Page 119 of Kade

Beltraine, Axel, and Steele. Cautious and confused expressions were on all three of them. Guarded too.

I tried to give them a reassuring smile, but I knew it fell flat.

“Mom?” Maddy asked, her voice dropping.

Her heart clenched because she’d resorted to the same voice she used when she was a little girl. She was scared. My little girl who was convinced she was some sort of sociopath. Her voice trembled in fear. “What’s going on?”

Mason cleared his throat.

She looked his way. “Dad?”

There was a hallway that separated the others from where Mason stood, but he heard them approaching and I held his gaze. His nostrils flared. His eyes met mine, holding mine for a moment, before a wall slammed into place.

No… I ached at seeing that expression on his face.

It’d been so long since I saw it.

I hadn’t realized till now that I never missed it. Not once. I wished I’d never have to see it again, but here it was.

My heart thumped hard in my chest, and with it, I reeled back in time to when I was Maddy’s age. When being numb or rageful were the only two emotions that got me through life.

“What’s going on?” Beltraine asked the question, stepping forward as their leader. His voice was also hoarse, but that was from all the vomiting he’d done before going to the hospital.

I ignored him. I ignored all of them, including my daughter and Max. A bitter laugh slipped from me as I addressed Mason. “I thought we were done with this?”

I had tunnel vision on my husband. Everything else was pushed to the back, including the gasp I heard from my daughter. She hadn’t moved a muscle. Nor had I, but suddenly, she was a mile away.

The mask lifted from Mason’s face, but only just barely. I got a hint of an apology, and that sealed everything inside of me.

I began shaking my head and took a step back. No.

No.

I wasn’t going to deal with this. Not anymore. My ghosts were gone. My mother was dead. I had no other skeletons in the closet, but Mason continued to hold my stare.

Whateverthiswas, whatever he was bringing into the house, it had to do with me.

If it’d been him, he wouldn’t be looking as if he’d rather cut out his own heart than deliver what news he had. If it’d been about the kids, he wouldn’t still be in the doorway. Anyone else, he would’ve called or said it to me directly. There’d be none of this premonition heartbreak.

Maddy was speaking, but I couldn’t pull myself out of this trance.

Mason continued to look only at me, and I did the same, and dammit, my eyes watered as tears slid down my face.

I was going to get my heart broken.

Mason saw the realization land with me and started for me. “Sam,” he said.

I shook my head, holding up a hand. “No. Just—” My voice broke. I needed a second. A fucking second. I was a mother, goddammit. Pulling myself out of the trance, Maddy was at my side, tugging on my arm. “Mom! MOM!” She was yelling, in my face, trying to get my attention. “Mom?” she whimpered.

“Maddy,” Max tried to soothe her, pulling her into his arms.

She evaded his hold, not moving an inch from my side.

I looked over our daughter’s head and asked her father, “Does she need to be here?”

“What? Be here for what? She is me, right?” She was looking between us as Mason came closer. He could now see the other boys, who had drawn closer as well. A new hardness cemented over his face, but he softened it as he looked at Maddy. “It’d be better if she wasn’t—” He glanced at Max, who’d been followingeverything with a keenness that belonged to someone twice his age.

He gave us both a brisk nod. “Maddy, let’s go to your room.”

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