Page 14 of Shattered Promise

I catch Beth’s eye as she circles back toward my end of the bar. “I’m gonna head out,” I say, my voice low as I tug my blazer from the back of my chair. “Have a good night.”

“Thanks, you too. See you this week now that your event’s over?” she asks, her smile tipping hopeful.

I lift my shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. “Maybe.” Work’s not slowing down yet, not for another week or two at least. And even if it was, I’m not sure I have the energy for anything right now but sleep and silence.

“Yeah, okay. Let me know.” Her smile slips a little as her gaze flicks toward the back table, where one guy has started tapping his beer bottle against the wood in time with a song that ended two minutes ago.

I flash a tired smile and smooth my hand over my collar. “Good luck with them,” I say, tilting my head toward the group in the back.

Beth snorts under her breath. “Thanks. I think I’ll need it.”

I flutter my fingers in a quiet goodbye and start weaving through the maze of high tops and low lighting. I give the rowdy table a wide berth, hugging the far side of the room, avoiding eye contact. My heels click softly against the scuffed floor, andthe thought of my bed tugs at me like gravity—clean sheets, cold pillow, the safety of not having to be anything for anyone.

I’m only steps from the door when something in the air shifts. Not the temperature exactly, but the pressure. Like the way the sky tightens right before a summer storm splits open.

“What did you just say?” a man near the front of the bar demands, his voice sharp and rising.

It takes me a second to register he’s not talking to me.

Another voice—louder, slurred, more mean—rings out behind me. “I said, maybe if your woman wasn’t such a controlling bitch, you’d actually be having fun with your boys.”

The woman in front of me gasps, sharp and indignant, but it’s drowned out by the chorus of male laughter behind me.

The man beside her shoves to his feet. His chair scrapes back against the floor with the screeching pitch of nails on a chalkboard. “Say that again,” he snarls, his body surging forward.

Not toward me, no, toward the voice behind me.

And I realize, too late, I’m in the worst possible place. Dead center. In no man's land between them. I try to sidestep, to slip between the edge of the bar and the mass of surrounding tables, but everyone else has the same idea. It’s a crush of bodies, a collective cringe away from where I’m standing.

Time folds in on itself.

One guy lunges. Another throws a punch. More people jump in—shouting, pushing, bottles clinking too hard against wood. And I’m in the middle. Frozen.

A sharp elbow clips the side of my face, hard.

White-hot pain explodes across my cheekbone and radiates down into my jaw. My vision blurs at the edges. I stumble, arms flailing, and slam into the edge of a nearby table. Glass shatters. Voices rise into shouts. I think someone screams. It might be me.

“Oh my god—Abby—shit—” Beth’s voice is too close, too sharp, sliced through with panic.

My knees hit the ground, my palm landing in something wet. Everything is ringing. Heat roars under my skin, pulsing in jagged waves. My head swims, and my stomach flips. I must've bit my cheek, because I can taste blood.

I look up through blurry vision and see chaos around me.

"I need to get the fuck out of here."

6

MASON

The house is quiet.Not peaceful-quiet—bone-deep quiet. The kind that presses in on your chest and makes everything feel too still. Theo’s been asleep for hours, the baby monitor casting its steady blue glow beside me. I should be in bed. But sleep’s been harder lately. Too many thoughts. Too much noise in my head, even when everything else goes still.

It’s past midnight now. That hour where the world feels a little haunted.

Insomnia’s the double-edged sword of parenthood no one warns you about. You spend all day running on fumes, dead on your feet—but the second your head hits the pillow, your brain kicks into overdrive. Victory laps through every thought you’ve ever had. You’re too tired to think and too wired not to. No one talks about that part. Not on the parenting blogs. Not in those smug little videos with clean counters and color-coded baby bins.

I shift on the porch steps and lean into the post behind me, letting the wood take some of my weight. The wraparound porch was half the reason I bought this place. It needed work—hell, it still does—but I couldn’t let it go. I saw one like it when I was akid, out near Briar Hollow. Big white farmhouse, peeling paint, kids’ bikes dumped by the front steps. I remember thinkingthatlooked like a place you could stay.

A real family kind of house.

---