Page 170 of Mason

I can’t look at her. I really fucking can’t. Because all I see is what I ruined. What I missed. But then her hand finds mine, and it’s warm. Solid. Real.

“You can be there,” she whispers. “For the first kick. For the birth. For every single milestone I’m terrified to face alone. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be here.”

My whole chest caves in.

I pull her into me before I think too hard about it, arms wrapping around her like a drowning man clinging to a life raft. She doesn’t resist. She holds me right back.

She’s shaking. I’m shaking.

And then, it just... breaks.

I cry.

Not the loud kind. Not the violent kind. Just these quiet, gut-wrenching sobs I didn’t even know I had left in me. For what I missed. For who I failed. For the tiny heartbeat growing inside the woman I barely just started to call my daughter.

“I don’t deserve you,” I whisper against her hair.

“You don’t,” she says, voice thick with emotion. “But you’ve got me anyway.”

I hold on tighter.

Because maybe this—this one thing—I can still get right.

44

MASON

The sun is a bastard.

It burns through my eyelids like judgment, and for a second, I forget where the hell I am. My skull feels like it cracked open in the night, and my throat is drier than death. But it’s not the hangover that gets me—it’s the memory.

Mia. Kneeling in front of me. Crying. Telling me she’s pregnant.

Telling me she needs me.

And all I gave her was the stench of whiskey and the weight of disappointment.

I drag myself to the kitchen on shaking legs, pull a glass from the cabinet, and stare at the bottle of bourbon still sitting on the counter. Half-empty. Like me. I don’t touch it.

The knock at the door isn’t polite. It’s a bang. A threat. A warning.

I already know who it is.

I open the door.

Brando storms in like he owns the place—and maybe he does. He’s the only man in my life who’s been steady, constant.The only one who’s never asked me for anything… except tobe better.

“Mason,” he says, voice low and tight. “Sit your ass down.”

I don’t move.

“Sit.”

I do.

He paces the kitchen like a panther ready to snap my throat. He’s still in yesterday’s clothes, dark shirt rolled up to the elbows, jaw set like concrete. His eyes are fire. Controlled, but barely.

“I should knock you out,” he mutters.

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