Page 75 of Man of Lies

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Yeah.”

Before I could talk myself out of it, I brushed my fingers along the stubble of his jaw. His skin was warm under my touch, and he allowed me to turn his face toward mine.

“Tell me you’ll come back,” I said quietly.

Silas’s gaze didn’t waver. But the silence stretched long enough to tell me what was coming.

“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll have left to offer if I do.”

“That’s not good enough.”

He flinched like the words hurt and sucked in a deep breath. “I know,” he said hoarsely.

I looked away first.

We’d survived the crash, but that didn’t mean we’d figured out how to sort the wreckage and rebuild.

Eventually, I rose, knees cracking before they let me straighten. I grabbed the folded blanket from the foot of the bed and shook it out slowly, laying it over him with more care than I’d realized it would betray.

His eyes followed the motion, but he didn’t say a word.

“I’ll let the nurse know you’re awake,” I croaked, backing away.

“Mason—”

My name stopped me halfway to the door. I turned.

He held my gaze…but he didn’t say a damn thing. I didn’t blame him. What was there left to say?

I nodded. Once. Controlled. Contained.

Then I walked out, wishing like hell that love alone had ever been enough to solve a thing.

Chapter Thirty-One

MASON

Sweat rolleddown my spine as I leaned over the Ducati’s frame, both arms buried elbow-deep in its guts. The cracked fairing was propped against the wall, and one mirror was tucked in a box of salvageable parts. Half the tail section was missing.

Gideon said it looked like something that lost a fight with God. I didn’t disagree.

We weren’t talking much. The heat had sucked away any energy we had to speak. It clung to the oaks and the bones of the old barn behind Eden, which we used as a makeshift shop. The cicadas kept up enough conversation for both of us.

Gideon worked the way he prayed: methodical and silent. I wasn’t praying. I was just trying to keep my hands busy long enough not to think about how hollow the days had felt since the hospital. Since I walked out of that room and didn’t look back.

Since Silas.

The world I’d built over a lifetime—controlled and squared off at the corners—should’ve snapped back into place by now. I’d thrown myself into work the way I always did, buried myselfin boxes of old judicial case records for Colton, hoping the structure would hold. But it didn’t. Not really. Everything I touched felt thinner somehow.

The meaning was gone…or maybe it had never been there to begin with, and Silas was the one who’d helped me realize it.

Every morning on the way in, I couldn’t resist driving past the Dead End. I could’ve taken a different route, but I didn’t. It had been closed since Silas flew out. The windows were dark and boarded, and it already looked like the kind of place teenagers would dare each other to break into on a Friday night.

Like the man who’d once lit it up with nothing but a crooked smile and a cigarette had never existed.

He hadn’t called or texted, but I didn’t blame him. The Bureau was probably raking him over the coals…if he was still with them at all. Besides, what was left to say? We’d gutted ourselves in that hospital room…and still, it hadn’t been enough.

Still, that damned aching lump in my throat showed up every time I thought about it. I’d swallowed it so many times it felt like habit now. And still, it didn’t stop hurting.

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