42. Shelby
42
SHELBY
B y the time Maxine and I step into the pool house, the air between us is heavy with all the things we didn’t say during the walk back.
The confrontation between Saxon and Mason still echoes in my head—shouting, growling, the pure masculine fury of two men who don’t know how to protect without destroying something in the process. It rattled something in me. Shook loose the fragile safety I’d built in the hours before, when laughter with Mia and Maxine had made me feel like I might still have a place here. Like I might still be me.
Now… I feel like glass again.
Maxine flicks on the lamp beside the couch, casting a warm glow across the room. It’s quiet. Safe. But not enough to settle the tremble in my bones.
“You want tea or something?” she asks, but I shake my head. My voice is still stuck somewhere behind my ribs.
She doesn’t push. Just nods, slipping off her boots and dropping onto the couch beside me. We sit in silence for a while, the kind that’s not awkward but… heavy. Like the night is still holding its breath, waiting for one of us to crack.
It’s me.
I shift, curling my legs beneath me, fingers digging into the throw blanket like it can anchor me. My heart still thuds too loud. My body still doesn’t feel like mine. Everything smells like soap and safety, but my skin won’t stop crawling.
I wake with a gasp hours later. A soundless scream still lodged in my throat. Sweat slicks my skin, and my entire body jerks as if I’ve just fallen from a great height.
It takes me too long to remember where I am.
Not under the bridge.
Not on the cold pavement.
Not bleeding.
Just a couch. A pillow. The low hum of safety that hasn’t quite convinced me it’s real.
I press a hand to my chest, trying to slow the hammering of my heart.
Then it happens.
A tray crashes in the kitchen.
Metal and plastic colliding. Loud. Violent. Too familiar.
My mind snaps in half.
The room goes white. My vision tunnels. I’m not here anymore—I’m there again.
Fists. Breath. Pain. Blood.
The weight of someone pinning me down.
The sound of my own scream caught in the cage of my throat.
The helplessness—like drowning in a body that won’t fight back.
I curl in on myself, unable to breathe. I think I might be dying.
Then a hand grabs my arm.
Firm. Steady. Warm.
“Shelby!”
It’s Maxine. Her voice cuts through the noise in my head like a thread pulling me back to the surface. I flinch, hard, every instinct screaming to run—but I see her face. Concern, not pity. Fear, not judgment.
I shatter.
Tears pour down my cheeks before I even know I’m crying. My hands tremble uncontrollably. I grip her arm like a lifeline.
“I—I can’t do this,” I choke out. “I can’t live like this. I can’t even handle a stupid tray hitting the ground.”
She kneels in front of me, silent for a beat, then pulls the chair from across the room until we’re almost knee to knee. She doesn’t let go of my hand.
“It’s normal,” she says, her voice calm, soft. “After what you’ve been through, your brain is wired for survival. It’s not weakness. It’s trauma. Every noise feels like danger. Every silence feels like a setup.”
“I don’t have time,” I snap, then crumble. “I don’t think I even want time. I’m too broken. Mason shouldn’t have to deal with this—me. I don’t belong in his world.”
Maxine leans forward, fierce. “Bullshit.”
I blink.
“You think I didn’t feel the same way?” she says, her jaw tightening. “You think I didn’t look at the women around me—Mia, Jacklyn, all of them—and wonder why I was the one who couldn’t breathe without shaking? Why I flinched every time a door slammed?”
I say nothing. Just cry harder.
“I was trafficked, Shelby,” she says, her voice deadpan. No theatrics. Just the facts. “Held like livestock. Moved from place to place. Used until I forgot what it meant to be a person. I stopped counting days. I stopped counting faces.”
A sob catches in my throat.
She leans back slightly, not pulling away—just giving the story space.
“I got out,” she says, her eyes on mine. “But I didn’t get free. Not right away. I carried it with me. Every day. Every night. But eventually, I decided it wasn’t going to be the last thing they wrote about me. I was going to write the rest of my story.”
Her voice softens—not in tone, but in meaning. “You’re still here. And that’s not weakness, Shelby. That’s warrior shit. You lived. You survived. That’s the only truth that matters right now.”
“But I don’t feel strong,” I whisper. “I feel like I’m bleeding out from the inside. Like I’m standing on shattered glass, and no matter where I move, I just keep slicing myself open.”
Maxine squeezes my hand again. “Then let it bleed. Let it hurt. But don’t you dare think it means Mason can’t love you.”
I look down, ashamed. “What if I’m not enough for him anymore?”
She lets out a breath. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Like you’re the first thing in this world that made sense to him. Don’t you dare question if you’re enough. He’s the one trying to be enough for you. ”
That’s what undoes me.
Not the attack. Not the memories.
That.
I sob like my chest might split open.
Maxine pulls me into her arms, holding me there like someone who understands what it means to feel unlovable—and still be loved.
“You’re not broken,” she whispers. “You’re cracked. There’s a difference.”
And I cling to her like she’s the only thing keeping me from falling completely apart.
Because maybe she is.
The soft knock on the door is almost lost beneath the sound of my breathing.
Maxine doesn’t flinch.
She just lifts her head and looks toward it, then back to me. Her eyes are softer now. Something gentler behind the steel.
“That’ll be him,” she says quietly.
I wipe my face with the sleeve of my hoodie, like it’ll erase the tears that have already stained my skin.
She doesn’t comment on it. Just rises slowly, still giving me space.
A moment later, the door creaks open.
Mason steps inside.
And everything in me shifts .
He looks like hell. Shadowed eyes. Jaw clenched tight. His shoulders are coiled, like he’s either just come from a war or about to start one. There’s something haunted in his expression—but it softens the second he sees me.
Not completely, but just enough.
He stops just a few steps in, as if unsure of what he’s allowed to do now.
Maxine glances between us, and I feel the tension in the air change . Heavy. Unspoken. Waiting.
She grabs her jacket off the armrest and shrugs it on without a word.
Then she turns to me, her voice steady but warm. “Call me if you need anything, okay? Don’t wait until you’re falling apart.”
I nod, and it takes everything in me not to reach for her hand again.
“I’ll check in on you tomorrow,” she adds, voice softening. “Promise.”
I whisper, “Thank you.”
Her eyes flick briefly to Mason. “Be gentle with her.”
He nods once, tight. Silent.
And then she’s gone, the door clicking shut behind her like a period at the end of a sacred march.
The room is too quiet again.
But this quiet feels different.
Mason doesn’t move right away.
Neither do I.
I sit there, tucked under the blanket, knees pulled to my chest, like I’m bracing for a storm I can already feel building behind his eyes.
Mason hesitates, then walks over and drops onto the edge of the couch across from me, elbows on his knees, hands clasped like he’s trying to hold himself together.
Finally, he speaks. His voice is low, raw. “You okay?”
It’s such a simple question. So stupid. So impossible .
I open my mouth to lie, to give him something easy—but the words lodge in my throat.
A sharp noise outside—a dog barking, maybe a car backfiring—makes me flinch.
And that’s it.
The dam breaks.
I curl in on myself, clutching the blanket tighter. “I can’t do this.”
Mason’s instantly on the floor in front of me, eyes wild with concern. “Shelby?—”
“I can’t keep pretending I’m fine when I’m not,” I choke out. “I’m jumpy, I can’t sleep, every time I close my eyes I see him—I feel him—” My voice cracks. “And you… you come home covered in blood like it’s normal, like this world is something I can survive in?—”
“I don’t want you to survive in it,” he snaps, then softens. “I want you to live in it. With me.”
“I’m not strong like you,” I whisper. “I’m not whole. I feel like I’m broken. Like I’m falling apart piece by piece.”
His hands hover near mine, not quite touching. “You’re not broken.”
“Yes, I am,” I say, barely breathing. “And you shouldn’t have to carry someone like me.”
Something in him flinches. He leans back on his heels, jaw clenched.
“I don’t carry you,” he says. “I stand beside you. There’s a difference.”
I shake my head, tears sliding down my cheeks.
“You deserve someone who doesn’t wake up screaming. Someone who doesn’t flinch when you walk into the room.”
Mason swears under his breath and rises, pacing the room like a caged animal. “You think this is easy for me?” he growls. “Watching you like this? Wanting to fix it and knowing I can’t ?”
“I don’t want your pity.”
“It’s not pity!” he snaps. “It’s love .”
My heart stops.
He freezes too.
Silence stretches, thick and dangerous.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” he mutters, voice raw.
“But you did,” I whisper.
We stare at each other. Two shattered people standing on opposite sides of a chasm neither of us knows how to cross.
“I don’t think I belong in your world,” I say, and it’s like ripping out my own ribs. “And I think you’ll realize that, eventually.”
I stand, numb, moving like I’m underwater. I walk past him without a word, to my room, and pack a small bag before I can change my mind.
I leave a note I don’t sign.
I tell myself this is for the best. That Mason’s world is violence and vengeance, and I’m no longer a woman who can live inside that storm. I tell myself I’m doing him a favor. That I’m protecting him from the shell of me that still sees ghosts in mirrors.
But when I open the front door, suitcase in hand, he’s already there.
He doesn’t say a word.
He just stands on the porch, half in shadow, half in light—barefoot, shirt wrinkled, like he stayed because some part of him knew .
His eyes meet mine. And it’s not anger I see.
It’s not confusion.
It’s grief .
Quiet. Heavy. The kind that sits in your bones and never really leaves.
His arms hang loose at his sides, like he doesn’t know what to do with them—like they were made to hold me, and now they’re useless.
He doesn’t ask me to stay.
And that’s what breaks me.
Not the silence.
Not the weight of my bag in my hand.
Not even the echo of my own heartbeat pounding like a warning.
It’s him .
Just standing there.
Letting me go.
Like he already knows I’ve made up my mind.
Like he’s learned the hard way not to hold onto things that want to run.
My chest cracks.
Splinters.
Bleeds.
But I take a step forward anyway.
And he doesn’t move.
Doesn’t stop me.
Doesn’t beg.
Because he knows—God, he knows —that the kind of broken I feel can’t be healed by staying.
And I?
I don’t look back.
But I feel him.
Every step I take away from him feels like ripping my own skin off.
And still—I walk.
Because I’m scared.
Because I’m drowning.
Because I don’t know who I am anymore.
But as I disappear up the path, away from him, the last thing burned into the back of my mind is his face.
That look in his eyes.
Like I just took a match to the only good thing we ever had…
And watched it burn to the ground.