5. Chapter 5
Cameron
Sebastian never explained to me why he needed the photos of Dale, just that he did. I assumed it was something involving the case. Unfortunately for him, I didn’t like keeping reminders of my adoptive father … but I also knew Dale would be at church tomorrow, so I promised I’d point him out then.
Dale liked to watch my sermons now and then so that he could remind me how I was fucking them up.
For the longest time, he had been telling me how I was letting myself go, how I was getting too old to fulfill my duty of spawning an offspring for the church, and overall, just how disappointed he was in me.
It was no secret that I lost the passion I once had.
I used to savor the idea of religion and saving the souls of innocent people from eternal damnation.
Still, at some point, after my brain fully developed, I realized just how terrible the cult was.
That was the first time I tried to leave the Sons of Christ. I was grieving the loss of my first son, and I told him I was done.
I signed up to give sermons and save souls, not kill innocent people in the Lord's name. But Dale let me know I’d never be allowed to leave.
If I tried, he promised that what he’d do would be worse than death.
And it was. I was starved, tortured, whipped within an inch of my life, and then locked in the basement of whatever church we worked out of at the time.
For three days, I lived naked, lying against the cold concrete, shivering so hard that all I could hear was the clacking of my teeth.
When Dale finally came to get me, I promised I’d behave.
If I had been smart, that woulda been the only time Dale punished me.
But that cycle continued for years. I could have stopped it by fighting back.
Lord knew Dale wouldn’t have been able to physically stop me, but I wasn’t the type.
Especially when he’d gotten in my head and made me think I couldn’t.
Slowly, the weight of his actions smothered my love for religion like dirt on a fire. And now, while I still believed in God, I didn’t think he was up to anything good. He definitely wasn’t anything someone should pray to.
All that abuse turned me bitter for a long time. I allowed that anger to poison me, and for years, I kept to myself because of it. Then I met Silas White, and he took me in like one of his own. And that led to Lucian and Sophia, and then eventually Mason.
Oh God, did it lead to Mason.
When I was with her, I felt more like me than I had in years.
I wasn’t sure if it was knowing she had somehow remained sweet enough to make my teeth hurt despite enduring similar abuse.
Or, if it was just the fact that she embodied everything I wanted in a partner back when I was Calvin, but I knew I felt the most like me when I was with her. That’s why this fight was killing me.
Once I was certain Mason wouldn’t want to see me anytime soon, I took a nap. One just long enough to make me functional for the rest of the day, but it did little to wipe away the exhaustion clinging to me like a wet cloth over my face.
It was suffocating, and I had no idea if it was from being tired or just how much my heart ached for making Mason cry.
I didn’t want to stress her out anymore than she already was, but I also knew I couldn’t let this go on.
And, unlike someone else who recently messed up, I was willing to admit I made a mistake if it meant healing part of Mason’s broken heart .
Whether or not you know it, the time you have with a loved one is a finite resource.
Sooner or later, one of you will be taken from the other.
This could be from death or just drifting apart.
Either way, I knew that well enough to understand that fights weren’t worth losing precious time.
And in my heart, I knew I loved Mason, and I’d like to think she’d feel the same, even if she knew the truth about who I was.
So, I waited for Sebastian to leave the house with his gym bag before venturing upstairs.
Another thing I learned was fights were more easily forgotten when you didn’t try to make amends empty-handed.
That’s why I brought the biggest piece of the brownie I had baked and a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.
I knew she wanted chocolate, but the idea of putting a scoop of fudge ice cream on top of a brownie with chocolate chunks seemed like overkill.
And, if I were wrong about that, I’d get a different brownie and fix my mistake.
I didn’t bother knocking, just like Seb didn’t bother locking the door when he left.
Both of these facts made for an easy entrance.
Mason wasn’t in the living room, so I knew that meant she was probably lying down still.
So, I ventured back into Sebastian’s bedroom to see Mason cuddled up and facing away from me.
She was lying on her side in a blue shirt I didn’t recognize and leggings that made me want to do some very inappropriate things with her. But that could wait. Right now, I needed to make things right with my baby girl.
I used a knuckle to rap on the doorframe, and Mason peered slightly over her shoulder. As I turned, I could see an e-reader in her hands. She preferred softcover books; something about liking the way the paper smelled and hardcover books feeling weird.
Seeing as we had a bookshelf stocked with romance novels that Sophia had been collecting and never reading for years, there was no reason for Mason to use technology to read unless she was avoiding going downstairs like I had been avoiding coming up here.
The tinge of red around her beautifully mismatched eyes made me feel worse.
“Hey.” Her voice was as soft as a spring breeze and just as welcomed.
“Hey… I brought you something.” I offered, holding up the plate .
Mason studied it for a moment before looking away. “I’m not hungry.”
That didn’t feel true. Mason may have been tiny, but more often than not, she was snacking on something. I assumed that’s why Rosie was growing so well.
“You sure? I made ’em just for you when you were in the hospital… I was so worried about y’all that I couldn’t sleep a wink.”
“If that’s true, you would have checked on me.” Her accusation was bitter.
A strange, icy feeling washed over me as I processed what she said. “Sweetpea… you think I didn’t check on you?”
“I know you didn’t.” She placed the e-reader on the nightstand before rolling over to look at me.
She pushed herself up to a sitting position with her elbows, and her shirt rode up slightly, revealing a slip of pale skin on her stomach.
“Sebastian showed me his phone. He had no texts or calls from you, Lucian, or Sophia. No one called or texted me either.”
Sebastian was quickly proving to me just how untrustworthy he was. To say that boy was a snake was an insult to reptiles.
Luckily, he hadn’t been smart enough to consider the fact that I could easily disprove his lie.
So, I walked over to Mason and put the plate on her bedside table.
In the short time between scooping the ice cream and coming up here, the frozen dessert had started to melt, causing a small white pool under the brownie.
I didn’t bother asking before sitting beside Mason.
My weight caused the springs to squeak and draw her in a little closer.
It only took a second for me to pull out my phone and bring up my conversation with Sebastian.
I counted each of the messages out loud and in French for dramatic effect before offering the phone to Mason.
“In the nine hours you were gone, I texted Sebastian over thirty times, once for every time I thought of you. If you don’t believe me, here’s the proof.”
Mason’s lips pressed into a thin line as she studied my phone as if the messages were written in hieroglyphics.
“Do you think he lied to me?” Mason finally asked.
Did I think Sebastian lied to Mason and deleted the messages to make me look like I didn’t care? Without a shadow of a doubt, yes. But I was a better man than him, which meant I had no intention of digging his hole any deeper than he already had.
“Maybe he just didn’t have service.” I suggested.
Mason slowly nodded before pointing to my peace offering. “Can I still have that?”
I smiled. “Of course, honestly, I’d be a little offended if you didn’t try it after all my hard work.”
I didn’t make her struggle to grab the plate; instead, I handed it to her.
Mason strategically balanced the blue china on her bump before using the spoon to cut into the dessert. The sound she made as she took a bite could only be described as a moan, and I wondered if she was doing it just to rile me up.
“Good?” I asked as I readjusted myself. I wasn’t going to let an erection destroy a sweet moment.
“Mhm.” She enthusiastically took another bite before offering me one.
I waved her off. “You eat it. You’re the one growin’ a baby.”
She didn’t argue with me. Instead, she just smiled. “I don’t like fighting with you.”
Happiness caused my lips to quiver. Given the fact that I could have missed our daughter’s birth, I figured she’d want to hold onto her grudge a little longer.
“Does this mean I’ve been forgiven?” I chuckled.
“Mhm.” She mumbled around the spoon in her mouth.
I always figured someone as small as Mason would eat like a bird, and for the most part, she did. But she also ate like she was in prison–One second, she’d have a full plate, and the next, it’d be gone.
“Well, I guess I’ll just save the other thing I had planned.” I teased.
Mason’s eyes darted between me and her now empty plate. “Does it end in me getting head?”
I ran a hand across my mouth, trying to fight my laugh. “You almost went into labor–Don’t you ever quit?”
Mason pushed the plate into my hands with a smile. But something in the way her lips twitched made me wonder if she was forcing it. I hadn’t known Mason long, but I knew one thing: She was good at hiding her feelings, and I silently prayed she wasn’t doing that to me.
“It’s part of my charm.” Her tone was sweet, and I reached out to ruffle her hair.
“No, it ain’t gonna end in you getting head .”
Her smile fell. “Well, that’s no fun.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m tryin’ to prove I’m sorry, not get you pregnant again.”
“Head doesn’t do that–Also,” Mason gestured toward her stomach. “You have to wait if you want to do that.”
My fingers met my temple as I let out a low, grumbly breath. Why on earth was this girl so literal about almost everything?
I shook my head. “I’ll give you that later… right now, let’s focus on us being okay.”
“We are okay… but I would like another brownie.” She pointed to the plate in my hand.
“I thought you weren’t hungry.” I teased, placing the plate on the bedside table before pushing her down to the mattress.
Her mismatched gaze met mine, and I could tell she was searching for something. I just didn’t know what.
She swallowed hard, and her full lips parted as if to speak, but no words came out.
My fingertips brushed the silk of her skin, and I pushed stray hairs behind her ear. “Tell me what’s going on inside that pretty little head of yours.”
She took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she did. When she opened them again, there was a flicker of something I couldn’t place, but it rested between uncertainty and fear.
“If you had a secret that could change the way I’d view you… Would you tell me?” She said, each word coming out slower than the last.
A chill ran down my spine and I fought the urge to go stiff as a board. What did she know? What did Sebastian tell her?
I chewed on my cheek as I tried to remind myself that her question could be completely hypothetical. “If it was something you needed to know, then yeah. ”
She nodded. “What if it was something about who you are? ….Something that might make things harder for us.”
Nope. There is no way in hell we were having this conversation right now. She had to know I was Calvin Waters, and that’s why she was being so weird.
I shot up into a sitting position. Mason’s eyes widened a little as she propped herself up on her elbows.
“Hey–I’ve been fixing up the nursery, and we’re missing a couple of things.” I rushed through my words, causing each syllable to match the beat of my heart. “I uh–Do ya wanna go out and get it? Together?”
Mason blinked, and it was obvious she was taken aback by the change in topic.
“Cameron…” She started, and I was so afraid she’d keep pushing that I hopped out of bed and immediately headed toward the door.
“It’ll be good for us to get out of the house. Plus, we need to get the stuff anyway.” I urged, my voice sounding oddly cheery. “I saw an ad for a place called Tiny Tots Emporium , and it looked like they had just about anything we’d need. They’re only about forty or so minutes away.”
That seemed like it’d be far enough away for us to shop uninterrupted and away from prying eyes.
Mason hesitated, her eyes still laser-focused on mine. But, after a moment, she sighed.
“Fine, let’s go.” She relented.
But something in the way she spoke made me realize that I may have dodged that bullet, but the gun was still loaded, and worse, it was pointed right at me.