Page 22 of Mason

Looking back, I should have known better. Should have seen the cracks, the warning signs, the moments where his charm twisted into something else—something sharp-edged and possessive. But I wrote over the red flags like they were nothing more than ink stains, turned the ugly truths into pretty metaphors, convinced myself that love—real love—was supposed to hurt sometimes.

It’s what poets do. We take pain—raw, ugly, blistering—and wrap it in silk. We dress the wound in metaphor and lace, pour it into verses that tremble under the weight of what we can’t say out loud. We make it rhyme so it hurts less. Or maybe so it hurtsbetter. We take the jagged edges of heartbreak and shape them into something you’d hang on a wall, something people underline in books and whisper at midnight when the silence feels too loud.

We take what nearly destroyed us… and make it beautiful.

Because beauty, even born from suffering, is still a form of survival.

But there’s nothing beautiful about the way my life turned out.

And now Clay isn’t here, and the silence isn’t just quiet—it’svacant.A hollow, gaping thing that stretches through the house, reminding me that, for the first time in my life, I amtrulyalone.

Until even my own loneliness is stolen from me.

The front door swings open just as I sit on the sofa, staring blankly at the TV, tuned to some muted afternoon game show.

The intrusion comes so swiftly it knocks the breath from my lungs, as unexpected as it is horrifying.

I freeze.

Not enough time to run.

He steps inside, pushing the door behind him with slow, deliberate intent, but it doesn’t latch shut.

One small mercy.

If I can just get to that door, if I can reach it before he does, I can run.

That’s the only thought in my head as David’s gaze drags over me—possessive, like I’m still something he owns. He hasn’t accepted it—our divorce, my freedom, the fact that I walked away and never looked back. In his mind, we are still bound, still locked in a world where I belong to him and him alone.

My stomach turns to stone as David strolls inside, as casually as if he’s just getting home from work.

His gaze locks on me the moment I leap to my feet—sharp, unwavering, like heknewI’d run.

But he’s already moving.

Fast.

Too fast.

By the time my foot hits the floor, he’s there, stepping in front of the door like a shadow solidifying in my path.

The exit is gone.

Blocked.

And so is my breath.

A slow, knowing smirk curls his lips—lazy, cruel, like he’s amused by the game and already sure of how it ends.

Dread slithers up my spine like ice water, cold and creeping, coiling around my throat. My pulse pounds in my ears, and I take a step back without meaning to—instinct, survival.

“Going somewhere?” he asks, voice low and dangerous.

Then his arm wraps around my waist.

Casual. Effortless.

Like he’s done this before. Like he owns the space between us, and I was always meant to be caught.

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