Page 161 of Mason

SHELBY

By 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 puremasculine furyof 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 beme.

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’mthereagain.

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.

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