He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 127

Chapter 127

Alex’s POV

My father called for the discussion at seven.

Not a request…. a surnmons, delivered through my mother… She had looked at me with the expression she wore when she knew what was coming and had already decided her role was to make sure the furniture survived it.

I had gone to the study.

He was standing when I came in.

The standing was information…. my father sat for conversations he expected to resolve themselves and stood for the ones he had already decided he needed to win.

“The wedding stops,” he said.

Not should stop. Stops

I looked at him.

“Until the test results,” he continued. “Until the story is managed and the questions are answered and the family’s name is not attached to a scandal that a gossip blog can move in forty minutes.” He held my gaze. “It’s not a permanent stop. It’s a pause…. A reasonable, defensible, professionally sound pause.”

“No,” I said.

The word arrived before the full sentence had assembled, which was accurate to how I felt about it.

“Álex….”

“No,” I said again. “We’re not pausing.”

He looked at me with the expression he used when he had expected pushback and was now deciding how much weight to put behind his position.

“The family’s reputation….”

“The family’s reputation is not diminished by continuing to plan a wedding,” I said. “It’s managed by handling the actual source of the story, which is Mason Hargrove, and by the DNA result, which is going to be unambiguous, and by conducting ourselves in the way we have always conducted ourselves…. with complete disregard for people who plant stories in blogs for personal reasons.”

“You’re moving too fast.”

“I’ve been waiting for this for ten years,” I said. “I’m moving at exactly the right speed.”

He looked at me

The specific quality of a man recalibrating.

“She’s not ready,” he said.

“That’s not your assessment to make”

“She’s been in your life for six weeks….”

“She’s been in my life for ten years,” I said. “The visible portion is six weeks. Those are different things and you

1/3

+25 Benus

know the difference because I told you the difference years ago and you chose not to listen.”

The study was quiet in the way rooms went quiet when things were being said that had been waiting to be said.

He moved to the window.

“She brings chaos,” he said.

“The chaos is brought by the people around her,” I said. “Mason, who has spent three months refusing to accept that he lost. You, who invited Zara to this house without telling me. The people connected to her father’s death, who are still actively managing what gets known and when.” I kept my voice level. “Maya is not the source of any of it. She is the person who keeps responding correctly to every single thing that arrives…..”

He turned from the window.

“You are blinded,” he said

“I am clear,” I said.

“That’s the same thing, from the outside.”

“Then the view from the outside is wrong.”

He looked at me with the expression I had been receiving since childhood….

“She will leave,” he said. “She left one marriage….”

“She left a marriage that was designed to fail,” I said. “Signed documents she was told were a business filing. Three pregnancies she was blamed for. Eight years of a man who told her she was nothing and replaceable.” I looked at him.

“She didn’t leave. She survived. There is a difference.”

“And you’re certain she won’t do the same to you.”

“I’m certain I am not Mason Hargrove,” I said. “Yes.”

He folded his arms.

The posture of someone who had reached the point where the argument was no longer about facts and was about conviction, and who understood that conviction couldn’t be debated.

“The scandal will spread,” he said. “The board members who follow reputation rather than governance will start asking questions. The investors who came in after the takeover will start reassessing. The family name will be attached to a story about paternity doubt and a rushed wedding and a woman who arrived in your life through someone else’s divorce.”

“The family name will also be attached to the resolution of that story,” I said

“When the result comes back unambiguous and the wedding proceeds and the chaos turns out to have been engineered by a man who couldn’t accept losing.” I held his gaze. “That’s the story I’m interested in being part of.

He looked at me.

Long enough that I understood he had reached the end of his available arguments and was deciding what to do with the end.

2/3

⚫25 Bonus

“You have always been stubborn,” he said.

“I learned it somewhere,” I said.

Something moved in his expression. Not softening….. the specific, involuntary quality of a man recognising something in his son that he could not fully object to because it was his.

He turned back to the window.

“The Zara situation,” I said. “It ends. You stop calling her. You stop inviting her. Whatever you believed you were/ doing for my benefit…. it’s done.”

He said nothing.

“Dad”

I waited until he looked at me. “I understand what you think you were protecting. I know you were trying to protect it because you love me and because you believe protecting things is what fathers do.” I kept my voice level. “But you’re protecting me from the wrong thing. And in doing it, you’ve been making the thing I’m actually choosing harder to hold.”

He looked at me.

“She’s going to be my wife,” I said. “She’s going to be the mother of my child. She is already the person I have chosen, and that choice was made a long time ago and it is not changing.” I held his gaze. “I need you to decide whether you’re going to be part of that or whether you’re going to stand at the window and be right about it.”

The study was very still

His jaw was set.

“Then don’t blame me,” he said, “when she destroys everything you are trying to protect.”

I looked at him

At my father, who loved me in the specific, flawed way of someone who had confused protection with control for so long the two had become the same thing.

“All right,” I said.

I walked out.

COIN BUNDLE: get more free bonus

Comments

J

Support

Share

GET IT

3/3