45. Samantha
45
SAMANTHA
M ason came in and time stopped.
I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew something was wrong. I never questioned it. Every fiber in my body began panicking and I took one stuttering step toward him before I stopped just as abruptly. I was in the hallway, my arms full of bedding. I was taking it to some of the other rooms to get the beds changed for the guys.
Mason held my gaze just inside the door, and I… Pain sliced through me. I didn’t know where it came from. I didn’t know why it was there, but it was there. One look from the boy I’d fallen in love with, the man I married, had children with, and was my other half. He was devastated.
I just didn’t know why.
“Mason,” I choked out. The bedding fell from my hands. I still didn’t move. “What is it?”
He continued to hold my gaze, and for a second, the absolute longing he let me see singed me. I’d never not remember that look from him. It was raw, deep, and it cut to the bone. Then he closed his eyes. Some of the contact was broken between us, but he only lifted his head, and drew in some air. His shoulders lifted, rolled back, and settled back down.
He was preparing himself.
For what? To do what?
“Mason.” My voice was still so hoarse. “What is it?”
His eyes opened. They were so bleak.
I was gutted from seeing that look from him. It wasn’t supposed to be there. Not him. Not anymore. We’d gone through our trials. We’d had so many battles, and none of them broke us. We persevered and we were better because of it, but that look wasn’t supposed to come back on his face.
My heart began pounding.
“Mom?” Maddy came over from the living room. I’d been in view of their room where she had been, her and the others. Max came over next, rounding Maddy’s side to step into the hall. He looked from myself to Mason, and as soon as he did, he snapped to attention. He drew in a sudden breath, before looking to me again.
Max, the dear boy—no. He was a man by now. A young man. He settled a hand on Maddy’s arm and positioned himself so he was between her and us. I noticed the movement, but it wasn’t to protect her from us. It was to protect her from what Mason was bringing with him, but as soon as he registered his own motion, his shoulders dropped just as abruptly because he knew, just as I did, that whatever Mason had to say, he was going to say no matter what.
Max couldn’t stop it from happening. He couldn’t stop it from hurting Maddy, and I watched as he came to that realization as well. A sudden look of defeat flared over his face before he folded his chin and stepped close to Maddy’s side. He got as close as he could.
Sounds of movement came from behind them. The others came in.
Beltraine, Axel, and Steele. Cautious and confused expressions were on all three of them. Guarded too.
I tried to give them a reassuring smile, but I knew it fell flat.
“Mom?” Maddy asked, her voice dropping.
Her heart clenched because she’d resorted to the same voice she used when she was a little girl. She was scared. My little girl who was convinced she was some sort of sociopath. Her voice trembled in fear. “What’s going on?”
Mason cleared his throat.
She looked his way. “Dad?”
There was a hallway that separated the others from where Mason stood, but he heard them approaching and I held his gaze. His nostrils flared. His eyes met mine, holding mine for a moment, before a wall slammed into place.
No… I ached at seeing that expression on his face.
It’d been so long since I saw it.
I hadn’t realized till now that I never missed it. Not once. I wished I’d never have to see it again, but here it was.
My heart thumped hard in my chest, and with it, I reeled back in time to when I was Maddy’s age. When being numb or rageful were the only two emotions that got me through life.
“What’s going on?” Beltraine asked the question, stepping forward as their leader. His voice was also hoarse, but that was from all the vomiting he’d done before going to the hospital.
I ignored him. I ignored all of them, including my daughter and Max. A bitter laugh slipped from me as I addressed Mason. “I thought we were done with this?”
I had tunnel vision on my husband. Everything else was pushed to the back, including the gasp I heard from my daughter. She hadn’t moved a muscle. Nor had I, but suddenly, she was a mile away.
The mask lifted from Mason’s face, but only just barely. I got a hint of an apology, and that sealed everything inside of me.
I began shaking my head and took a step back. No.
No .
I wasn’t going to deal with this. Not anymore. My ghosts were gone. My mother was dead. I had no other skeletons in the closet, but Mason continued to hold my stare.
Whatever this was, whatever he was bringing into the house, it had to do with me.
If it’d been him, he wouldn’t be looking as if he’d rather cut out his own heart than deliver what news he had. If it’d been about the kids, he wouldn’t still be in the doorway. Anyone else, he would’ve called or said it to me directly. There’d be none of this premonition heartbreak.
Maddy was speaking, but I couldn’t pull myself out of this trance.
Mason continued to look only at me, and I did the same, and dammit, my eyes watered as tears slid down my face.
I was going to get my heart broken.
Mason saw the realization land with me and started for me. “Sam,” he said.
I shook my head, holding up a hand. “No. Just—” My voice broke. I needed a second. A fucking second. I was a mother, goddammit. Pulling myself out of the trance, Maddy was at my side, tugging on my arm. “Mom! MOM!” She was yelling, in my face, trying to get my attention. “Mom?” she whimpered.
“Maddy,” Max tried to soothe her, pulling her into his arms.
She evaded his hold, not moving an inch from my side.
I looked over our daughter’s head and asked her father, “Does she need to be here?”
“What? Be here for what? She is me, right?” She was looking between us as Mason came closer. He could now see the other boys, who had drawn closer as well. A new hardness cemented over his face, but he softened it as he looked at Maddy. “It’d be better if she wasn’t—” He glanced at Max, who’d been following everything with a keenness that belonged to someone twice his age.
He gave us both a brisk nod. “Maddy, let’s go to your room.”
“What?”
He began pulling her away.
She dug her heels in. “No!”
He took her hand.
She shook him off. “I’m not leaving. Something’s going on with my parents, and I—” Her tone trembled, breaking. “I need to be here for them.”
He was watching us over her head.
Mason gave him another nod.
He clipped his head down before he bent forward and tossed my daughter over his shoulder.
“Hey—HEY! No! What are you doing?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’ll keep her in her room as long as possible, but you both know you won’t have long to do what you need to do. Also, make sure I’m breathing when she comes back down.” He went up the stairs after that, my daughter struggling and yelling over his shoulder.
It was the three boys and us now.
All were quiet, all so on guard.
I waited, wondering if Mason would dismiss them, then deliver what news he needed to tell me, but as I waited, he didn’t.
What…
I inhaled sharply as new comprehension settled into place. This—whatever he had to tell me—it had to do with them?
I continued to frown as Mason turned to them, facing them as he stood at my side, and I held my breath, not knowing what was about to happen next.
“Tell her who the fuck you are.”
What?
Tell me?
The boys? But—I studied them. Each of them.
Beltraine’s eyebrows were pulled together, his head cocked to the side. Confused.
Axel… He was pissed. Clenched jaw. Hands in fists at his side. His shoulders were so rigid.
“Tell her. Now.” Mason was looking at him. Dominant authority came off him in waves. There was no room to move here. He would tell me or he would face the consequences of Mason, but my husband took another step forward.
He wasn’t speaking to Axel.
My eyes trailed, finding who my husband was addressing, and there was a faint pitter patter in my chest. The last boy.
Steele… His last name wasn’t coming to me right now, but Steele .
Unlike his two friends, there was no confusion on his face. He stood at his tallest height. His shoulders back. His head lifted. He wasn’t even focused on Mason. There was no fear. His eyes were on me, directly on me, and they weren’t wavering. A new light shone from them. A new resolve or was it something else? He was calm, but there was more. He was resigned to whatever was about to happen.
I blinked, though, and I took a step toward him.
I’d felt a pull toward him since I first saw him in the warehouse. I’d done a double-take because for a second, just a brief second, I thought I saw someone else in him. But I looked again, and it was gone. I only saw a boy in pain, someone I didn’t know, but someone I wanted to help.
He continued to hold my gaze.
“Steele is a nickname, and Manning is from my mother’s side. My actual name is—”
I gasped as I saw it.
It happened in a flash, so fast. All the pieces connected, but I’d been wondering in the back of my mind all evening myself. I’d been focused on other items, more prominent issues first, but since that double-take, there’d been something nagging at me, a whisper from the back of my mind that I knew this boy. I may never have met him, but I knew him.
His name wasn’t Steele. Not his real name.
The truth rocked through me.
He started, “Stirling—”
“—Brickshire,” I ended.
He was my brother.