Because You're Mine by Rea Frey

Author:Rea Frey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

35

noah

Mason eats chicken straight off the bone. Noah studies his movements, the way his small teeth gnaw at the warm flesh. Since they discussed how chickens were killed, skinned, sprayed with chemicals, and processed in factories, Mason prefers they buy whole chickens, so they pass through fewer hands.

This is Mason’s second rotisserie chicken in forty-eight hours, and Noah, never a fan of messes, has offered him a pair of latex gloves and a trough of paper towels, which he folds into a parallelogram. Mason dissects the bird with the precision of a surgeon, already having peeled back the oily top layer of skin. He pushes through twiggy bones, snapping a few like toothpicks, and then organizes the meat into neat little stacks: dark, light, pink, and purple, staring down into the bowl of the carcass, not disgusted but intrigued. He envies Mason’s hyper focus.

Noah pours himself another cup of coffee and glances out the window. God, he misses Grace. He hates that she told Lee alone and that it did not go well. He knows their friendship will weather the storm, but he never should have let Lee think, even for a moment, that she had a romantic chance. He hadn’t told Grace about what happened on the couch; how she took his face in her hands, how he was so reminded of …

His phone rings, and Noah rushes to pick it up, so as not to disturb Mason. He looks at the number, expecting it to be Lee or one of his clients.

“I was just thinking of you.”

Ringing phones and voices converge in the background. Grace’s voice crackles in and out over the line. He sticks one finger in his ear and ducks into Lee’s studio. He attempts to string together the words into something he can comprehend.

“Wait. Slow down. What’s happened?”

“It’s Lee. Lee.” Grace begins to cry.

“What are you saying?”

She starts spewing information between sobs: there was a fallen hiker. Or maybe a jumper? And Lee. Lee, Mason’s mother. Lee, Grace’s best friend. Lee, Noah’s employer. Lee, the woman who likes him.

“She’s dead, Noah. Lee is dead.”

Her beautiful face flashes through his mind. “What?” It is an idiotic thing to say, but he can think of nothing else. His knees buckle, and he collapses in her styling chair. Grace says his name, but he can only focus on the word dead.

She tries to explain between sobs, but the dial tone thrums in his ear, and he realizes he’s the one who ended the call. He looks in the mirror, his reflection pale and uncertain. Dead, dead, dead. His brother’s death swoops back into focus—his last and largest loss.

“Please God. Not again.” He drops his face into his hands. His entire body convulses. Sweet, hopeful Lee. He whips his head upright and catches sight of his own green eyes in the mirror. She’d been so hesitant to go … had she had some sort of gut feeling that something bad would happen?

“Noah! You have to see this!”

Mason. How the fuck is he going to tell Mason?

He replays Grace’s words again, and they rip right through him.

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