48. Shelby
48
SHELBY
T he room settles somewhere between midnight and memory.
Candles burn low, with the kind of scent that makes you feel like you’ve stumbled into a moment you don’t deserve—but still can’t bear to leave.
Someone snores softly. Probably Jackie. Or Tayana. A playlist hums in the background, dreamy and distant, like a heartbeat slowed down to a lull.
I should be asleep.
But I’m not.
I lie curled up in a mountain of borrowed blankets on the corner of the couch, half-covered, half-hiding. Everyone else has melted into the space around me like they belong here—like they’ve always belonged here.
And me?
I’m just a guest in someone else’s dream.
The kind of girl who doesn’t get a permanent place.
Just a visit. Just a taste. Just long enough to remind herself what it feels like to want something she’ll never truly have. Unless I let them in.
I listen as the voices fade to whispers—the kind people think don’t carry. The kind not meant for the ears of someone on the edge of sleep.
But I hear them.
“...he’s changed,” Allegra says softly. “You can see it in his eyes. Mason used to move like a man who didn’t believe he was allowed to want anything.”
“He still doesn’t,” Mia murmurs. “Except her.”
The room stills. Even the air pauses.
Her.
I know they mean me. I feel the word wrap itself around my spine like a shiver, like a name I don’t quite know how to answer to.
“Do you think she’ll go back to him?” Lula asks, so softly it’s almost kind.
“I think she’s scared,” Maxine says. Her voice doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t waver. “But I think she’ll see it eventually. The way he looks at her—hell, the way he waits for her. He’s not pushing. He’s just... there. And Mason Ironside doesn’t just wait for people.”
“Especially not women,” Jackie adds. “That man used to be a black hole in a suit. Cold. Focused. Dead inside.”
“Not anymore,” Mia says.
I lie still. Breathe through the crack in my chest that’s just a little wider now.
Because I know what kind of man Mason used to be. I saw it in the way he looked at the world—with nothing behind his eyes but duty and ruin. I saw it in the way he moved, like he was already halfway to the grave and dragging everyone else behind him.
But then he looked at me.
And it was different.
And it terrified me.
Because I don’t know how to be wanted like that.
I know how to be convenient.
I know how to be useful.
I know how to be quiet and careful and easy to leave behind.
But Mason doesn’t look at me like I’m background noise.
He looks at me like I’m gravity.
Like he’s spent a lifetime falling, and I’m the only thing that’s ever made him want to land.
And I don’t know how to hold that.
I don’t know how to be that.
Because no one’s ever waited for me. Not like that.
Not without conditions. Not without keeping score.
I’ve always been the afterthought.
The second pick.
The temporary comfort on someone else’s road to more.
And Mason?
He looks at me like I am the more.
And it breaks something in me.
Because I don’t know if I’ll ever believe I’m enough to deserve that look.
No one says my name, but I feel it pressing at the edges of their sentences. I feel it like a spotlight I didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
They think I’m asleep.
They think I’m too far to hear.
But I do.
And every word wraps around my ribs like a bandage—tight, aching, necessary.
I don’t know how to accept the way he loves me.
But God, some part of me wants to try.
I close my eyes, even though sleep feels miles away. I let their voices fade, swallowed by the hush of candlelight and unspoken hope.
And for the first time in what feels like forever...
I don’t dream of the fall.
I dream of being caught.
The house smells like coffee and burnt toast the next morning.
Sunlight bleeds in through the gauzy curtains, soft and golden, and the living room is a graveyard of empty wine glasses and half-eaten snacks.
I sit up slowly. My back aches. My mouth tastes like strawberry margarita.
Most of the women are still asleep—scattered across the living room like beautiful wreckage, limbs tangled in throw blankets and each other.
It’s a mess I don’t mind waking up to.
Maxine is already in the kitchen.
Of course she is.
She moves like she hasn’t slept—sharp and deliberate, hoodie slung over silk pajamas, barefoot on cold tile.
She doesn’t look up when she hands me a mug of coffee. Just gestures to the seat across from her.
I sit.
She sips. Watches me over the rim of her mug like she’s deciding whether or not to speak.
“Doesn’t look like you slept well,” she says.
“I slept a little.”
She doesn’t argue. Just hums like she doesn’t believe me.
“I also heard what you guys said. Last night.”
Maxine’s eyes flick up. She doesn’t look embarrassed. She doesn’t apologize.
She nods once.
“Good,” she says. “You needed to.”
I stare at the dark swirl in my cup.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for him.”
“No one ever is,” she replies. “Not for men like that.”
My throat tightens. “He’s... intense.”
“He’s also patient. Loyal. Steady. And completely wrecked over you,” she says flatly. “But sure. Let’s focus on the scary parts.”
I glance up. “He scares me a little.”
Maxine leans in. “He should. All the good ones do. Because when a man like Mason Ironside loves you? It’s not convenient. It’s not easy. It’s consuming . And it’ll force you to look at all the parts of yourself you’ve been hiding from.”
I go quiet.
She doesn’t push.
Just watches.
“I don’t know if I can be what he needs,” I say finally.
“You don’t have to be,” Maxine says. “You just have to be real . He’s not looking for perfect. He’s looking for you . The broken, stubborn, scared version of you. Because that’s who he fell for.”
My eyes burn.
She leans back, folding her arms across her chest.
“But if you’re not ready? That’s okay. We’re not kicking you out of the circle. You’ve got time, Shelby. Time to breathe. Time to heal. Time to figure out if you want to reach back for the hand that’s already waiting for you.”
“And if I never do?”
Maxine gives me a slow, sad smile.
“Then I’ll be the one to tell him,” she says, her voice calm and unshakable.
“But you should know—none of us will ever stop believing in you.”
The lump in my throat is sharp and sudden. I swallow around it, but it doesn't move.
It just stays there—tight, aching, full of things I haven’t said out loud in years.
I blink, staring down at the mug in my hands.
The steam has faded. The warmth is almost gone.
But her words? Her words burn like brandy in my chest.
None of us will ever stop believing in you.
I don’t know what to do with that.
Because belief, for me, has always been a luxury.
Other people get belief. Other people get safety nets and warm hands and the kind of love that holds steady even when they fall apart.
Me?
I’ve spent years running.
From my past. From my ex. From the life he tried to steal from me.
I’ve lived out of suitcases, stashed emergency cash in the soles of my shoes, learned how to disappear before the fear ever faded.
I’ve kept myself small. Kept quiet. Stayed polite and distant and easy to forget—because being forgotten was safer than being noticed.
There wasn’t time for friends. For brunch dates and late-night phone calls and birthday texts.
There was only survival.
Only one foot in front of the other.
Only: Where do I go next? Who can I trust? How long until he finds me again?
And then I landed here.
In the eye of the storm.
In the middle of a family that doesn’t feel real half the time, because how could something this warm, this loud, this loyal actually exist?
They didn’t just open the door for me—they opened themselves.
Their homes. Their hearts.
Their messy, brutal, beautiful world.
And they let me in.
Mia, who mothers with fire and protects like a soldier.
Maxine, who sees through bullshit like it’s smoke and cuts through fear like she’s wielding a knife.
Jackie and Tayana and Allegra and Lula—all of them fierce in their own ways, all of them wrapped around me like armor I didn’t know I needed.
They don’t ask me to be fixed. They don’t request perfection.
They don’t tiptoe around my past or treat me like something fragile.
They just... see me.
And they stay.
For the first time in years, I feel like I’ve stopped running.
Like I’ve found ground solid enough to plant something in.
Maybe not roots yet.
But seeds. Hope. The beginning of something.
This family—these women—they’re more than just names in the hierarchy of the Gatti empire.
They’re the blood that keeps it alive.
The spine that holds it upright.
And somehow, impossibly, they’ve made space for me in it.
Not because I’ve earned it.
Not because I’ve proven anything.
But because they chose to.
I press my lips together, trying to swallow the emotion clawing up my throat.
Maxine is still watching me, steady as ever, and I wonder if she sees all the ways that I’m unraveling.
I’ve spent so long feeling like I don’t belong to anyone.
Like the only thing I could count on was my own shadow.
But maybe...maybe that isn’t true anymore.
Maybe now, I belong to something greater.
Something real.
Something I didn’t even know I was allowed to want.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Maxine shrugs. “Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t seen Brando and Mason try to put together IKEA furniture. That’s when the real horror begins.”
I laugh.
It’s small.
But it’s real.
And for the first time, it doesn’t feel borrowed.
It feels like my own voice again.