by W. Winters
And now they know that I know.
My throat tightens instantly, as if a strong hand has gripped it to choke me. “You can come to me with anything, Miss Summers,” Mason’s father says, staring me straight in the eyes as he continues, “I know everyone, Jules, and I’ll be sure you’re taken care of—”
“Enough,” Mason practically growls at his father.
His father finally takes his assessing stare from me to give Mason his attention. “Just out of curiosity, Mason, what little secret did you tell our Jules?”
Mason ignores his father, taking my hand in his with a bruising force and leading me to the door. My legs are weak but I keep up with him. He rips the door open so violently I swear he nearly pulls it off the hinges.
“Go,” Mason commands me, sweeping his arm forward and I listen immediately, grateful to be getting the fuck out of here mostly unscathed.
“Bye for now, Jules,” Mr. Thatcher says to my back as I leave, and I’m grateful Mason is between us. I can’t breathe or do anything other than follow Mason’s lead until we’ve left the station. I can feel everyone watching us and my face blazes with the awareness, but fear is what keeps me moving and my eyes staring straight ahead.
“Mason,” I whimper as he braces his hand against the small of my back and leads me across the street to where he’s parked. I stare at his car, feeling as though I’m so close to safety, but knowing I’m going back to a cell.
Mason doesn’t respond but he pulls me in close, wrapping his arm around my waist as we cross the street to the parking lot. Without knowing what to think or feel, my head spins. I have to walk quickly to keep up with his purposeful strides, but I feel comforted just from his arm wrapped around me, needing his embrace.
For a moment, as Mason opens my door and waits for me to get in his car, I think there’s hope. I think I can repair the damage I’ve caused even though I’m not sure why I’m even considering it.
I’m so confused, so conflicted. The only thing I’m certain of is that if Mason hadn’t come to get me, something bad would have happened. Something to make sure I was silenced.
Foolish. I’m so damn foolish. At the thought, I struggle to breathe and I lay my head back against the seat, feeling the weight of what just happened flow through every limb. Heat flows around my skin, uncomfortably and unbearably so.
Mason shuts his door with a loud thud as he gets in and starts the car, all without sparing me a glance while he backs out and merges into traffic.
With tension pulled through every inch of me, I wait for something, for a moment to speak or for him to say something, but I’m given nothing.
“Mason?” I take a chance and say his name as the car stops at a red light. His fingers flex on the steering wheel and then his knuckles turn white as he grips it and slowly turns to look at me.
His eyes are cold, ice cold, and I instantly regret speaking at all.
“We’ll talk when we get home,” he says beneath his breath. I nod once, feeling alone and abandoned and utterly hopeless.
Mason
Forever doesn’t end,
But it also doesn’t last.
What you feel right now,
Will soon be the past.
Left only with the memories,
And the desire to hold.
But time doesn’t wait,
And even love grows old.
I would have killed them. Both the detective and the commissioner. Possibly even my father. I’ve never been so close to snapping, never. I’ve never come close to feeling that pull. Pure anger and hatred are fueling my thoughts. I’m barely contained, on the edge of something dangerous, something so dark I’ve never confronted it before. Not even that fateful day I destroyed Jules’s life. Even that wasn’t like this.
Dragging my hand down my face, I listen as my shoes smack against the hardwood floors, but then the sound is muted on the rug in front of the gray suede sofa in my living room.
“What were you going to tell them?” I ask as I pace in front of her, my gaze still focused downward.
It’s never felt colder or darker in this house before. Not to me. Even with the bright white snow reflecting light through the large modern windows on the back wall, there’s not an ounce of warmth in the room.
Ice courses through my blood, but even that’s not cold enough to take the heat from my anger.
I can’t stop moving; every muscle is coiled and ready to fight. She doesn’t know what she does to me. She has no fucking idea what she’s done. What kind of danger she’s put herself in.
“How could you?” I say. The question is menacing and it stops me in my tracks. It holds a vicious tone I can’t contain. I take a single glance up and regret it. With her beautiful blue eyes widened, Jules looks as though I’ve slapped her, flinching and her mouth dropping open, but she doesn’t answer.
“I—” she tries to speak, but can’t finish her sentence. It’s fucking infuriating. I don’t know what’s worse, how she’s impulsively made everything worse for us, or the fact that she left to turn me in. My jaw clenches so hard I nearly crack my teeth. I have to stare past her at the blanket of snow as she squirms on the sofa. “Mason, I—”
“You what?” My voice booms from my chest as my heart pounds. She would be dead if my father hadn’t called me. He could have killed her. Or have had her killed rather, so he wouldn’t have blood on his own hands. He’d have done it too, if he hadn’t wanted to toy with me. If he hadn’t wanted something to hold over my head. If he hadn’t wanted me to know that I owe him now. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
I can only imagine my father is under the impression that she knows about his involvement with Avery’s death. That I told her. That she was there to rat him out and not me.
“Fuck.” The curse lays under my breath as my pacing continues. It takes every ounce of self-control not to destroy this place.
He doesn’t know a damn thing about Jace’s murder. No one does but the anonymous stranger who sent Jules that note.
My father won’t let Jules live. I take in a ragged breath, but it doesn’t calm me.
There’s no fucking way I’ll let him touch her. She’s mine, and she’ll be my wife and mother to my children. If he dares try any of that shit with her again, I’ll destroy him. I’ll end his life so fucking miserably that he’ll be thankful when I finally slide the edge of a knife across his throat.
“Mason,” she says and fear clings to the single whispered word.
“They would have killed you, Jules.” I swallow the ball of spikes in my throat and finally look down at her glassed-over eyes. Her baby blues are full of so much emotion. “They would have killed you,” I repeat in a whisper and it’s that sickening thought that breaks the rage. It shatters into something else. Something that feels like weakness.
Jules holds my gaze, but she doesn’t answer me. Tears leak from the corner of her eyes, but Jules doesn’t acknowledge them. Her face displays an expression of sincerity. “I’m scared,” she says. She gently shakes her head and looks past me, down the hallway and avoiding eye contact. My heart clenches in my chest.
“I didn’t want any of this,” she says and her voice is raw with emotion.
I swallow thickly and tell her the simple truth, “You never should have left.”
She looks up at me with daggers in her eyes as she hisses at me without a second passing between us, “You never should have killed my husband.”
It catches me off guard for a moment, but the pure venom and hate she had only hours ago is dimmed, the stark reality of the situation taking its toll on her. I keep my eyes on hers as I tell her, “Your husband deserved to die for what he did.”
Jules’s lips part as she takes in a heavy breath, looking as if she’s going to respond, but no words come out. After a moment she looks away, finally wiping the tears from her reddened cheeks with the sleeve of her ruined sweater and sniffling.
“I don’t want to die, Mason,” she says weakly. Her chest rises and
falls with her steady breathing. “I just want to go home and I’ll never say a word.”
“You can’t go home.” My voice is hard and leaves no room for negotiation. I won’t risk putting her in danger. I don’t know what my father’s told the commissioner. I need to make it clear to him that she knows nothing about what happened. I’ll lie. I’ll tell him I hit her.
He’s always seen through my lies, though. He’s a damn good liar, and the challenge of outsmarting him has never seemed so daunting.
I could tell him the truth. I’ll tell him anything I need to in order to make him believe she’s not a threat.
“If you leave me, you’re putting yourself at risk—” I can’t finish because it’s at that moment that Jules finally breaks down. Her always composed demeanor cracks and her shoulders hunch forward as a sob wracks her body.
Any explanation dies at the back of my throat. All of my anger dissipates. She’s broken because of me. This happened because of me. I fucking hate myself.
“I’ll protect you,” I tell her. I only hesitate for a moment before taking the seat next to her. My weight causes her small body to lean into mine, and I’m surprised when she doesn’t resist. She lets me hold her for a moment as her cries get softer and she wipes the tears from beneath her eyes. I’ve craved this warmth since she found out the truth. “I promise.”
I lean forward and kiss her hair, taking in her sweet scent but it makes her withdraw. She doesn’t look at me, and the moment she has her composure back she pulls away from me.
“Is it really that bad to stay with me?”
Her body stiffens at the question, and she doesn’t answer.
“You have no other options but to stay where I tell you and do what I say. You need to convince everyone in this city that you’re mine, that everything between us is better than it’s ever been.”
“I just want to go home.” She’ll never know how much that desire damages me in the worst way. How empty and hollow her confession leaves me. “I won’t tell anyone,” she adds, peeking up through her thick lashes.
“You don’t have a choice,” I tell her as I cup her cheek in my hand. I run the rough pad of my thumb along her lush lips, and they beg me to kiss her. Her pale skin is flushed a beautiful shade of pink and everything in me wants to hold her close. I want to take her pain away; I want to remind her who she belongs to.
“You’re mine, Jules. There’s no changing that.”
Jules
Pressed against a hard wall,
No choices, no way out.
Without the air to breathe,
And only left with doubt.
There’s no way to move forward,
No will to make amends.
Nothing but what he gives me,
Trapped and at dead ends.
I’m desperate for my mother, of all things. Desperate to call her, to confess what’s happened, to plead with her to protect me. As if something so simple could save me.
I pick at the comforter on the bed and wish I had my computer or my phone. Or any way at all to contact someone.
Not a single soul has come up Mason’s driveway since he brought me back here. There are no neighbors close enough to just drop by, not that Mason’s the neighborly type. Even the mailbox is all the way at the end of the long driveway. I’m trapped in this house that’s practically a gilded cage without a damn thing to do other than write down every forsaken emotion and thought that comes to me. Time is moving slowly; the past three days have felt like a year, and all I can do is be consumed by the thoughts of how I got here. How did this become my life?
The moment I look out a window or walk toward a door, Mason’s there. Watching me, waiting to see what I’ll do. He went from being my lover and my hope, to a prison warden. Every time he enters the room, I can feel him.
Yet he’s pretending he’s not monitoring me, that he trusts I’ll behave because I’m afraid. Part of that’s true, but mostly I’m waiting, simply biding my time. I’ll be quiet and listen until I have a chance to leave him. He can’t keep me here forever.
The bathroom door opens with a soft creak, stealing me away from my thoughts as Mason steps into the bedroom from the en suite. He’s bare-chested, his tanned skin on display as he strides toward the dresser with only a towel wrapped around his waist. His demeanor is casual, as if nothing happened. As if I can live with the fact that he’s a murderer, and my life is in danger because of him and his father. If I’d known he was tied to anything at all like this, I’d never have gone home with him that first night. I’d never have flirted, I’d never have touched him, let alone fallen in love with him.
I have to bite my cheek to keep from screaming, to keep from doing something stupid as Mason turns his back to me, letting the towel drop as he selects a pair of boxers from the top drawer of his dresser. Between the multiple heartaches and chaos, loss is there. Loss of someone I thought I loved who didn’t exist. Loss of the independence I was so sure I had.
“I bought you a dress for Saturday,” he informs me matter-of-factly as he unzips a garment bag with his back to me.
My eyes flicker to the beautiful evening gown hanging on the back of the closet door. Its jewels sparkle as the light hits it; they’re sparser on top, just a faint pattern that forms the outline of an hourglass, overlaying the darker gray on the sides and absent on the light gray inlay. From the hips down, the gown is completely covered in the dazzling Swarovski crystals.
It’s stunning. I’m sure it would impress everyone at the charity event. I don’t remember which one this is; I only know that Mason wants to attend to discuss business with a number of investors and it’s an annual charity gala I’ve gone to without fail for years.
For a moment, I can only watch Mason continue with the business of getting dressed, wondering how he could even consider the two of us attending an event together. “I don’t see how I could possibly go.” I can’t imagine standing in a room smiling and playing nice when I feel like this. When I’m trapped and cornered. When I’m literally scared for my life.
Mason’s steel gray eyes pierce through me as if he heard every one of my thoughts when I look at his reflection in the cheval mirror.
“You’ve had a couple of nights to think about things. You’ll have another handful of days to come around,” he says confidently and breaks my gaze to shut a drawer, holding a pair of socks in his right hand.
“Where are you going?” I ask him, feeling a touch of hope rise in my chest at the prospect of him leaving. I just want to go home. The thought plays in my head on a loop like a broken record.
His lips press into a thin line and he turns slowly to face me, leaning back against the dresser. “Do you think it would be wise?” he asks. He hasn’t moved but somehow he seems much closer than he was a moment ago.
I feel the blood drain from my face. “What do you mean?”
“Jules, my sweetheart,” he says as he sets the clothes on top of the dresser and strides toward me. The bed dips as he sits on the edge, my heart racing from the proximity even though he doesn’t touch me. “I’m still the man I was,” he says calmly; his voice is soft and it breaks something inside of me. The smile he gives me is sad and doesn’t reach his eyes. Leaning forward, he adds, “I can practically hear what you’re thinking.”
Thud, my heart pauses, caught in a trap that snaps shut around it. I swallow and focus on calming down to pry it free from the steel bars, attempting to pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about.
My head shakes to deny the truth but he reaches out, grabbing me by the nape of the neck and my hip, holding me in place and forcing me to look at him. It’s possessive, it’s dominating and it steals my breath. He hasn’t been this close to me in days. His lips are so very close to mine. Just like my heart, I’m trapped.
“I’m not going to lose you, Jules.” He speaks with an intensity that makes the world blur around him.
“I’m not leaving,” I whisper with a shaky breath, although even I can tell it�
�s a lie. My words are just as weak as I am when it comes to him. The corner of his lips twitch as if he wants to smile and pretend I’m telling the truth, but he doesn’t.
“I’m the same man you fell in love with.” The steel gray gaze softens, begging me to understand and believe him, but I can’t. The tension is thick between us, but how can he expect me to simply forget? When I look at him, I see it all play out, over and over again.
I refuse to believe I ever knew this man, but the very thought splits my heart down the center.
I could never love a murderer. I could never be with the person who killed Jace. Pain lances through my chest, and I have to look away. As much as I wish I could turn it off and stop loving him entirely, I know that’s not a possibility either. A piece of my heart is his forever, but that only makes me hate him more.
A question begs to be asked. One I’ve thought every night since he confessed. “You knew when you saw me that first night?” I ask him with a raw voice. That’s what I simply can’t wrap my head around. He knew who I was. He knew how much he’d hurt me and ruined me. Yet it didn’t stop him.
“Knew what?” he asks, sitting easily across from me and I look him in the eyes to confront him as I say, “You knew who I was? Jace’s widow.”
He nods once.
“How could you?” I ask as my blood races and whatever took over a moment ago vanishes. It’s yet again another betrayal. “Was I a prize to you? A reward for getting away with it?” I say out of spite.
His expression changes to one I’m growing familiar with. To distaste and anger. Apparently we both feel it. “Don’t you dare.” His nostrils flare as he adds, “Don’t you dare do that to us. To what we have.”
“Had,” I say and my throat hurts as the word leaves my lips. I don’t see how I could ever forgive him or how he can expect that I would. He may be the only thing keeping me alive and standing in the way of his father silencing me, but he’ll forever be my husband’s murderer. A liar, a sinner, and ultimately someone who used me.