Page 113 of Shattered Promise

“Stop overreacting,” I whisper to myself. My voice sounds too loud in the room.

The storm makes a distant sound of protest—thunder low and dragging across the sky like something unwilling to wake.

I move further inside, leaving my keys and dropping my purse on the table with a soft clatter. The kitchen light is still on. My plants look the same. There’s a throw blanket half-fallen from the couch, the way I left it.

But still, something itches at the back of my neck. I step toward the bedroom, then pause.

A shadow moves in the hallway. Not a trick of the light, not the usual echo of my own limbs.

My feet freeze. Every nerve in my body goes taut and useless. I blink, half-convinced I’m about to see a stranger, a threat, a face from every nightmare I’ve ever had about being alone in the middle of nowhere.

But it’s not a stranger standing in my hallway.

My lips part, and a heartbeat passes. “What are you doing here?”

Movement from the corner of my eye catches my attention, but before I can turn to look, the world goes black.

43

MASON

The storm'sbeen pacing the horizon all evening, but it hasn’t broken yet. Just thunder rolling low like a warning and the kind of wind that makes the trees mutter to each other. I’m standing in the living room, arms folded tight across my chest, staring out the window like the rain might show up carrying answers.

Theo’s behind me, fussing in that overtired way babies do—small, sharp cries with no real teeth, just need. I should go to him, coax him into his favorite game ofknock the blocks over. But I can’t move. Not yet.

Not while my words are still echoing in the kitchen like little wrecking balls.

You’re not his mother.

I should’ve grabbed those words and swallowed them the second they left my mouth. But I didn’t. I let them sit there, poison in the air between us, and then I just watched her go. Like a fucking idiot.

Now the house feels wrong without her. Too still. Too quiet in all the ways that matter. And my boy keeps looking at the door like he expects her to walk through it. He tried signingmoreearlier and then babbled something that sounded a lot likeAbby, and I honestly don’t know which one hurt more.

I hear myself say it again, inside my head, like a bell that won’t stop ringing:You’re not his mother.

I can’t even remember how it started—what idiotic, self-preserving synapse fired and made me torch the only thing that made sense in this house. I just remember the look on her face, that moment the air left the room and everything in her went still. How she didn’t fight back, didn’t give me the satisfaction of another round. She just calmly walked out the door like she already knew this was how it would end.

Because I’m a coward.

Because I’m terrified of ever letting myself want something that much again, and more terrified of what happens when I get it because I’ll lose it.

Isn’t that the Porter legacy? Want nothing, need nothing. So nothing can wreck you when it’s gone. Because it will leave.

I watch the last fingers of daylight slip under the stormfront and drag a hand down my face, palm rough against the stubble I forgot to shave. My heart’s kicking hard in my chest.

A flash of lightning splits the sky, throwing the field outside into stark relief. The thunder that follows is so deep it rattles the window glass. Theo startles, lets out a little yelp, and I finally snap out of it enough to scoop him up, pressing his cheek to my jaw.

The storm is close now, the way you can feel it in your fillings and the hair on your arms.

I rock him against me, murmuring nonsense, but my mind’s not on my kid. It’s focused on the cabin, on the other side of the snake pit, where my girl is holed upalone.

I picture her in that little kitchen, shoulders hunched and hair in a messy knot, staring at the same goddamn storm andthinking about what I said. I want to take it back so bad it feels like there’s acid behind my ribs.

Theo pulls back enough to pat my cheek, babbling with earnest, like he’s just as worried about her as I am.

“Fuck it,” I murmur. I’m not going to wait another minute. “Let’s go get our girl, yeah, buddy?”

Theo wiggles his little body in my arms, and I take it as encouragement.

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