am home, Vinnie. I guess the question is when areyoucoming home?”

He clenched his teeth and looked away. “I can’t just leave. I’m still under contract.”

Mason didn’t say anything for a long moment, and the strained silence between them dug at Vinnie’s insides like razor blades until he finally had to look. The disappointment on Mason’s face was just another cut.

“I know you are. I meant, are you going to sign another contract when this one is up?”

The paperwork for the new placement was still sitting on the coffee table. Exactly where he’d thrown the papers the night they’d gotten into their big fight. He hadn’t looked at or touched them since.

“I don’t know, Mase. Everything is just…” He shook his head.

“Fucked-up,” Mason answered.

“Yeah, that,” he said with a hollow laugh. “What are we doing?”

“Vinnie…”

“No, seriously. Since when are we the kind of people who take off after a fight and don’t come back?”

“Don’t. Don’t act like this was just like any other fight.Youtold me to go.”

“I didn’t mean it!”

“Yes, you did,” Mason said, speaking right over him. “You threw my suitcase on the bed, looked me in the eye, and you told me to leave.”

“Because you wanted to!” Vinnie exploded, jumping to his feet. “Because you’ve wanted to ever since we left. You think I didn’t know how much you hated this? How much you regretted coming with me? How much you resentedme?”

“I didn’t,” Mason said, getting softer in response to Vinnie’s anger, which only ever pissed him off more. He hated being the one who couldn’t hold it together.

“Yes, you did,” Vinnie said, bitterness dripping off his tongue. “Every day since the day we left, you have been miserable. It didn’t matter how many places we visited or how many restaurants we tried or how many plants I bought you. You made up your mind that you would hate being here, and you made sure I knew that nothing I did would make it better every single day.”

“Vinnie,” Mason gasped. “That’s not what… I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t mean for you to actually leave.”

They sat in silence for a minute, all the things that had happened between them in the last year—all the words that hadbeen said and all the ones that had been left unsaid—filling the space. Crowding them out. Forcing them further apart.

“I don’t know what you want anymore,” Vinnie whispered, tilting his phone to hide most of his face, letting the screen only show part of his jaw, an ear, and his low fade.

“What do you mean?” Mason asked just as quietly. “I tried to talk to you about getting a house or?—”

“No. Not, like, where we want to live. I don’t know what you wantfrom me. I don’t know what we are to each other.”

“We’re the same thing we’ve always been.”

“What’s that?” Vinnie asked, hating how broken his voice was but unable to stop. “Best friends? Boyfriends? Roommates? We’ve been moving forward together for so long, but I feel like we’ve lost track of what we’re actually movingtoward. I don’t know where the finish line is anymore, Mase. I don’t even know if we have the same finish line anymore.”

“I guess I don’t either,” Mason agreed slowly. “Maybe that’s something we need to figure out while we’re apart.”

While we’re apart.

He hated those words, but he just nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

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