by Callie Rose
“My mom died ten years ago,” I choked out. “She got hit by a drunk driver. She couldn’t have—”
“Not like that.” He shot a glance at me. “Our parents knew each other when they were younger. You know that, right?”
I nodded. We had known each other when we were younger. The Princes and I. My mom hadn’t left Roseland until after Element Investments went under, until after she’d apparently turned on everyone she knew here. I’d probably been about four years old when she’d left, and I had no idea how my father fit into all of this. They must’ve met while she was still living here, but she’d obviously kept him a secret.
“Your mom left town a long time ago. But I guess before she did, she kinda snapped. She decided she hated Mason’s mom and did whatever she could to fuck with her head. I don’t know what happened, but it messed her up bad. A few years after Charlotte Hildebrand left town, his mom killed herself.”
“A few years?” I shook my head. “She killed herself years later, and he thinks it was my mom’s fault? Why?”
“Mace’s dad told him a little of what’d been going on after the fact, I guess. His mom was in therapy, on mood-stabilizing drugs, all that shit. But it wasn’t enough. Whatever your mom did to her stuck.”
I bristled. “My mom didn’t—”
But the words died before I could finish the sentence. I didn’t know what my mom had done. I’d barely known her, and all my memories of her were filtered through a child’s love and innocence. The picture that’d been painted of her by literally everyone who had known her in Roseland was the same—that of someone who had gone from loving and open to spiteful and full of hate. She’d gotten into drugs and alcohol, and I had to wonder if any or all of that was due to my dad’s influence.
But had she really been that cruel? Left such lasting marks on her one-time-friend’s psyche that the woman had eventually killed herself?
My stomach turned, and I had an overwhelming impulse to run back to my dorm, pick up the framed photo of my mom that sat on my desk, and stare at it until it gave me some kind of fucking answers. Not that I needed to see it—I knew that photo like the back of my hand, could picture it clearly in my mind’s eye. Her soft brown hair, so close in color to mine. Her hazel eyes, which were warm and thoughtful and just a little bit sad.
The woman in that photo didn’t look like a killer.
Then again, the Princes looked like fucking movie stars, and Jacqueline looked like a perfectly poised society lady.
Looks could be deceiving.
“That’s why Mason hates me. Why he didn’t want me here,” I breathed softly.
“Yeah.” Finn flipped on his blinker before turning onto the Oak Park campus. The grounds were quiet as he pulled into the lot. “It’s fucked up, Tal. The whole thing is fucked. Her death messed him up. He… he was the one who found the body. He was only eight.” He turned off the ignition and looked over at me. “But that still didn’t give us any right to fuck with you.”
I gazed at him, a thousand thoughts bouncing around in my head. Anger. Shock.
Guilt.
But that was fucking stupid.
Even if it was true, and my mom had been that awful to her friend, I hadn’t done it. I hadn’t even known about it. I wasn’t responsible for Mrs. Van Buren’s death or Mason’s pain.
“You’re right. It didn’t.”
I sucked in a deep breath as I finished speaking, suddenly finding it hard to get enough oxygen in the confined space of the car. My fingers scrabbled for the door handle, and I pushed it open, stepping outside into the blessedly cool night air.
Finn didn’t say anything else. He grabbed my bag from the back seat and carried it for me as he walked me back to my dorm. When we stopped in front of Prentice Hall, he looked down at me, his blond hair shining in the dim light.
He opened his mouth like he was about to say something else, then shut it again. One large hand reached up to brush a lock of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering like he couldn’t quite drag himself away. Then he dipped his head and kissed my cheek.
“Get some sleep, Legs. Text me when you want to go back to the hospital, and I’ll drive you.”
His breath was warm on my skin, and with just the slightest of movements, I could’ve turned and claimed his lips in a kiss.
I wanted to.
Wanted to take some pleasure from him just like I had from Elijah, wanted to banish the confusion and pain.
But my mind was too full of roiling thoughts, and I could feel myself getting pulled back into the Princes’ world, into their orbit.
So I just let the heat of his kiss spread across my cheek and linger there as he pulled away. He handed me my backpack and watched me unlock the door before he turned and headed back toward Clarendon Hall.
Inside my little apartment, I headed straight for the bedroom and flipped on the bedside lamp. Now that I was here, I suddenly found myself unable to look at the photo of my mother, as if I was afraid of what it might reveal.
What kind of person had she been?
I changed into a pair of black stretchy pants and a soft, beat-up old t-shirt and brushed my teeth. Then I flicked the light off and crawled into bed, hoping my exhaustion would turn my brain off eventually and let me sleep.
But it didn’t.
A disquieting feeling of unease churned in my stomach, and I shifted from side to side, unable to get comfortable. The more I tried to relax, the worse the feeling became, and finally, I sat bolt upright, flinging the covers off.
Without letting myself dwell on what I was about to do, I pulled open a drawer in my desk and grabbed the maintenance man’s key card. I pulled on a jacket over my t-shirt and stuffed the key card in the pocket, then slipped out the door.
The campus was even quieter than it’d been when Finn walked me back to the Wastelands earlier. I hadn’t even checked my phone for the time, but it was probably close to one a.m.
It was not the right time to be doing this, and I wasn’t even sure exactly what I was going to do. All I knew was that I couldn’t keep sitting on the information Finn had given me, letting it bounce around in my head like a ricocheting bullet.
The key card still worked in the front door of Clarendon Hall. The main common room was dim, with only a few lights left on overnight, and I took the stairs to the top floor quietly.
My heart pounded harder as I ascended the last flight, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation I’d had with Philip the first time he had agreed to meet with me—the heartbreak in his expression when he’d talked about my mom and the way her personality had flipped.
The Princes had already shown themselves to be completely capable of lying to me. And Jacqueline was obviously still holding a grudge against her daughter. But Philip? He’d loved Charlotte. It was clear in the way he talked about her. He had no reason to lie, to go out of his way to paint a damning picture of her.
And even he admitted that toward the end, her behavior had been cruel and erratic.
Maybe my mom had hurt her friends somehow, had pushed Mason’s mom to the breaking point.
But was it fair for kids to be held responsible for their parents’ demons?
I passed by Elijah’s room, then Cole’s and Finn’s, and came to a stop in front of Mason’s door. My skin prickled with electric energy as I reached up and rapped my knuckles against it.
No answer.
Just go, Talia. Go back to your room and forget all about this.
But even as I had the thought, my fist was striking the door again, harder this time.
The sound of movement on the other side made me stand up straighter, dropping my hand, and then Mason pulled the door open.
I’d woken him up.
He was shirtless and a little disheveled, a pair of gym shorts slung low on his waist, showcasing the V at his hips and the sculpted terrain of his chest. His brilliant green eyes were foggy with sleep, and a small piece of hair was sticking up on the right side of his head.
He lo
oked so… so real in that moment that it knocked me for a loop.
There was a part of me that still didn’t consider Mason a mortal, that thought of him more like some escaped god of the underworld, someone incapable of the same fears and weaknesses as the rest of us.
But right now, his eyes were open and vulnerable—not in the falsely warm way they appeared when he was about to unleash some new cruelty, but in a way that let me see more of what was behind them than I ever had before.
Then his sleepy gaze registered who was standing outside his door, and I watched the bright green of his irises harden as if they were real gemstones.
“What are you doing here, little dancer?”
“Is it true?”
He shook his head, annoyance and confusion making his brow wrinkle. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“About your mom. Is it true?”
His expression changed as soon as the words left my mouth, his features smoothing over as a mask of anger fell across his face. He stepped back, moving to close the door, but I couldn’t let him.
Without thinking, I threw my arm out, grabbing the edge of the door. Mason let out a muffled curse, pulling back on the handle at the last second. Instead of crushing my hand against the frame, the door hit with lighter force, bruising bones instead of breaking them. I hissed in pain, and Mason cursed again, opening the door wider and reaching out to haul me inside.
He slammed it shut behind us and pulled me into the kitchen, turning on the tap to the coldest setting and sticking my hand under the flowing water.
Then he left me standing there while he turned and yanked open the freezer. “What the fuck were you thinking? You trying to get your hand broken?”
“No. I…”
The water was so cold it made my bruised skin ache, and my heart drummed hard in my chest. It’d been pure animal instinct that’d made me do that, a desperate impulse not to let Mason escape. I needed answers, and I wasn’t going to let him threaten or evade this time.
“I could’ve hurt you, Talia,” he said harshly, finally digging an ice pack out of the freezer and turning to face me. The fading bruises on his cheek and jaw stood out in the dim light.
I didn’t bother pointing out that he already had. It was a truth we both knew unequivocally, just like the fact that the sky was blue or grass was green.
He flicked off the tap with an angry gesture, but when he took my hand in both of his, bending my fingers a little and running his thumbs over my bruised palm, his touch was surprisingly gentle.
I kept my gaze on his face as he focused on my hand. “Finn told me.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched, but he didn’t look at me. “So?”
“Is it true?”
“Yes.”
What had I expected him to say?
No?
That this was all some new elaborate lie, some hoax to set me up? I’d known he wouldn’t do that. He believed with every fiber of his being that Charlotte Hildebrand had been responsible for his mother’s death.
“What happened?” When he refused to answer, his fingers still manipulating my hand gently, I tugged on it, almost pulling it from his grip. “Mason. Everything you did to me, you did because of this. You owe me.”
His emerald gaze flashed up to meet mine suddenly, and he looked like he was about to tell me where I could shove whatever he owed me. But instead, he remained frozen for a long moment, staring into my eyes. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
He ducked his head, and I watched him draw in several deep breaths before he finally said, “I remember you.”
“What?”
“From when we were little.” He reached for the ice pack on the counter and wrapped it around my hand, keeping his focus on his task. “More an idea of you than actual memories. You wore yellow all the time, I remember that. A little girl dressed in sunshine.”
There was something almost tender in his voice, and I held myself rigid against the sound of it, refusing to let it penetrate my heart.
“I remember your mom too, just a little. Mostly, I remember fighting. I remember her screaming at my mom. My mom crying.” His voice was tense and strained like a rubber band that might snap at any moment, and when I looked at his face, the same desperate pain I’d seen before contorted his features. “I was eight when she died, so I didn’t understand what was happening then. I just knew there was something wrong with her. She was quiet all the time. She cried all the time. And then she—”
He broke off, dragging in a harsh breath.
“Finn told me you found her,” I whispered.
He didn’t answer that with words, but his silence, the tension rippling through every muscle in his body as if he might tear apart at any second, said plenty.
A heavy silence stretched between us until finally, I spoke again.
“I don’t understand though. How do you know it was anything my mom did? She’d been gone for years by then. How do you know your mom wasn’t…”
My words trailed off. It was possible Mason’s mom had been dealing with demons completely unrelated to my own mother. Depression was a real and terrible thing. But I didn’t know how to broach that subject without sounding like I was trying to deflect blame from my mom.
“She left a note.” Mason shrugged. His voice was blank now, devoid of any emotion, as if the excess of feelings had caused a complete shutdown in his heart. “My dad didn’t even let me read it until much later, but I kept insisting until he finally showed it to me. She said your mom was right about everything. That she was horrible, ugly inside, didn’t deserve to live… It was a long list of reasons she gave for killing herself, and every one of them, your mom planted in her head.”
Against every self-preservation instinct in my body, against the fortifications I’d built up and reinforced around my heart, against logic and common fucking sense, pity rose up inside me.
“I’m sorry, Mason. You didn’t deserve to lose your mom like that.”
He didn’t say anything, just pulled the ice pack away from my hand and set it back on the counter. The cold had numbed my bruised skin and made my joints feel stiff and awkward, but I squeezed the hand that was still holding mine as hard as I could, gripping him so tight he winced.
“But I am not my mother. What she did, no matter how awful it was—it had nothing to do with me.”
He looked down at our joined hands, at the bruising grip that held us together. “I know.”
“And what you did—every single thing you did to try to punish me for my mom’s actions—you decided. No one else did that. No one made you.”
“I know.” His voice was pitched so low I almost couldn’t hear it.
My bruises ached, my fingers were going numb, and I could feel my bones scraping together as I clutched his hand. He was squeezing mine back just as hard, each of us gripping the other like an anchor in a storm.
“You made it your goal to hurt me. And if I’d been a different person, or been put in a different foster home, or let my grandma’s hate get under my skin… I could’ve ended up taking the same way out your mom did. Is that what you wanted?”
His gaze snapped up to mine, a look of wild panic flaring in his eyes, and he released my hand suddenly, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into his embrace, crushing me against him. His grip on me was so tight I could hardly move, and everywhere we touched, I could feel his body shuddering.
“No. Don’t.” His lips were in my hair, the words spoken directly into my skull, as if he could somehow plant them in my brain. “Don’t ever do that, Tal. Please. Fucking. Don’t.”
Chapter 19
Mason held me for a long time, and I didn’t try to push him away, didn’t struggle against his tight hold. I couldn’t quite bring myself to hug him back, so I rested my hands on his arms, feeling the muscles clench as hard as steel beneath my fingertips.
His heart beat heavily again
st mine, and his breath was ragged as shudders wracked his body.
Maybe I should’ve pushed him away or hit him or kneed him in the balls. But part of me needed this too, needed the support of someone else who was as fucked up by all of this as I was. We held each other like two boxers in a clinch, an embrace of exhaustion and violence that could almost be mistaken for tenderness from a distance.
Eventually, we stepped away from each other. As soon as I left his embrace, Mason turned and rested his hands on the kitchen counter, his head bowed. It was a look of utter defeat, and I gazed at him for a moment, unsure what I wanted to do.
Comfort him?
Exploit the open wound I’d found by stabbing it over and over again?
I couldn’t convince myself to do either, so I walked away and headed for the door. He turned his head slightly as I opened it, but he didn’t try to stop me.
A few fat raindrops fell from the night sky as I made my way back across campus. It hardly ever rained here, and I tilted my head up, letting the droplets of water hit my face and trail down my cheeks like tears.
My clothes smelled like Mason, like cedar and a hint of something spicy, but I didn’t even bother to change as I stumbled into my bedroom, exhaustion finally dragging me toward sleep. I crawled under the covers and pulled them up to my ears, letting darkness pull me under.
Money problems
Mom committed suicide
Mason found her body
I stared at the last sentence as I finished writing it under Mason’s name in my little notebook. The final word trailed off until it was almost illegible as the press of my pen lightened.
Those two lines weren’t just dirt on Mason and his family, knowledge that could be used against him. They were the reason for this whole thing, the flash point for the Princes’ attacks on me in the first place.
Not an excuse, not a justification.
But a reason.
At least now I knew.
Tearing my gaze away from the page, I flipped the notebook closed and slid the elastic band into place. I hadn’t slept nearly enough, and I’d been tempted to ditch my morning classes. But as soon as my alarm had gone off at seven, I’d found myself wide awake—and the last thing I wanted to do was lie in bed thinking.