I don't think I'd ever experienced as tense of a car ride as I did on our way back to the hotel. There was this giant elephant prancing around the room, and though everyone felt it, nobody commented on it. What had been an attempt to jog some of Xander's memories had been successful, but it'd brought with it a whole lot of confusion and tension that couldn't be severed with even the sharpest of knives.

The boys and my father hadn't heard what had left Xander's mouth over an hour ago, but they must have some silent understanding that it'd been big as they hadn't tried to get it out of anyone. For the first time since I'd agreed to join the boys a couple weeks ago, I willingly threw myself into the passenger seat and kept my eyes trained out the window. The couple times I glanced back, I felt a pang of guilt swell in my chest seeing Xander's expression.

Mason and Ryan were lounged back in the recliners, their eyes trained on some old Western playing on the TV over Xander's head. Ashton and Haiden had headed for the beds at the back of the RV and must have fallen asleep as I hadn't heard a peep out of either of them in over forty-five minutes. Xander, sitting in the booth, had his phone on the table in front of him, but every time I looked back he had his eyes trained out the window and into the dark night, lost deep in thought.

We had so desperately wanted him to make progress, but this wasn't what we'd wanted-and frankly far from what I'd expected.

As if he could feel my eyes on him now, he turned it just a fraction and his eyes caught mine. The tormented look of pain was enough for me to quickly look back out the windshield and squeeze my eyes shut before my emotions couldn't completely overwhelm me.

*

"We need to talk." I said into the empty room, nodding in the security guard perched in the kitchen. He took that as a silent voicing of him to vacate the premise-or at least the suite and step outside the door. Once the door had clicked shut behind him, I looked to Xander leaning out over the railing on the balcony. "You can't avoid me forever, Alex."

"I can try." he responded as I edged closer. As soon as I'd fell into place beside him, I crossed my arms over the railing and looked out over Vegas, so beautifully lit by all the casinos it looked like an entirely different city than it had this afternoon.

We stayed like that for a while, side by side, silent as we listened to the uproar of the city thirty stories down. Finally, Xander lifted his head and stared at the crescent moon nearly covered by the overcast sky, and whispered, "I thought I'd be happy to remember something. That once it happened they'd all come flooding back at once. But it's like. . . like freak slip, like a fragment of a dream I can barely remember. It's so exhausting. I'm so tired, Willow. So exhausted. I just want to go home."

My lips parted as if I'd already had a speech ready to sit and comfort him with, but I quickly pressed them shut again. Though I couldn't say it right now, I felt as though he knew somewhere in his subconscious that there was no home to go back too.

"The doctors said it'd be like this. That they'd come back in short intervals." I replied. "They explained that it wouldn't be like the end of some cheesy Hallmark movie, Alex. It's not all going to come back at once. It's progress."

He snickered, eyes flickering from the sky to me at his side. "It's false hope, Willow. For me, for you, for everyone that pretends to give a shit about me and my wellbeing. If anyone truly gave a shit about how I really felt, they would of asked me if I wanted to do all this. If I wanted to be dragged along like some little child while I watch everyone else have a blast, a confused, disoriented mess."

I fought the urge to reach out and touch my hand to his cheek and turned to look back out over the city, not able to find the right thing to say.

"Before tonight, I kept wondering why the hell I was so pissed every time I saw you with him." he pushed off the rail suddenly, shaking his head. "I didn't understand why I wanted to hurt him when he was the only one on this stupid little trip that was truly getting you to smile."

He touched one of his hands to the railing to keep his balance and touched the other to my cheek. "Then I saw us. I don't know when or how old we were, but you were so close to me, so close I could just move an inch and my lips would have been against yours. It was intense, the desire to do it, and when I thought back to all the lyrics I read in that book, I understood."

I thought for sure he was going to kiss, and maybe he would have if my phone didn't start ringing in my back pocket. I'd never know as it forced me back into reality and I jumped a few feet back and pulled my phone from my back pocket. Seeing it was Max, I silenced the call, but found myself stepping back into the bedroom rather than returning to see where that strange moment of intimacy was going to lead.

"I should go to my room." I said, shifting on my feet awkwardly. "You should get some sleep, Alex. You had a big night."

"You're going to his room." Xander's back was still to me, but I could hear the hurt in his voice.

I grasped the doorknob and responded, "Goodnight, Alex."

He slowly turned to look at me over his shoulder as I opened the door, but his expression was cold, closed off, lacking any emotion at all.

The security guard wandered back into the room once I'd exited and I walked a few doors down until I reached Mason's suite and knocked gently, afraid he may be asleep. Of course he wasn't, and almost as if he'd been waiting by the door for this exact moment, the door was opened in seconds and he stepped aside to let me in.

"What happened?" he asked, seeing that I was avoiding his outstretched hand. I walked around him as his own security guard stepped outside and waited until he'd shut the door to sit at the edge of the bed and look toward him in front of the door.

"What the hell was that tonight?" I asked, resting my palm flat against my chest. "Mason, I don't. . . this. . ."

He crossed the large room to the bed beside me. "What Xander said or the duet?"

"Both."

"I knew Xander was in love with you when I met the two of you for the first time when you guys were thirteen." he confessed. "Even in the little time we saw you two together, it was obvious in how he looked at you. When I saw his songbook and listened to his lyrics, it was confirmed. I always hoped that you'd come back around, for his sake, but when you refused to acknowledge his existence, I started writing you myself hoping you'd eventually respond. And you did. But over the years, I think I slowly understood why he'd been so hopelessly in love with you, Willow. I loved it, our conversations. They were so normal, so mundane. I looked forward to them."

My breath caught somewhere in the back of my throat and to my relief, he spoke so I didn't have to yet.

"I hoped of all the memories that would come back to him, that it'd be one of the last. But having you here must have stirred them up and him seeing us out there tonight triggered emotions he probably didn't even understand, which probably ultimately led to the memories and feelings resurfacing."

I made a gesture toward myself. "I don't feel that way about him."

"He knows that. Even as confused as he is right now, I think you've made that abundantly clear."

"I don't want to hurt him more than he already is." I whispered. "He doesn't even want to do this, Mason. He told me while I was in there. He doesn't understand why nobody asked him what he wanted to do."

Mason's top lip twitched slightly. "It's not like he has a home to go back to."

"Maybe not, but I think we were all so caught up in our own grief and shock nobody stopped to consider what it was he wanted or how he felt."

As hard as the words were for him to hear, Mason basked in them for a while, his eyes trained straight ahead, before he finally touched his hand to my knee. "Then maybe we should just head back."

"Yeah." I agreed softly.

He was eerily calm a few minutes later when he barely audibly said, "I'm leaving the band."

"What?" he'd mentioned this a few days ago, but I never thought he'd go through with it. "Mason, are you sure—"

"I'm tired, Willow. I never wanted any of this." he met my eyes, sadness lingering in his own. "All I wanted was to ensure my family had a roof over their heads and enough money to survive without living paycheck to paycheck. And I used to love writing and singing, it was who I was. But sometime over the last few years I lost myself. I hate it now. I don't even want to look at my songbook or guitar. I don't know who I am anymore, Willow."

The impulse I had to touch Xander's cheek in comfort became a reality as my fingertips brushed Mason's cheek. He shut his eyes under my touch, and after a slight hesitation he rested his hand on top of mine.

Tonight had been a rollercoaster of emotions, and most of them had been centered around Mason Carter. I had made out with him seconds before Ryan had thrown the entire club and performing fiasco on us, and there had been something extremely intimate and intense about our performance, even if neither of us were ready to talk about it.

I had spent all high school afraid to let people in, I'd always feared the worst of people and believed that relationships and friendship were long, winding inevitable roads to heartbreak. But in all that chaos, there was Mason. Even if it were only emails and text messages every few months, they'd been there, a constant. And though I'd never really sat and thought about it, I suppose there was always a part of me that looked forward to them too. Because as much as I denied it, I did still care for Xander after all I'd convinced myself he'd done-and I'd grown to care for Mason at some point in the last six years too.

"We need to talk about what happened." I eventually managed to get out. "Before the show."

He opened his eyes again, inching closer so there was very little space between. "Why?"

"Because we can't—"

I stopped midsentence and frowned, thinking about his question. Why was a pretty good question. Because there really wasn't any reason to talk about it. Not when he'd pretty much explained it all in what he'd just said-and an entire song we'd just sung in front of a club full of people.

"What we need to do is tell Jack to prepare everything so we can start heading back home."

The mention of my father made my nose scrunch a little. "What happens when this is all over though? You're just going to disappear? What happens with the band? Will they break up? Will—"

"I don't know." Mason interjected before I could ramble further. "I'm not going to just drop off the face of the Earth, Willow, but I'm going to be on the down low for a while. So I can just breathe and get my head on straight. I don't know what's going to happen with the boys, that's entirely up to Jack and them."

"And Xander?"

I knew he'd been thinking about the same thing as his eyes had darkened when I'd started bombarding him with questions.

"Hopefully he'll continue to go to therapy and eventually get some more of his memories back." he cleared his throat, then added quietly, "As much as it hurts to say it, he's not my problem anymore, Willow. I love him with all my heart and I pray every night he'll remember everything one day, but I need to start worrying about myself and who I want to be."

My phone started ringing again, and for a fraction of a second I almost told Mason the real reason why I'd agreed to this trip. I wanted with everything in me to believe that was truly the only reason why I was sitting here right now, even if deep down I knew it was far more than a story I needed to walk away from this with.

I needed closure. Whether it was from my father or Xander, or possibly both, I wasn't sure yet.

"We're going to forget this happened when we go back, aren't we?" I questioned, avoiding his eyes on me. He averted his gaze to the TV mounted to the wall in front of us for a minute, then returned his full attention to me.

"What do you want, Willow?" he searched my eyes. "Do you want this? Do you want us to be more than just a what if? A something?"

It was a scary thought and I wished I had the ability to answer it, but instead I leaned into him, wrapping my arms around myself, and breathed out,

"I don't know."