by Dena Christy
Mason drew his gloved fist back and slammed it into the heavy bag. The bag wobbled on its chain and he had to reach out and steady it. It only furthered his anger and frustration every time he had to do that. It would be a lot easier for him to pound out everything inside him if someone held the bag. But the few people in the gym were giving him a wide berth. And with good reason, he supposed. He was in a killing mood, and he was certain that it was evident by the look on his face.
Slam steady, slam steady, he got into that rhythm as his thoughts turned. He should’ve known that what was happening between him and Grace was too good to be true. That it had been a mirage, an illusion that he projected with his mind because it was what he wanted more than anything else in the world. But it wasn’t real. What was real was that all that was between him and Grace were secrets and lies. His bitterness was only compounded by the fact that her secrets were shared by his cousin and best friend.
He drew his fist back and slammed it into the bag, this time it didn’t move. He pulled himself from his thoughts to see Logan standing behind the bag, holding it as he looked at him steadily. Mason curled his lip back in a bitter snarl, and hit the bag as hard as he could. It only rocked slightly, which further pissed him off.
“Fuck off. You lied to me and it is taking everything inside me not to smash your face in. So do us both a favor and get lost.” Mason stared at Logan, the man he’d always thought of as his best friend first, who made no move to leave. Was he just going to stand there? Staring at him as if daring me to do his worst? “Fuck off I said.”
“No. You can either smash my face or smash this bag, but I’m not leaving. So why don't you do your worst to burn out that’s poison that in you until you’re ready to listen to what I have to say.”
With a deep snarl that drew the attention of those around him, Mason drew back his fist but instead of directing it at Logan’s face, slammed it into the heavy bag. For several long minutes all that could be heard was the slap of leather boxing gloves against the leather of the bag and Mason's grunts of exertion. The bag took the brunt of his anger, until he finally put his hands on either side of it and hung his head as sweat dripped off his forehead. The immediate rush of anger may have worn off, but the bitter poison was still there. Mason lifted his head and looked at his cousin.
“Well?”
Logan looked around the gym and then back at Mason. “You really want to do this here? I think the guys have been given enough of a show, don’t you?”
He been so intent on beating the shit of the bag that he’d forgotten that there were a few people in the gym. He glanced around to see the guys everyone were trained on him and Logan. Whatever was said between him and Logan was between him and Logan, so he turned away and walked toward his office, pulling his gloves off as he went.
Once he got into his office, he threw himself into the chair behind his desk and reached into the bottom drawer for a clean towel. He used it to wipe his face as Logan closed the door and sat across from him. His hand tightened around the fabric, bunching it into his fist as he stared at the man he trusted above all others, and he couldn’t believe he spent the last fifteen years lying to him.
“Well? You wanted to talk so talk.”
Logan looked at him steadily and calmly, as he steepled his fingers under his chin. “Are you in love with her?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Mason balled the towel in his fist and threw it aside. “She lied to me and you lied to me, and you’re going to sit here and asked me if I love her?”
“Yes because it’s important. Grace is in a bad place, and she needs you. I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t much. The rest will have to come from her, and I have a feeling that her telling you and you hearing it will be a walk through hell. So if you don’t love her, walk away now. Don’t put her through it, don’t put yourself through it.”
A feeling of stillness came over Mason, as what his cousin had said to him sunk in. Could he walk away from her? He searched inside himself for the answer, and he knew without a doubt what it was. Despite his words in Logan's office, despite telling her that they were done, he knew now that he was in too deep to walk away.
“I love her and I’m not ready to walk away. Is that what you want me to say?”
“Only if you mean it. Be sure that you mean it, because if you don’t and you make her tell you, it will break her if you walk away after.”
A strange feeling unfurled in Mason’s stomach, one which he could only identify as dread. What the hell was her secret, and why would telling him make him not love her? He had no idea what the answer to that question was, and right now he didn’t need to. What was important right now was that Logan tell him what he’d been keeping from him for fifteen years.
“Are you going to tell me what you know? Or are we going to sit here and talk in riddles all day?”
“Fifteen years ago something happened to Grace that made her need to run away from East Brook. I don’t know what it was, she would never tell me. All she would say was that her stepfather knew about you and her, and that she had to leave in order to protect you.”
“Why did she need to protect me? Her stepfather knowing about us wouldn’t hurt. Sure he might’ve been pissed off, but there was no way he could do anything about it unless I stepped in East Brook.” Cold Bay and East Brook may mingle with each other now, but fifteen years ago things were very different. Territories between the packs were very well defined, and there was no way that Grace’s stepfather would’ve set foot in Mike Sawyer's territory, and there was no way that Mason would’ve stepped foot in Grace's stepfather’s territory. There had to be more to the story than what Logan was telling him.
“She told me that her stepfather had found a way to lure you into East Brook, one that you wouldn’t be able to turn away from, and if you did, Titus would kill you. I don’t know what the lure was, I don’t know if it would’ve worked. But what I did know was that she was terrified, and when she told me that the only way to save you was for her to leave East Brook and never come back, I believed her. We both knew that there was no way you would leave it alone unless there was a clean break between you and her. It was her idea to tell you that there was another guy. I didn’t think you would believe her, but of course you did.”
Of course he believed her, because back then there was a part of him that couldn’t believe he was so lucky to get a girl like her. He could see now that if she told him that she wanted to break up with him for any other reason he would not have believed her. He loved her all those years ago, and he been sure that she loved him. Up until the moment that she called him, telling him that she left East Brook so she could be with another man.
“No wonder it felt so sudden, like it came out of nowhere. I was so sure of her, so sure that she loved me as much as I loved her that when she told me there was another guy it blindsided me. It felt like she ripped my heart out and stomped on it. Maybe that was the point. If she needed me to stay out of East Brook and not come after her than that was the way to do it. I’m guessing you helped her leave?”
Logan nodded. “She came to me with the clothes on her back and not much else. I got her a bus ticket and gave her all the money I’d managed to saved that summer. And for fifteen years I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for you to find out that I helped her lie to you that summer. If you want to be mad at me go ahead. Just know that I didn’t do it for shits and giggles, or out of any kind of cruelty or malice, I did it to protect you and her. Something bad happened to her to send her running to me with nothing. I did what I thought was right at the time.”
Mason looked down at his hands as he thought about what Logan told him. He knew that unlike his father, there wasn’t a malicious bone in Logan's body. Whatever he had done fifteen years ago he done for a reason, and Mason believed him when he said that he done it to protect them. But what the hell happened to Grace that summer that made her run away from home and everything she’d known, and
still had the power to terrify her.
“So what sent her run into your office today?”
“She went out to the house alone, and Titus came to her and threatened her. After months of lurking around he finally showed up and revealed his hand. All that she would tell me was that he wants her to leave you and threatened to expose whatever the secret is.”
So whatever Grace’s secret was, Titus was wrapped up in it. A deep anger went through him when he remembered how terrified she’d been when she came in to the bar. She must’ve come straight from her confrontation with Titus, and instead of being able to set aside all his baggage, he'd only made things worse for her by coming down on her like a ton of bricks over a fifteen-year-old secret.
“I sent her home.” Logan held his hand up as Mason shot to his feet. “Rafe is with her, and he is to stay with her until you get there.”
Even with Rafe watching over her at his house, Mason knew that he wouldn’t be able to settle until she was sitting in front of him. Until he could see for himself that she was safe. He looked at Logan, who gave him a nod of understanding, and he strode out of his office to go to his woman.
Simultaneous feelings of relief and dread went through Grace when she heard the distinct rumble of Mason’s truck pulling into the driveway. Logan must have kept his word and gone to talk to him, and now the moment that she never wanted to come was here. She had no choice now but to talk about what she’d carefully kept hidden away deep inside herself. The fear she’d manage to hold back after her talk with Logan came back to swamp her, but she knew that if she gave into it she would be lost. Too long had she harbored this deep black thing inside her, and she now knew that if she didn’t get it out it would kill any chance she had of having what she wanted. And what she wanted most was a future with Mason.
She sat on the couch waiting for him, focused on pulling in slow breaths through her nose and out through her mouth. Breathing in and breathing out, that was all she could do as she sat there and heard the rumble of Mason’s voice as he spoke to Rafe who stood guard on the porch. The heavy sound of his boots on the porch sounded like the blows of a hammer, and she flinched with each one. She curled her fingers together on her lap as she watched the door, and Mason walked into the house. She searched his face for some sign of the anger that had covered his expression when he walked out of Logan’s office, but if it was there, it was well hidden.
He came toward her and sat down, and there was about one cushion’s worth of distance between them, but to her it felt like a much wider gulf. And if she wanted to bridge that distance she needed to dredge up a hell that she never wanted him to experience.
“Logan came to talk to me, and he told me his part of it. I know you didn’t leave fifteen years ago to be with another man. Maybe if I hadn't been so hurt and angry then I would have seen it for the lie it was, but I didn’t. The time for lies is over, you need to tell me the truth of what happened that summer and you need to tell me all of it.” His eyes were steady as he looked at her, and her lower lip trembled for a moment. He must’ve seen just how hard starting this thing was, because he reached out and untangled her fingers, taking her hand in his. She clung to him like a lifeline. “What is Titus holding over you?”
“In order to know that you need to know the story about a girl who fell in love during the summer just after she turned eighteen. The young man she fell in love with was from a rival pack, and from the second she saw him at the lake the night they met, she knew he was the one for her. It was wrong for them to be together because the hatred between their two alphas ran deep. But they couldn’t keep away from each other, and they spent that summer sneaking around to be together in any way they could.”
Grace took a deep breath and let it out. This was the easy part of the story, the part he knew all about. What was to come was the part that he didn’t know, and the part that she never wanted him to find out.
“It was the same for the young man. As soon as he saw her she was it for him. She was his first love. And many years later she is still his love. So whatever it is that she needs to tell him, all she needs to know is that no matter what it is she has to say, as long as she loves him in return, his love for her won’t change.”
A sob came out of her, and Grace looked down at her lap and swallowed. He loved her, but would it be able to survive what she had to tell him? There was only one way to know, and she hoped he was right, because things had gone too far to turn away now.
“Things might have been different if my father hadn’t died, if my mother hadn’t turned to his second in command and helped him become alpha. My stepfather was not the alpha that my father was, and his hatred of Cold Bay and all things associated with it only drove the rivalry between the packs into a much darker place than it was before. I knew that if he ever found out about us that there would be hell to pay, but even I could not have guessed just how steep the price was.” She glanced up at him, and he gave her hand a squeeze. He must have sensed that if he interrupted her now she would never be able to get through this.
“That summer was the most perfect summer I’d ever experienced but when it went bad it went bad fast. It started when I found out that I was pregnant.” Her voice faltered on that last part, and the only reaction he gave was a slight widening of his eyes. He was smart enough to know that if there had been a baby that summer, something must have happened to it since there was no evidence of it now. “I had only just found out, and I was excited and scared at the same time. I knew that we loved each other, but we were both so young and not exactly in a position to start a family.”
Grace licked her lips for a second, and it was like the words she had to say were stuck in the middle of her chest. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. His eyes were soft, and seeing his love for her shining in them was almost her undoing. What would happen when she told him the rest of it and that look died?
“Tell me what happened, Grace. Did you run away because you were pregnant and gave the baby up for adoption and are afraid to tell me?”
Oh God, it was much worse than that but she knew she had to tell it. She wished that that was the reason she’d run away, but the truth was much darker.
“By the time I ran away there was no baby.” Grace drew in a deep shuddering breath and the pain of it all swamped her. The only way she was going to get through this, to tell him everything, would be if she shoved it away in a corner deep inside her, where it had lived for fifteen years. “My stepfather found out about us and he knew about the baby too. I have a feeling now that I know who informed him, but at the time I didn’t know how he found out. All I knew was that he knew I’d been with you that summer and that I was pregnant as a result.
“I was surprised when he confronted me, because he wasn’t mad like I expected him to be. He said that it would be dealt with, and that I wasn’t to tell my mother about it until he’d prepared her for it. I should have known that it was all a carefully crafted ruse to fool me into complacency but I was just so relieved that he wasn’t mad that I forgot just how bad he was. I found out how he planned to deal with it when he took my mother away for a weekend get away and I was left alone at home.”
Grace tried to swallow past her dry throat several times, and as if seeing her struggle Mason let go of her hand and left the room. When he came back he had a glass of ice water which he handed to her and she downed the contents. He sat back down beside her, and she noticed that he was much closer to her than he had been before. His body was facing hers, with their knees touching and he clasped both her hands in his.
“What happened when you were home alone?” There was a deep quality to his voice, which belied the soft steady look he was giving her. There was steel in that voice, and it was the sound of a man who was prepared to hear something that he didn’t want to but knew that he needed to. And for both their sakes, she knew that she needed to tell it as much as he needed to hear it.
“Titus came calling. There is a reason that he was my stepfather’s enfor
cer, and that the remaining members of East Brook live in terror just at the sound of his name. He did every bit of my stepfather’s dirty work, even before he became the alpha. I think it was Titus who killed my father to make room for Grant to have his time as alpha.” Unfortunately she could never prove what she suspected, and it didn’t matter now. Titus had other crimes that were more relevant to her and Mason. “It was just after dark when he came around, and it was dawn by the time I ran away into the woods. Grant wanted to make sure that I never carried that baby to term and Titus was the tool that he used to make sure it happened.”
“He wanted to force you to change into your wolf form, so that the baby would be lost, didn’t he?” There was a wealth of understanding in the deep rumble of his voice, and he moved his thumb in soothing circles over one of her hands. “Tell me what he did, Grace.”
“He toyed with me at first, telling me that all I needed to do was turn into a wolf and he’d leave me alone. That nothing would happen to me and that life could go on just as before. But I refused, and then he used his belt on me. And still I refused. His fists came next, and still I refused to be broken and bent to his will. I thought I was strong, that I could live with whatever pain he inflicted on me. But I was very wrong. He raped me, and I couldn’t hold it back. He sat on the sofa, watching me with pure hatred and malice in his eyes as I lay naked and bleeding on the floor in front of him, and it broke me. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t resisted when my wolf side rose inside me to spare me from further pain and to help me heal. I did what he wanted, I changed into a wolf and I killed our baby.”
Grace dragged her hands away from his as his grip went lax, and she used them to cover her face as she sobbed out her pain and remembered grief. Her secret was out now. She hadn’t been strong enough to save their baby and now he knew it. She braced herself for what she knew was coming. How could he love her now that he knew her deepest shame?