Page 45 of Quietly Falling
I’d talked Mason through his first time when he told me he was going to go all the way with a girl from high school, and by all accounts I’d given him a hell of a pep talk.
He returned with a giant smile and more details than I wanted to know.
But even he doesn’t know, my brother by choice since I was nine years old. It’s the only secret I’ve kept from him—more an omission than anything else.
It wasn’t meant to be a secret, but I’d grown up in world where sex was almost never a beautiful connection between two people.
It was vile and heartbreaking, and I’d done everything I could to protect myself—to protect Mason and Audrey and so many others.
It hadn’t always worked, and that guilt—the revulsion my failure had caused—is tattooed on my soul, the parts of me that darkness consumes.
The parts that I hope no one else ever has to endure.
So, yeah, maybe I’m not a catch. Hell, Ella has already endured so much of my bullshit in the short time I’ve known her—reallyknown her.
And that doesn’t even scratch the surface.
This isn’t for me.
It’s okay this might never be mine.
I bite my lip hard as I squeeze my eyelids shut, hoping the pain will stave off the tears. I’m losing my grasp on reality, on the things that had kept me safe—things I had controlled.
Keeping my circle impossibly small and only giving people the most surface details of my past had never been a problem.
And it still wasn’t…mostly.
But with the new trial and Mason finding a life with Lana and her kids, the need to run has never been stronger. He’s happy and he loves them.
He loves love.
And if there’s anything I did right in this world, it’s protecting that part of him—the innocence that still shines through even after all these years.
But I’m not my brother, and I never will be.
And I should probably tuck that hope I’d had back into the box it wrestled itself out of because the first woman I’ve even wanted to try with only sees me as a friend.
And that’s okay.
Because I’m too damn tired and I stopped dreaming a long time ago.
22
ELLA
“Are you ready?”
“Sure you don’t want me to stay here? I don’t want to intrude,” Bodhi says evenly, his gaze not quite meeting mine while Eden and Roman wait for us outside.
“I want you to come.” I huff because I don’t like this mood—whatever it is. He’d been fine when we crossed the state line into North Carolina, but he’d gotten quieter with every passing minute. It’s why him insisting we should go to the bar caught me so off guard. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He says it in that way women are accused of saying it when they’re not fine at all.
“Did something happen?”
“No. It’s just a lot—meeting so many people.” He shrugs. “It’s never been my thing.”
