Page 170 of Deacon

A humorless laugh escaped Mason. “Well, actually... we both are.” Whatever he saw on my face killed the laugh quickly.

“He said we understood each other because we both saw the same thing. That you didn’t know what was good for you. That you kept circling back to men who were bad for you because some part of you mistook chaos for love.” Mason looked at me with terrible earnestness. “He said together we could give you something better. Something stable. Something real.”

I let the silence sit. His expression hardened under it. “That’s not fair.”

“No?” I asked. “What would be fair, Mason? You and Jude deciding for me who I belong to? Turning yourselves into some noble little rescue mission because neither of you could stand not being chosen?”

His nostrils flared. “That’s not what this is.” Anger finally pushed through the wounded expression, but underneath it I could see panic as his version of us started coming apart.

“Then what is it?” I held his gaze while he searched for an answer that would let him keep believing himself. He found nothing clean enough to save the story.

His voice softened. “I love you.” Real hurt filled his face, which somehow made him more frightening because he still believed the word should matter more than everything around it.

“No.” The word came out stronger than I felt. “You wanted me. There’s a difference.” I knew what love looked like when it hurt, and this still wasn’t it.

Something needy showed through. “I would’ve taken care of you,” he said. He offered care like proof, not understanding that the offer itself had never been the problem.

“I never asked you to.” I knew what care looked like. It did not erase the person being cared for or make permission optional.

“You shouldn’t have had to ask.” He sounded certain, and that certainty exposed everything.

I shook my head. “And there it is.” The thing underneath every excuse had finally said itself out loud, and Mason still looked like he thought I was the one missing the point.

He frowned. “What?” He genuinely didn’t understand, and that frightened me more than anger would have.

“The part where none of this was ever really about me. It was about how I made you feel. How I disappointed you. How I didn’t choose you. How the two of you turned that into some noble story about wanting better for me instead of what it really was.” I stepped closer. “Entitlement.”

His jaw jumped. “I’m trying to explain.” He sounded frustrated, as if the failure belonged to my understanding instead of his choices.

“No. You’re trying to make it sound prettier than it is.”

Mason started pacing again. “You don’t understand what it did to me after you cut things off.” The story he had built was coming apart faster than he could repair it.

“I’m standing in a house I was lured to with my daughter’s phone, Mason. I do not care what it did to you.” Fear was back beneath my anger now, colder because the person who had brought me here was still unaccounted for.

He dragged both hands down his face. “Because this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.” The admission changed the air between us. There had been a plan, even if this part of it had gone wrong.

“Then tell me how it was supposed to happen.” His hesitation frightened me more than his confession.

“He said you’d come here because you were ready.” His voice had gone low, almost embarrassed, and his eyes dropped before returning to mine.

“Ready for what?” I already hated the shape of the answer forming in my head.

Mason looked at me with terrible, sincere hurt. “To stop fighting. To let us love you right.” The sentence sounded rehearsed, something he had believed long before I reached his porch.

The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Somewhere deeper in the house, a vent clicked on, pushing warm air through a room that suddenly felt too small. If Mason hadn’t sent the messages, Jude had known Jade was missing and had known exactly how to use it.

I looked toward the front door, then back at Mason. “Call him,” I said. If Jude answered, maybe I could finally see how much of this Mason understood.

He blinked. “What?” The request caught him off guard enough that his whole posture changed, and I watched that reaction more closely than the words.

“Call Jude. Right now. Put him on speaker.” I watched his face instead of the hand near his pocket.

His expression tightened. “That won’t help.” He didn’t ask why or tell me Jude had nothing to do with this. He only resisted.

“Do it.” I kept my voice low. The anger had cooled into something steadier now.

His eyes flicked away. “He’s handling something.” The vagueness of it sharpened every nerve in my body. I suddenly wanted to know exactly what something meant.