Page 128 of When We Were Reckless
Abby pulled away from Mason and pointed her finger at me, her voice shaking with anger. “You need to leave. I don’t want you anywhere near my daughter.”
“I promised I’d stay. I promised I wouldn’t leave her.”
“And you promised me you’d never take her on your motorcycle. So what’s another broken promise.”
“Mom. It was an accident,” Mason said, trying to reason with his mother. But he didn’t know the whole truth. If he did, he wouldn’t be defending me. “Judging by the way he looks right now, he already feels like shit.”
Abby crossed her arms over her chest. “So you’re fine with the idea of your twenty-seven-year-old friend being with your eighteen-year-old sister?”
Mason’s brow furrowed, trying to make sense of his mom’s words. He didn’t know what to think or believe. “They’ve always been friends.” His gaze swung to me. “You and Quinn. You’re just friends, right?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. It was time to come clean. “We’re more than just friends.”
Mason stared at me for a moment until my words finally sank in, and then, he clenched his jaw, and his hands curled into fists.
“I need to see you outside.”
I nodded. Fuck. I knew this wouldn’t sit right but worse than that, I’d been going behind his back all summer.
Mason strode out the front door, and I turned to Quinn’s mother, taking one more stab at an apology.
“I’m sorry. I never…” I blew out a breath, trying to find the right words to make this better, but I didn’t think there were any. “I care about your daughter. I always have. I would never do anything to hurt her.”
“And yet, here we are in a hospital. I always liked you, Jesse. But right now, I can’t even look at you.” She turned and walked away, and I let her go. This wasn’t the right time to make amends.
I met Mason out front and prepared myself for whatever was coming my way. I didn’t have to wait long.
“You son of a bitch,” he gritted out, and then he punched me in the face.
Shit. I worked my jaw. Guess I deserved that.
“How long? How long has this been going on?”
“Most of the summer,” I admitted. Although that was a lie. I’d kissed her on her eighteenth birthday. That was the day I stopped thinking of Quinn as Mason’s little sister. But I didn’t want to add insult to injury, so I kept that part to myself.
“Most of the summer?” Mason said incredulously. “I can’t fucking believe this. You’ve been my best friend for twenty years. Twenty. Fucking. Years. I thought I could trust you with my life. I thought I could trust you withmy sister.” He gripped the back of his head with both hands and paced back and forth, trying to get his emotions under control. “Why her? Of all the girls you could have been with, why would you go after my sister?”
I’d been giving this a lot of thought over the past couple of days. There were a lot of reasons why I’d gone for Quinn, but I kept it simple. “Because she’s special.”
“Exactly why you should have stayed away from her.” He shoved my shoulder,hard, the fucked-up shoulder that still gave me trouble. I winced, but I didn’t even try to fight back. Not the first time he did it or the second. He knew it was my bad shoulder, but he was angry, and if I were in his shoes, I would be angry too.
So, if he needed to use me as a punching bag, then I’d let him. Because of me, his sister was lying in a hospital bed. The same sister he’d donated a kidney to without giving it a second thought.
“What were you trying to do? Get your ego stroked? Does it make you feel more like a man to know that an eighteen-year-old girl worships the ground you walk on? You were using her to get over Alessia, weren’t you?”
“Maybe, in the beginning, yeah,” I admitted. Then, before I had a chance to explain myself, he punched me in the shoulder.
Motherfucker. I grabbed my shoulder and staggered back, trying to breathe through the pain.
Mason wasn’t a fighter any more than I was, but he was fighting because he thought I’d done him wrong. I got that, but shit, that had hurt.
“I hope it was worth it because you just shit all over our friendship. We’re over. I’ll reimburse you for the money you invested in the brewery.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I do. I want nothing to do with you.” He stabbed a finger at me. “You’d better hope to hell this accident hasn’t affected her kidneys.”
I did hope like hell that it hadn’t. I didn’t want Quinn to be hurting at all. If I could take away her pain and make it my own, I would do it in a heartbeat.
