Chapter 15 - Bryce
The next morning, I woke up feeling groggy and heavy, as if the toll of the day before had truly taken a hit. Curled up in a ball on the double bed in the guest room, Cassie at my side, I blinked up at the window, where the curtains were open. Sunlight streamed through, bright and blinding.
With a heavy heart, I dragged myself to the kitchen. Life didn’t stop just because my heart was broken, but I knew I couldn’t stay in Honeycreek. I had been a fool to think I could, to trust Mason once more. I knew I should have kept my distance, but I had fallen back into a trap I had set for myself. I had returned to Mason in body and trust—only to be left by him once again.
I wanted to have been held, to be comforted, for him to say he would never leave my side again. The wolf inside me howled for her alpha, while the other part of me was just angry and exhausted.
But it was my life.
Every time I had fallen down, it had been me to get myself back up. I had never sat around waiting for someone else to scrape me off the floor. I had always known that I couldn’t count on Mason—on anyone like him, on anyone in the pack, or even in this town, except for June.
The thought of leaving her behind gutted me, but what could I do? Now that Mason knew for sure he had a daughter, would he come looking for me? Part of me thoughtno, because he hadn’t stayed when I’d asked him to yesterday. Maybe his running away was the biggest message I needed to see: he didn’t want to be a part of Cassie’s life, or mine.
This wasmylife.
I paced the kitchen, knowing I couldn’t go to Cassie unless I had a plan. I had no car, but—Jackson was out. Part of me wondered why he hadn’t come home if he had found out that Mason knew. Maybe Jackson didn’t know. Maybe Mason had fled and isolated, gone to the others in the pack, talked about me, laughed.
She was just the fat bitch of the town. You always need one, but you didn’t need her in your life,Mason. In my panic, my mind conjured a thousand terrible things they would all have said. Through the walls, I felt as though the whole pack watched me, out of sight to me, but I could feel it. Ifeltwatched.
Turning my back on the kitchen windows, I walked back upstairs, gently waking my daughter up. I was already moving by the time she grumbled and sleepily blinked awake.
“Mommy?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.
“I’m sorry to wake you, baby, but we have to go, okay?” I kept my voice as calm as I could. She didn’t need a panicked mom; she needed a leader. Whatever strength I had left, I maintained it for Cassie.
“Where are we going? Are we going out with the wolf man?”
“No,” I told her, giving her a weary smile. “We’re…” I looked around for her backpack and my duffel bag. Everything else could be left behind for now. Just some clothes, essentials, and something to keep Cassie distracted—yeah, that was all I needed. “We’re going on a little trip back to White Bay. I know you’ve been… you’ve been…” My speech trailed off as I hunted the room, tossing things into her backpack, half-distracted. “You’ve been missing it, right?”
“I have, but, well, I like it here. Aunty June was teaching me how to spot constipation.”
I halted. “Spot what?”
“The stars. She said they make patterns.”
Her misspeak was a brief reprieve in a moment of confusion, and I loosened a laugh. It slowed me down, got me over to the bed to sit on the edge with her. I was trying to plan, think ahead, and comfort her, all while needing to be hurried to pack up before Mason tried to come here to speak to me.
As if he would, I thought.
But… for his own ego, I thought perhaps he might.
Shutting down that worry, I focused on my daughter’s confusion. Smoothing out the wrinkle in her brow with my thumb, I gave her a small smile that I knew didn’t look convincing enough. Cassie was sharp, always had been, and always saw through my attempts to mask the harsher parts of her life.
“Constellations,” I corrected her finally, blinking back into focus and moving around the room again. “And I know you like Aunty June, but she can come visit us, okay?”
I didn’t know if that was entirely true yet. I needed to say whatever I had to in order to get her to move with me.
“Mommy, where did the wolf man go?” Her voice was so quiet that it stopped me in my tracks while bundling some of her t-shirts into her backpack.
I froze.If this is how you hate me, then God, Bryce, hate me forever. His words from the cave sent a shudder through me. Except I couldn’t—I couldn’t let him in only to be abandoned again. I shook it off.
“He’s… he’s busy,” I answered.
I turned to Cassie again, finding her large, blue eyes widened and fixed on me. There was a sad pull to her mouth when she looked at her bag in my hands, and then at me. How could she have found peace in this place after only a week when I’d raised her in White Bay all her life?
Because a part of her knows she’s home, where her parents are. Where her family is. I tampered down that other voice in my head, ignored the guilt of taking her away from her uncle, and her newfound aunt, and the life I had already uprooted her to come to. More shame hit me. I had let Mason stay in her life, be around her. I didn’t stop him from starting to bond with her, and now Cassie would go through the very thing I had feared: a father who did not want her.
I should have known better; now, my daughter would face the consequences, too.
