Page 105 of High Sea Seduction

“Problems?” Zach enquires.

I veer toward him. “No.”

She isn’t in trouble—financially or health-wise. I’ve made sure to keep an eye on her and my mother since my father died three years ago. Seven is also programmed to alert me if anything happens. Besides those parameters for keeping an eye on them, I consider myself free from obligation to Cassie and my mother.

“My ex-wife’s definition of urgent and mine vastly differ.”

“Are you sure?”

I spin around at the softly worded question.

Keely is framed in the doorway, her beautiful face pale and drawn. That air of fragility I saw in Montauk is back, and the eyes that track me as I close the gap between us are a dark, haunted green.

“What?” I ask, forgetting what she said as I’m confronted by the feeling I’ve only ever felt once before in my life. Hopelessness.

“I said are you sure your definition of urgent and hers are that different?”

I shake my head in confusion. I reach out to touch her hand, but she jerks away.

I ball my hand into a fist and lower it to my thigh. “What are you talking about?”

She dismisses Daniel with a nod and walks into the room. I vaguely register Bethany enter and cross to her fiancé’s side. Or that they exchange a whispered argument before Zach leads her out.

“Cassie called me.”

That jars in a way that unnerves me even more. “Why would she do that? She doesn’t know you.”

A frigid little smile touches her mouth. “Stop underestimating the people around you, Mason. You’re not the only one who knows how to track another human being.”

I search her eyes in a last, desperately futile attempt to save what’s coming. Not so long ago, I proudly boasted that I have nothing worth salvaging and therefore nothing to live for. Now everything I’ve flung away in my grief and murderous despair comes flooding back. I feel my heart beat, my lungs fill, my soul raise its head and condemn me for abandoning it.

“You know,” I rasp through lips that want to beg for every single act of cruelty I’ve ever perpetuated.

Ravaged green eyes meet mine. “That when you caught up with Peterson, you kidnapped him and kept him locked in a cage for ninety days with just enough food and water to keep him alive? Yes, I know.” Her voice shakes with echoes of her own tortured past, and I die a million agonizing deaths in the face of her pain.

“Keely…” I grab her hands, but they’re cold and almost lifeless. I rub them between mine, but she just stares at me.

“Did you torture him?”

The poison in my blood bleeds into my stomach and sickens it. “Don’t ask me that.”

“I’m asking, Mason. You can choose to answer truthfully, or you can lie.”

Bile rises higher and I swallow several times before I can speak. “I wanted answers. I couldn’t accept that his illness was the sole reason he took my son.”

“And did you? Get your answers? Or do you go back to the mental institution he was sent to, once a year, to demand more answers?”

“You already know the answer to that, or you wouldn’t know what to ask.” My fingers scramble up to cup her shoulders, and I compel her to look at me. “But I can’t explain to you the hell of living with this every day, of knowing it’s my fault my son is no longer with me. Not until you have a child of your own.”

She shakes her head. “You’re wrong. I do know,” she murmurs hollowly.

I feel a little hope when her hand lifts toward me. But it hangs between us, then drops as her face convulses and a dry sob rips from her throat.

“Baby, please, if you know… if you have any inkling of what I feel, then don’t write me off. Tell me what I can do to fix this. I know you think I’m a monster?—”

Her teary laughter cuts me off. “Trust me, I know what real monsters look like. Actually, no I don’t.” Her self-flagellation flays me. I move to tug her into my arms, but she pulls away and folds her arms around her middle. “I don’t know what my monsters look like, and I’ve never wanted to know. What sort of person does that make me?”

I hesitate, then attempt to save the life I can see slipping away from me. “There’s no right or wrong way to deal with what happened to you. You wanted to put what happened to you behind you. But… if you ever want answers, I can help.”

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