He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 139

Chapter 139

Maya’s POV

Detective Reeves left at nine-fifteen.

The family room emptied after him…. Rivaldi had gone to coordinate with the legal team, Catherine had been persuaded by Olive to eat something in the hospital cafeteria, and rest.

I sat in the chair beside his door

Watched the medical staff move through their scheduled checks with the professional precision of people who had a methodology for this and were applying it.

The file was in my bag…

Not the full file… Reeves had kept that. What he had left me was the photograph and a card with his direct number and an instruction to call if anything occurred to me that hadn’t been covered in the past

two hours.

I looked at the corridor….

I was very tired.

Mason appeared at nine-forty.

Not unexpected….. I had understood, from the shape of the situation, that he would find his way here eventually. The hospital was public enough to provide cover and connected enough to the story that his presence could be framed as concern rather than something else.

He looked at me

I looked at him.

“You should be somewhere else,” I said.

“Probably,” he said. He sat in the chair across then corridor…. the one that existed for family members who needed to be adjacent to a room without being in it. “I wanted to see that you were all right”

“I’m not all right,” I said. “Alex is unconscious in the room behind me and I’ve spent the past three hours being interviewed by a detective.” I held his gaze. “But I’m functional.”

“That’s more than most people would be,” he said.

I said nothing…

He looked at the floor

“You’ve been through too much,” he said. “All of this…. the company, the investigation, the family pressure. All of it was too much for one person.” He paused. “And none of it was what you deserved.”

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I looked at the corridor

“Mason….”

“I know,” he said. He held up one hand. Not defensive, the gesture of someone acknowledging a boundary before it needed to be stated. “I know.”

He was quiet for a moment

Then he was not.

“What if it had been different?” he said. His voice had shifted….

I looked at him.

“That’s not a useful question,” I said

“I know it isn’t,” he said. “I’m asking it anyway.”

“Mason.” My voice carried the tone that was not unkind and was completely clear. “What you and I were was what it was. I’ve made peace with that. I need you to make peace with it too”

He looked at the floor.

“I’ve been thinking about the corridor,” he said. “What I told you about the test. About the losses.” He looked up. “I should have told you years ago. I’ve been sitting with what that means….. what I allowed to happen and I can’t….”

“That conversation happened,” I said. “And I acknowledged it. And I mean it when I say it mattered to hear it.” I held his gaze. “But it doesn’t change where we are. And it doesn’t give you access to a

conversation I’m not having.”

He looked at me…

At the ring on my hand.

The ring that was from the man in the room behind me

He stood up.

Crossed the corridor

Stopped too close….

“Maya…”

“No,” I said.

One word.

He stopped.

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I stood up too…

Not to create space…. I was already at the appropriate distance. But standing communicated something sitting hadn’t.

“I need you to go,” I said. ” Because this is a hospital corridor outside the room where Alex is recovering and everything you are doing in this moment is exactly wrong and I think somewhere underneath it you know that.”

He looked at me

The embarrassment arrived in his expression….

He stepped back.

I heard footsteps at the end of the corridor

Selina stopped when she saw us.

…… Mason, standing too close to a corridor wall with an expression he was reassembling, me with my arms at my sides and the specific stillness of someone who had just finished a necessary conversation.

She looked at Mason.

At the expression on his face that had not yet finished reassembling.

At the ring on my hand….

At the room behind me.

She looked at him for a long moment

He looked at her.

Neither of them said anything immediately

Then she said: “Go to the car.”

Not a question

He went.

She watched him walk to the elevator

Then she looked at me.

I held her gaze.

Then she turned and followed him to the elevator.

I sat back down in the chair outside Alex’s room…

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Chapter 139

Put my hand on my stomach.

Looked at the corridor.

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