Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
PHOENIX
The harbor is still when I step onto the back porch, coffee mug warming my palms against the October chill.
Mason sits alone in one of the Adirondack chairs, his own cup of tea cradled in his hands.
And he’s wearing one of Judah’s flannels.
I clock this detail immediately. Mason probably doesn’t realize he grabbed it this morning. The wooden boards creak under my bare feet as I cross to the empty chair beside him.
I settle into the chair beside him without asking permission. Close enough to touch, but not touching. The cold seeps through my yoga pants immediately, and I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping both hands around my own mug for warmth.
We sit in silence.
This has always been one of our strengths—the ability to exist in the same space without filling it with noise. Mason understands that sometimes I need quiet more than conversation, and I’ve learned that his silences often say more than his words.
But this silence has teeth.
There are too many things between us now. The heat. The kisses. The revelation about Judah. The fact that we had sex—multiple times, in multiple positions, with varying degrees of desperation. The fact that neither of us has acknowledged any of it since Mason’s heat broke.
The elephant in the room has brought friends. We’ve got a whole circus of unaddressed issues setting up camp, and the ringleader is the speech I can practically see forming behind Mason’s careful mask.
He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t acknowledge my presence at all, just keeps staring at that gunmetal water with an expression I’ve learned to dread over three years of working together.
It’s the expression he wears when he knows he’s about to do something that I’m going to hate.
Oh, hell no.
He’s working himself up to quit. I can practically feel it coming like a change in the wind.
I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his fingers keep tightening around his tea mug like he’s rehearsing the speech in his head.
I take a sip of coffee and wait.
Mason draws a breath. His jaw tightens. Here it comes.
“Phoenix, I think we need to discuss—”
“If you’re about to quit,” I interrupt, “I need you to know that I will literally chase you down the street in my socks. I will make a scene. It will be embarrassing for both of us.”
Mason’s mouth snaps shut.
“I wasn’t—“ He stops. Starts again. “This is about professionalism, Phoenix. Our relationship has been compromised. I can’t be objective anymore, and you deserve an assistant who doesn’t have this much…baggage.”
“Mason.”
“The power dynamic alone makes this untenable. You’re my employer. I’m financially dependent on you. The optics are—“
“Mason.”
He falls silent, but I can see the words still stacking up behind his teeth, all those logical arguments he’s prepared like soldiers waiting for the order to charge.
“I don’t want an objective assistant,” I tell him. My voice comes out softer than I intended, but I don’t try to correct it. “I want you. And I’m not going to let you use professionalism as a shield to avoid talking about what actually needs to be discussed.”
Something flickers across his face. Hope and fear and pain, all tangled together in an expression that makes my chest ache.
“Phoenix—”
“We crossed a line. Multiple lines. Lines that can’t be uncrossed.
” I set down my mug on the arm of the chair, turning to face him fully.
“I’m not going to pretend that didn’t happen.
And I’m not going to let you pretend it was some heat-induced hallucination that we can file away and never mention again. ”
Mason’s grip on his tea mug has gone white-knuckled. “It wasn’t—I didn’t—“
“What I said during my heat. And during yours.” I force myself to hold his gaze, even though everything in me wants to look away. “About wanting you. About you being the only real thing in my life. That was true. Not heat-talk. Not hormones. True before, during, and after.”
Mason’s composure cracks. Just a little. There’s a tremor in his jaw, a sheen in his eyes that he blinks away almost immediately. But I see it. I’ve spent three years learning to read the tiny variations in his carefully controlled expressions, and this one screams hope he’s afraid to feel.
“You’re my employer,” he says again, but the conviction has leached out of the words. “The logistics—”
“Are real issues that need to be addressed. I’m not dismissing that.
” I lean forward, closing some of the distance between us.
“But you don’t get to use logistics as a reason to deny what we both feel.
We can figure out the professional boundaries later, with clear heads and possibly a lawyer.
Right now, I need you to stop hiding behind the employee handbook and talk to me like a human being. ”
The silence stretches.
Mason stares at me with those storm-gray eyes, and I can see the war happening behind them. The part of him that’s spent three years maintaining perfect professional distance battling against the part that kissed me like I was oxygen and he was drowning.
Finally, he lets out a breath that seems to come from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay.”
But I’m not done.
Because there’s something bigger than our blurred boundaries hanging between us. Something that’s been eating at me since I found out about Judah, a hurt I’ve been shoving down because Mason’s heat took priority and my own feelings seemed petty in comparison.
My voice goes quieter when I speak again. Mason recognizes the shift immediately. I see his spine stiffen, his expression go wary.
“Three years, Mason.” Each word lands deliberately, precisely. “Three years of sharing hotel rooms and late nights and every secret I have. And you never once told me you were bonded.”
He flinches like I’ve struck him.
“Phoenix—”
“I told you about Laurence.” The name tastes like ash in my mouth, but I force it out anyway.
“I told you about my mother. I told you about every fear and failure and fucked-up thing that’s ever happened to me.
And you listened, and you helped, and you held my hand through panic attacks and bad reviews and all of it.
But the single most important thing about yourself? You kept that to yourself.”
Mason’s face has gone pale. His tea sits forgotten in his lap, probably gone cold by now.
“It was a mistake,” he says, and his voice sounds hollow. “From when I was seventeen. The bond is effectively dead. It wasn’t relevant to our…relationship.”
I take a deep breath. “Bullshit.”
He recoils slightly at the word. “C’mon, Phoenix.”
“Can I tell you what I think?”
Mason just looks at me. “Have I ever been able to stop you from doing that.”
“Nope,” I chirp, ignoring the sarcasm.
“I’ve watched Judah for almost a week now.
” My voice stays gentle, but firm. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.
That man didn’t sleep at all during your heat.
He just hung around nearby until I told him you wanted him.
And when you finally did ask for him…Mason, the sound he made when he touched you.
That wasn’t obligation or guilt. Or horror. ”
Mason takes a deep, shuddering breath. But he doesn’t speak.
“Dom told me things, too,” I continue. “Judah hasn’t dated anyone.
Not once. In ten years. He’s been living like a monk in this big empty house, wearing a bracelet you made him in high school, keeping your photo on his shelf.
Dom says he fell apart when you left and never fully put himself back together. ”
“That doesn’t mean—“
“You were seventeen years old.” I lean forward, catching his gaze and holding it.
“You’d just accidentally bonded with your best friend during an early heat.
You were terrified. He was terrified. You felt something huge and overwhelming come through that bond and you called it disgust. But what if it wasn’t? ”
Mason’s face has gone very still.
“What if what you felt was fear? His fear? The same fear you were drowning in? And you couldn’t tell the difference because neither of you had ever felt anything that intense before?”
I watch Mason absorb them, watch the war happening behind his eyes as everything he’s believed for ten years comes crashing up against a possibility he’s never allowed himself to consider.
“I spent ten years convinced that every alpha who looked at me wanted to use me,” I say quietly.
“Because one of them did, when I was too young to know the difference. I built my whole life around that assumption. And it was wrong, Mason. Not completely wrong—some of them absolutely did want to use me—but the assumption itself was wrong. The story I told myself to survive became the cage I couldn’t escape. ”
A tear tracks down Mason’s cheek. He doesn’t wipe it away.
“You told yourself a story about what Judah felt. And that story kept you safe for ten years. But it also kept you alone.” I reach out, take his hand. His fingers are cold, trembling slightly. “And I think—I really, truly think—that it was never true.”
The silence that follows is enormous.
Somewhere in the distance, a gull finally breaks the quiet with a single cry. The water ripples against the dock. The world keeps turning, indifferent to the devastation playing out on this weathered back porch.
When Mason finally speaks, his voice is barely audible. “What if you’re wrong?”
The question is small and terrified, the voice of a seventeen-year-old boy who convinced himself he was too much to be wanted and spent a decade building walls to make sure he never had to test that belief.
“What if I’m right?” I squeeze his hand, holding his gaze with everything I have. “What if you left behind the person who loves you most in the world because you were too scared to ask him how he actually felt?”
Mason’s composure shatters.
It’s not dramatic—no sobs, no screams. He just goes very quiet, and his hands start shaking, and more tears track down his cheeks that he doesn’t bother to wipe away. His breath comes in ragged hitches, like something inside him is breaking apart.
I shift closer and take his hand properly in both of mine. Hold it the way he’s held mine a hundred times—steady, certain, present. The role reversal is complete. For once, I’m the anchor. For once, I’m the one providing the stability while someone else falls apart.
We sit like that for a long time.
Eventually, Mason’s breathing steadies. His grip on my hand loosens from a desperate clutch to something gentler.
“What am I supposed to do?”
I don’t bother with a grand speech.
“You talk to Judah. Preferably when you’re not in heat or a similar crisis. And you clear the air.” I squeeze his hand once. “You ask him what he actually felt and you listen to the answer, without making any wild assumptions.”
Mason nods slowly. He’s not ready yet—not right this second—but I can see the wall has cracked. The false narrative has been challenged in a way he can’t easily rebuild.
The harbor is waking up properly now. I can hear movement inside the house—Judah getting ready for the water, probably. Dom’s heavy boots on the stairs. Atticus’s muffled voice humming something melodic from somewhere on the second floor.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I say quietly.
Mason looks at me, gray eyes red-rimmed but clearer than they’ve been all morning.
“Pushing you toward Judah is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” The admission costs me something, but it needs to be said. “Because part of me is terrified that if you and Judah reconcile fully, there won’t be room for me anymore.”
His expression shifts. Something fierce and tender breaks through the exhaustion.
“I just got you.” My voice wavers, and I let it. “The real you. And now I’m telling you to go back to someone you loved first. Which is either the most selfless thing I’ve ever done or the dumbest. Jury’s still out.”
“Phoenix.” Mason’s hand tightens around mine. “You’re not losing me.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can.” His voice is rough but certain. “Loving Judah and loving you aren’t competing forces. My heart isn’t a pie with limited slices.”
I laugh, watery and raw. “Did you just use a pie metaphor to describe your feelings? God, you really are from a small town.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s close. Closer than anything I’ve seen from him since his heat broke.
I lean my head against his shoulder, watching the first fishing boats motor out into the gray morning.
I think about wishes written on paper lanterns and sent out to sea.
I think about the wish I wrote—I want to be loved, not just desired—and wonder if the universe has a sense of humor or a sense of justice.
Maybe both.
Nothing is resolved. Nothing is fixed. But something has shifted—a door cracked open that’s been sealed shut for a decade. What happens next is up to Mason.
But I’ve done the best I can to make that wish come true.
I’ve kicked down the first barrier and dared someone I love to walk through it.