Chapter 38 #2
“You don’t owe me an explanation.” The words come out rougher than I want them to, scraped raw by the effort of keeping my voice level. “But I would really really like to know why you left.”
Mason goes still. Seconds pass excruciatingly slowly. He removes his glasses. Cleans them on the hem of the flannel—my flannel—with slow, careful strokes.
When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet but steady.
“My answer to that question would have been very different if you’d asked me a few days ago.”
“Okay,” I manage, very aware that I can’t say anything that might spook him before he gets this out.
Mason stares at the stage. His jaw works once. Twice.
“I felt what you felt.” Each word emerges as though it’s been pried loose from somewhere deep. “Through the bond. That morning. After we—after it happened.”
My pulse kicks hard against my throat.
“And what I felt was horror.” His voice fractures on the word, a hairline crack that splits the careful composure he’s been maintaining. “Disgust. This overwhelming wave of revulsion at what we’d done. And I assumed—“
He stops. Swallows. His hands curl into fists at his sides, knuckles bloodless.
“I assumed it was about me. That you were disgusted by what we were. By what I am.”
The floor drops out from under me.
“No.” The word rips out of me before I can shape it into anything gentler. “Mason, no. That’s not—“
“I know.” His voice is barely audible now, almost lost beneath the bar noise. “Or at least, I’m starting to.”
He turns his head just enough to look at me. Those gray eyes, red-rimmed behind his glasses, hold mine with an openness that guts me.
“Phoenix is the one who figured it out.” A ghost of a smile touches his mouth. “And then she bashed me over the head with the obvious truth until I couldn’t possibly pretend not to see it.”
Gratitude swells in my chest like a balloon filled until it’s about to burst. I’m so damned grateful for that beautiful hurricane of a woman.
And not at all bothered by the idea of sharing a nest with them both for the rest of my life.
“I was horrified with myself, “ I insist, hoping I’m telling him something he already knows. “I thought I’d taken advantage of you. Your heat came early and I could have kept you safe without crawling into that messy nest you made out of our sleeping bags. I didn’t have to do what I did—“
My voice breaks. I drag a hand across my face.
“You were barely eighteen, Mason. You were in heat and scared and I bonded you. All I could think was that I’d ruined your life. That I’d stolen something from you that you’d never be able to get back.”
The bar buzzes around us, an entire existence happening beyond us while we’re frozen in this moment.
Glasses clink. Someone laughs too loudly near the pool table.
The world continues as though nothing extraordinary is happening in this cramped corner, as though two people aren’t rewriting a decade of heartbreak in real time.
Mason’s throat bobs. His eyes glitter behind his glasses, light catching on the tears he’s not letting fall.
“I’m still not sure why it came as such a surprise.” His voice is so quiet I have to lean closer to catch every word. “That you—or anyone—would actually want me that desperately.”
The sentence breaks something open inside my chest that I don’t think will ever close again.
I move slowly. Telegraphing every inch, the way I’ve learned to do this week. Giving him time. Giving him space to step away, to put distance between us, to choose differently.
Mason doesn’t step away.
My hand finds his jaw. His skin is warm beneath my palm, roughened with stubble he hasn’t bothered to shave. My thumb traces the line of his cheekbone. His breath hitches but he holds still, eyes wide and luminous.
I kiss him.
Not the desperate, heat-driven collision of the past few days.
Not the frantic reclaiming of territory lost. Something slower.
Something that starts soft and stays soft, my lips finding his with the careful deliberation of a man who’s been thinking about this exact moment for ten years and refuses to rush it.
Mason groans against my mouth. His hands come up to grip the front of my shirt, twisting the fabric between his fingers, and he kisses me back with a trembling intensity that tastes like salt.
Someone wolf-whistles from the direction of the pool table.
I don’t care.
Let the whole town see. Let them whisper and gossip and draw whatever conclusions they want. This man is mine. Has been mine since we were seventeen and too young to understand what that meant. And I am done—done—pretending otherwise.
When I finally pull back, his forehead falls against mine. Both of us breathing hard. Both of us shaking. His fingers haven’t released my shirt.
“We still have a lot to talk about,” I murmur against his mouth.
Mason laughs. The sound is wet and raw, cracking at the edges, and he releases one hand from my shirt long enough to dash tears from his cheeks with the back of his wrist.
“Yeah, we really do.” He sniffs, hard, then laughs again—brighter this time, closer to the sound I remember from before everything went wrong. “But it’ll have to wait.”
He tilts his head toward the stage, where Atticus has appeared with the tuned guitar slung across his body, adjusting the microphone height.
“Show’s about to start.”