He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 113

Chapter 113

Maya’s POV

Alex set me down.

Not slowly…. His feet found the floor and mine found it a second later, and we both stood in the doorway of his bedroom looking at Zara Collins standing in the middle of it.

She looked back at us

The composure was complete. That was the thing …. the absolute, unbothered quality of someone who had arranged themselves in a space and was waiting for the room to adjust to their presence rather than the other way around.

“You’re back early,” she said.

To Alex. Not to me….

Alex’s hand was still at my back.

I felt it go still…. the full arrest of someone whose body had stopped while the mind processed what the eyes were communicating.

“Zara.” His voice was the flat one. The version that contained no warmth and no anger and communicated both.” What are you doing?”

“Waiting.” She moved to the chair by the window with the ease of someone settling into a space they had assessed and found comfortable. “I let myself in. Your father gave me the gate code when he called last week.” She looked at Alex with the expression she had been wearing all week, the warm, deliberate confidence of someone who had decided they belonged. “I thought we could talk. Properly. Without an audience.”

She looked at me on the last word.

Not aggressively.

The specific, dismissive quality of someone acknowledging an obstacle rather than a person.

I had been running on empty since eleven this morning

The Mason confrontation. The corridor. The admission about the declined test and the weight of what that admission contained. Victor Ashworth in the car park and the dinner I had already agreed to and the box on the desk I hadn’t opened and the book with eleven words in it and the kiss in the study that had lasted exactly long enough to matter before this room had happened.

I looked at Zara Collins standing in Alex’s bedroom in the arrangement of someone who had decided she had a claim to it.

“Get… out,” I said.

She looked at me

The smile arrived…. the composed, slightly amused version that she had been deploying all week.

“Maya….” Alex started.

“No.” I looked at him briefly. Then back at Zara. “You’ve been in this building. In this house. In the meetings, at the dinner, in every space I move through. You have been working very carefully and very deliberately to insert

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yourself into every room that matters to me.” I kept my voice level.

The level version of something that was not level underneath. “And now you’re standing in his bedroom.”

Zara tilted her head

“I’ve known Alex for four years,” she said. “I’ve known this house for four years. My history here predates yours.” She paused. “You’ve been here for six weeks.”

“And in six weeks I have built two companies, activated a trust, and taken the chair of a board that your family has been trying to influence.” I held her gaze. “I have also been threatened, photographed without my consent, had a device planted in my home, and been followed by someone your friend Mason arranged.” I took one step forward.” So when you stand in his bedroom and tell me my history is shorter, what you’re actually telling me is that you haven’t been paying attention.”

Something moved in her expression

Not the smile this time…. something underneath it.

“You don’t know what I know,” she said.

“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me what you know. Tell me what Richard told you when he called and asked you to come back

Tell me what the arrangement is and what you’ve been promised and whether any of it has anything to do with what you actually want or whether you’ve just been useful.”

She stared at me

“Because from where I’m standing,” I said, “you came here for Alex and you’ve been used for something else, and I think you already know that and you’re choosing not to look at it directly.”

The room was very still

Alex had not moved from the doorway.

Zara’s composure had developed the first visible crack… not much, just the specific quality of someone who has been named accurately and doesn’t have the immediate response ready.

“You should be careful,” she said, and her voice had lost the warmth and the smile and was simply the real register underneath all of it. “About what you think you understand.”

“I understand enough,” I said. “Get out of his room”

The pain arrived without warning.

Not the gradual kind……. the sharp, specific kind that communicated something the body needed me to pay attention to immediately. Low, centralised, the kind that had a different quality from the ordinary discomfort of a pregnancy at this stage.

It arrived and I heard myself make a sound I hadn’t planned to make

My hand went to my stomach.

Alex was across the room before I had processed him moving.

“Maya.” His hands on my arms. His face close. “What is it….where…..”

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“It’s….” I pressed my hand flat. The pain had subsided to something less sharp but was still present, a dull insistence that hadn’t be en there five minutes ago. “I’m not sure. It was sharp.”

“Sit down.” He was already guiding me toward the bed, his hands, his attention entirely on my face.

“I’m fine…..”

“Sit down,” he said. Not harshly. The complete, focused version. “You’re sitting down.”

I sat.

He crouched in front of me, his hands on my face.

“How long has it been there?” he said.

“Just now. Just…. it was sudden.” I looked at him. “It’s less now. It’s…..”

“We’re going to the hospital,” he said.

“Alex….”

“We’re going.” He stood. Turned.

Zara was still by the window

He looked at her with an expression I had not seen before, not anger, not the controlled frustration of the past week. Something colder and more final.

“Leave,” he said.

She opened her mouth.

“Get out of my house,” he said. “Don’t use the code again. Don’t come to the building again. We’re done.”

He turned back to me

“Can you walk?” he said.

“Yes….”

He helped me up anyway.

Behind us, as we moved toward the door, I heard Zara’s footsteps…. not toward us. Away. Toward the hallway, toward the stairs.

The sound of her leaving.

My hand was pressed flat against my stomach.

The pain was quieter now, manageable, but present.

Alex’s hand was at my back.

“The car is out front,” he said. “We’re going now.”

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