My best friend's brother and my brother's best friend (2016)

Denial, in more ways than one ...

Hey guys! So at long last this part is up. You have no idea how sorry I am that it took so ridiculously long, please don't think that I don't appreciate you all and honestly the thought of letting everyone of my readers down has been giving me serious anxiety. A lot of personal family issues have arisen this year which I won't bore you with now but had ultimately left me in a dark place. I also did the stupid thing of getting out of my regular routine of writing to channel my emotions which made things even worse and to be honest I started having doubts about this story altogether. Anyway, hopefully I'm past this shitty year (*cough* Brexit *cough cough* Trump) and I hope you can all understand as I'm sure everyone's life has it's dark periods.

So without further ado ...

"You know what you are in that leather skirt, half naked -"

"They've gone," Cara chimes, yanking me out of my mind's darkness whilst carefully closing her bedroom door.

"Mm-hm," I reply nonchalantly, barely moving from my cosy spot and turning over the page.

"You sure you didn't want to say goodbye again, we may never see them again?" Cara laughs, flinging herself down next to me.

"Bloody hell Cara," I groan in protest as the whole bed goes into disarray.

"You sure it was nothing to do with seeing a certain brother of mine?"

"It's fine Cara honestly ... it'll just take some time that's all," I reply as truthfully as I can with a sigh.

She simply replies with a nod.

It had been a few days since I'd properly spoken to Eli. Just this morning him and Jeremy had headed off to D & B, a drum and bass festival just outside of London to meet up with some of Eli's friends from uni. Not that I was constantly obsessing about the fact that festivals also equal lots of extremely pretty girls looking for fun. Not at all.

"You sure you still want to go to Josh's party tonight?" Cara asks absentmindedly, crawling into her own bed and getting back to sewing designs on her current project.

"Why wouldn't I? Just because -"

I'm interrupted by the sound of a door slamming, causing me to jump way more than I should have.

"You sure your ok?" Cara asks carefully, "I mean we never really properly talked about what happened -"

"I'm fine," I return sharply, "I just want to move on and forget about it, this summer is supposed to be fun right?"

"Yeah, I know but that doesn't mean you should be in complete denial Dani, I still think the bastard got off way too easily."

"I doubt that after how your brother dealt with the situation," I half laugh thinking back to our conversation last week; after the incident.

"Anyway," I add with a sigh, "Alex's daddy is rich he'll most likely just get off scot-free."

"There are other ways to get payback, "Miss can't quite take the hint"," Cara replies with a grin and a devilish gleam in her eye.

"No!" I scold without the ability not to return her grin, "I'm gonna get a drink."

I give her another look as if to say "don't you dare do anything in my absence you might regret" before springing up and heading downstairs. I hum a random tune as I tread lightly down the stairs before again finding myself being pulled from my thoughts by a harsh whisper coming from next to the staircase.

"Look I know - I - know I promised that but you didn't have to - I'm set back another week at least now -"

Is that Mason? Why does he sound so stressed out?

"I know but - if I have no income how the hell am I supposed to have any chance of getting you your money?"

Who the hell is he talking to?

"No I'm not challenging you ... yes I understand what will happen -"

"Mason?" I interrupt in a small voice before I even realise I've said anything.

He almost jumps out of his skin as he spins around on the spot to face me. His eyes look pained, almost wild and are sporting two huge bags underneath. His skin looks so pale and sickly it's almost a grey colour. He's a ghost of the man that he was when I saw him only the other week.

Without hesitation, he switches his phone off and stuffs it in his pocket, I can see his chest moving up and down at an incredible rate as he gives me his charming smile. I'm somewhat unconvinced.

"Hey Dani, how you doing kid?"

He waltzes over to me before enveloping me in one of his friendly Mason hugs. I was right, in fact his heart almost feels like it's having some sort of insane seizure from where I am.

"Everything ok?" I ask uncertainly pulling away and looking him straight in the eye. Sure enough he dodges me and his eyes drop to the ground.

"Great," he says looking back up with a sharp smile, "just dropping in, Al had some stuff for me to -"

"Ah! Good hear you are!"

We both turn to Al rushing into the hallway, wiping her floury hands on her pinny.

"Here, I need you to drop this off with mum, it's already late," she laughs pulling a face and handing Mason a chunky A4 envelope.

"Sure, I can see as usual you weren't exaggerating when you said you were getting your hands dirty," Mason laughs, seemingly back to his normal self again.

What's going on with him?

"Well some of us have to," she retorts back laughing before glancing in my direction, "are you ok Dani? You look worried about something sweetheart."

"Fine," I answer as convincingly as possible, "just normal stuff."

"Ah to be a teenager again, hey?"

I hear her laughing with Mason as I turn back upstairs, running as soon as I get out of sight and making a frantic entrance into Cara's room.

"You ok?"

I'm greeted with a pair of curious blue eyes.

"Yeah," I gasp, plonking back down into my own bed and busying myself with my news feed.

"Really? Then how come you don't have a drink?"

"Alright "the drink police" I finished it downstairs," I laugh, rolling my eyes at her until she giggles back and shrugs it off.

Wow Dani, lying to your best friend?

Well what's the alternative? Tell her I caught Mason having an uncomfortable phone call that he got awkward about because that totally has to be suspicious and damning. Yeah it seemed weird but what exactly am I accusing him of?

No, it's Mason, probably the most legit guy I know. There has to be an obvious explanation.

Doesn't there?

Thank you my lovely people for reading! Again I'm so sorry for my hiatus from this story and pretty much from Wattpad altogether, I really do appreciate you all and I would never leave a story unfinished. It feels such a relief to get this all of my chest and begin properly writing again. Stay tuned for more! 😉 ❤️