Chapter 19
Nineteen
I descend the stairs, shoulders squared, game face on.
The floor beneath the tree has transformed into a sea of colorful paper, ribbons, and boxes in various stages of destruction.
Everyone is gathered. Mason sits perched on the edge of the sectional, dressed in a pressed Oxford and slacks as if Christmas morning calls for business casual. His eyes find mine immediately.
“Merry Christmas. Did you fall asleep in the sunroom?” he asks, patting the spot beside him. He examines me more closely than he has in a long time. “That lipstick is a bit much for Christmas morning, don’t you think?”
My red lips curl into a forced smile, and I sit, careful to leave space. “Merry Christmas. And no. I think it’s exactly right.” I ignore his question about where I’ve been.
Anna wriggles in my arms, impatient to be free, and bolts the second I loosen my grip.
She heads straight for Bell, the benevolent guardian among the wrapping paper, climbing her like a personal jungle gym.
The dog thumps her tail in lazy approval, and I slide down to the floor, needing to be where the air feels easier to breathe.
Ivy leans against James, her hand resting possessively on his thigh, the diamond catching the light every time she moves. James shifts—subtle, but telling—never reaching for her.
Instead, his gaze finds me. It rakes over the curve of my cheek, the sharp red on my lips, the ugly Christmas sweater that should be ridiculous, but under his gaze, feels sinful.
His eyes trace me like a memory, as though he’s tucking it away for later.
My pulse thunders, and I'm grateful I'm already sitting, because my knees feel weak.
The questions hang between us. The accusation I threw. The confessions we shared.
My hands clasp together on my lap as I struggle to arrange my features into something resembling a cheerful Christmas morning greeting. Try to pretend my world hasn’t been altered in the early hours by the man not bothering to hide watching me. Pretty sure I'm failing.
“So… are we still into country music today?” Jules whispers, sliding onto the floor beside me.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffs. “I saw the pool game. I know that meant something.”
I shift, checking who is paying attention. James tilts his head, his attention split between Ivy’s chatter and my whispered conversation with Jules. Mason, thankfully, swipes at his phone, distracted as always.
“Jules,” I warn, under my breath.
“Relax.” Her tone softens; the teasing slips, revealing her sincerity. “We don’t have to talk about it here. But we will. We’re going to have a long, honest conversation about everything.”
“Can you drop this? Please.”
She lifts her hands in mock surrender. “If you’re trying to convince anyone nothing is going on, you might want to stop looking at him like he’s the last cookie on the plate. Eventually, it won’t only be me noticing.”
My cheeks burn. She’s not wrong. I look again despite myself.
He’s already waiting, meeting my gaze. The man who saw me broken and raw this morning and didn’t flinch.
There’s no caution in his eyes now. I’m met with the same unwavering intensity that’s unraveled me more times than I can count.
My heart stirs, wild and untamed, recognizing where it wants to land.
“Syd.” Mason touches my forearm. “I have something for you.”
My stomach sinks. We hadn’t discussed gifts, and I don't want one…here.
He pulls a small box from his pocket. “It’s nothing big, but... I saw it in a little shop when I ran into town yesterday. Thought you might like it.”
Inside the velvet box rests a gold necklace. A pendant—the letter M—glints mockingly. I look down at the bracelet Margaret gave me last year, the one with my name carved on it as a reminder that I’m still me beneath the layers of motherhood and obligations. The one I’ve worn everyday since.
This… is the opposite.
“Is the letter M for mom?”
“Or Mason.” He smiles. “Here, let me.”
He leans down to grab the necklace, gently moving my hair toward my shoulder and kissing the back of my neck.
I flinch as tiny little spiders spread across my skin but he doesn’t notice.
When I look up under my lashes, James watches.
His jaw is clenched, fists tightening at his sides, before directing his gaze out the window.
“I didn’t get you anything.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t expect anything.”
The necklace feels heavy against my skin, a collar I never asked for. I look over my shoulder to thank him, but Mason’s not looking at me. He’s watching James staring out the window. A hard set to his eyes willing James to turn. To see.
It hits me like a physical blow.
He hasn’t been blind after all. This isn’t a lovingly selected gift or a peace offering. It’s a message. How long has he been watching? How many glances has he catalogued? How many moments has he filed away as evidence?
Anna walks over, arms raised. “Pan’kes?”
“Yeah, Bug. Let’s go help Grandma make pancakes.”
Jules jumps up, snaking her arm through mine. “What a nice necklace.”
“Please, not right now,” I plead.
But as I move toward the kitchen, the necklace tightens with every breath. I catch my reflection in the window. My red lips stare back. The pendant gleams against my skin.
I press my fingers to it.
Wrap them tight. And pull.
***
Anna settles for a nap, and I seize the quiet. I grab my laptop to check a few emails for work, then plan to escape into a book—a little solitude in the sunroom before dinner. My hand settles on the grain as voices float through the opening. I hesitate and snatch my hand to my chest.
Mason. And Ivy.
I shouldn’t listen, shouldn’t invade their privacy. But I don’t move, not when I hear my name mentioned.
“How are things with you and Syd?” Ivy’s voice is light, but there’s an edge beneath the words; a question she’s not asking.
Mason sighs. “We’re fine. Why do you ask?”
“She’s been off lately. Last year, this past summer. Last night. She hasn’t seemed like herself.”
A long pause—the kind that tightens your stomach before the answer even comes.
“Do you have a point, Ivy?”
“Did James and Sydney look… tense during their pool game?” She stops and takes a breath, I can hear from outside the door, before continuing. “They weren’t even talking. It was like they were locked in a silent feud.”
My stomach drops and I press a hand to my mouth to keep from gasping aloud.
“Are you implying something?”
“No… I don’t know. He’s been off since yesterday. Quiet. Not excited about the engagement.”
“It’s been one day. Maybe he’s dealing with that. You know, losing his freedom, being tied to one person. Would he propose if he didn’t want to marry you?”
There’s a scoff. “That’s the thing. He didn’t ask. He handed me the box. And he kind of looked like he wanted to throw up.”
The vulnerability in Ivy’s voice is unmistakable. The same uncertainty I remember from her college years, when she’d cry about boys who didn’t deserve her tears. Except now I’m the reason, not the comfort.
“Mase, I’ve walked in on them talking a few times. And it felt like I was interrupting something.”
Silence. A heavy kind.
“Stay out of my marriage,” Mason seethes.
“Have you noticed any shifts? Like one minute, Sydney’s staring out the window, a million miles away, and the next, it’s like you’re the life raft keeping her afloat.
” A soft, sad sniffle follows. “Ever since we left last Christmas, James has been all over the place, quiet one minute, irritable the next, then suddenly acting like he can’t stand to be alone.
I chalked it up to… I don’t know what… but now, I’m not sure. ”
“Maybe you should take that up with your fiancé. I’m trying to work now. Do you need anything else?”
“I came to you because something feels off. But sure, go ahead and make me feel stupid. That’s easier than admitting something might be wrong.”
I hear her shift in her chair. Silence follows.
Warm breath hits my neck—cedar and bergamot, I know who it is before he asks, “Who are we eavesdropping on?”
“Shhh,” I hiss, backing away from the door. I make my way down the long hall, and take the steps two at a time to get as far away as quickly as I can. I don’t stop till I’m in the basement. James follows at a more leisurely pace, a few steps behind. “Why are you following me?”
“I want to know what made you all flushed and furious.” He grins, settling on the leather couch with a large sketchbook in hand. “Where’s your necklace?”
“I took it off,” I snap. “Didn’t suit me. It was Mason and Ivy in the sunroom. They were talking about us.”
“What exactly did they say?”
“She’s read more into the times she’s interrupted us. That you didn’t even propose, you just handed her a box, that our pool game felt like something more.”
He doesn’t flinch. “And?”
I stare at him—at his calm, his certainty. It makes me want to throw a shoe at him. I understand how Jules feels with Tom’s ever-present calmness and support.
“Sydney,” he says, quieter now, more serious, “I think we both know the answers to her questions. The real one is yours. Will you ever trust me?”
I swallow hard.
“I’m still here,” he continues. “I’ve tried to move on, tried to convince myself I’m better off without this. Without you. Hell, I’ve thought about ending it with Ivy, so I wouldn’t have to see you again. But when I imagined never seeing you again... that hurt worse. So here I am.”
He leans forward, eyes never leaving mine. “Hoping you’ll finally see that I’m not going to disappear when your claws come out. I like them. I like you, especially when you let me see the fire you hide from everyone else. I’m waiting for the day when your eyes flash gold, and you don’t look away.”
I sink into the nearest chair, breath dying in my throat. My shoulders sag under the weight of all I’ve been carrying. I stare at the ceiling, letting his words settle into the cracks in my walls and thread into the crevices of my heart.
“What happened with my mom… with my parents. It really fucked with my head.”
He nods, steady and sure. “I know. That’s why I’m still here, why I’ll keep showing up.”
The certainty in his voice makes something quake deep inside me. Hope. The thing I haven’t let myself believe in since I found out my mother had taken her own life.
Without another word, he opens the sketchbook and pencil scratches across the page.
Rather than pushing anymore and demanding I make a decision right this second, he accepts that I need to move at my own pace.
He chooses to stay close. Show up. And somehow, that might be the most romantic thing anyone has ever done.
I open my laptop and bury myself in legal contracts and client briefs; the endless paperwork between companies fighting for more money and control.
The space is quiet with just our tools and even breathing, working our respective trades.
When my last email is sent, the soft click of my laptop closing startles James. He flushes, realizing I’m watching.
“What are you working on?” I ask, tilting my head to the side.
“Nothing.” He snaps the sketchbook closed, hesitates, fingers grazing the edge. “Actually... here. You can look. I usually sketch the buildings I’m working on. But lately...”
My hands shake as I hold the still-warm linen cover and open to the first page. It’s me, lying on a couch, reading. The ski lodge—the first day we spent together. The next page is me too, standing outside, looking up at the sky as snow falls, before I told him I wasn’t an option.
Page after page. Moments from the last few years, each one a confession he couldn’t say out loud.
The last is incomplete: the beginnings of me sitting here, one hand beneath my chin, brow furrowed in concentration, laptop on my legs. He started drawing this moment while I was sitting across from him, trying to keep my heart from skipping out of my chest.
Years of being seen—a record of something I’ve longed to believe but never dared trust.
“You drew me,” I say aloud.
“Yeah, I did.”
When I lift my eyes, tears blur the room’s edges, but I don’t hide them.
I don’t blink them back or stop him from seeing how undone I am.
My fingers graze the curve of the page, as if to test its reality.
I’ve replayed these memories over and over.
But he didn’t just remember, he made them permanent.
He made me permanent.
Heavy footsteps on the stairs jolt me back to reality.
I slide the sketchbook beneath my laptop and wipe the corners of my eyes.
Mason stops at the bottom step. He pauses, taking in the scene: the flush in my cheeks and James leaning forward, body angled toward mine.
Ivy has interrupted us before. But Mason?
This is the first time he’s stepped into the charged hum of something too heavy to be casual.
He clears his throat. “Anna still napping?”
“Yeah. She’ll be up soon.” My voice comes out calm, unaffected—despite my world being flipped inside out.
“What happened to your necklace?” Mason’s eyes land on the bare space at my throat.
“The chain broke. I’ll have to get it fixed.” I meet his eyes and don’t look away.
“I see.” His tone is even, but the silence that follows is thick.
“I was catching up on some work. You heading to the gym?”
“Interesting. Seems counterintuitive to work on vacation, especially after scaling back so much.”
“I do what is needed.”
“Good to know your priorities are in order.” The words land hard. His eyes flick from me to James. “Ivy was looking for you. Better go find your fiancée.”
Neither man moves—hard blue eyes locked on fierce green. They hold until Mason breaks. His footsteps echo, each one louder than the last, until the gym door slams behind him.
The reverberation fades and I ask, “What are you thinking?”
“You want the truth?” He asks, but the words spill out before I can answer.
“I look at you, and it feels like I can’t breathe.
I want you so badly it scrambles my thoughts, makes it impossible to focus when you’re near.
” He draws in a shaky breath, his always-steady shoulders dipping under the weight.
“It destroys me every time I see you vanish behind his eyes, like you’re folding yourself away to survive. ”
He closes the distance between us in two quiet steps and sinks to his knees. His warm, calloused palms cradle my face in trembling hands.
“You have all the power here,” he whispers, his voice barely brushing my skin. I smell the coffee on his breath, the cedar in his cologne. “I’m on my knees, asking you to trust me.”
Something shifts in my chest.
A wall begins to crumble.
A long-locked door creaks open.
His hands fall away, leaving ghost prints of warmth on my skin. He grabs his sketchbook in one swift motion and walks upstairs. I remain frozen, the echo of his touch still burning on my face.