He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 205

Chapter 205

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Chapter 205

Alex’s POV

I found her on the balcony…. The notebook in her lap. Her eyes somewhere beyond the garden….

I had been watching her do this for two days.

I brought two cups of coffee…

Set hers beside the chair before I sat.

She looked at the cup.

Then at me…

“You shouldn’t be up this early in the morning,” she said.

“I’ve been asleep for two months,” I said. “I have a surplus”

She looked at the garden.

Almost smiled.

Not quite.

I reached across.

Took the notebook from her hands.

Closed it.

She let me take it… I set it on the table between us.

“You need a break,” I said.

She looked at me.

The faint smile arrived… the tired version, the one that communicated something was genuinely registering beneath the exhaustion.

“A break from what?” she said. “My life?”

“A break from carrying the weight of the whole world,” I said.

She lowered her eyes

Her hand moving to her stomach in the automatic gesture I had been watching her make since I woke up…

“For the past two months,” I said, “you were fighting for me. Before that, you were fighting to protect our baby. Before that, you were fighting to take back your company and understand your father’s death and manage an investigation and everything else that arrived simultaneously.” I held her gaze. “You haven’t stopped carrying everyone else’s burdens for a single day.”

“I don’t know how,” she said.

The honesty in it was complete… not a performance of vulnerability, the actual admission of someone who had been in motion so long that stillness had become unfamiliar.

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“Then let me help,” I said.

She looked at me

At the face that had been learning, across two months of listening, exactly what she sounded like when she was close to the limit of what she could absorb without something breaking.

“I want us to leave for a few days,” I said.

She went still.

“Not from the investigation…. Reeves has it. Not from the company, Lila and Rivaldi have it. Not from Carter, who is recovering and whose file is with the right people.” I held her gaze. “Just us. You, me, and our unborn baby. Somewhere without reporters or police or hospital rooms.” I paused. “We deserve a chance to remember what peace feels like.”

She looked at the garden.

“You want a vacation,” she said.

Something in her voice that had not been there since before the garden.

Something lighter.

“The kind we should have had a long time ago,” I said.

She looked at me….

She laughed.

“A vacation,” she said again.

The word sitting in her mouth differently the second time.

Like something she was testing for weight.

Finding it lighter than expected.

“Where?” she said.

“Somewhere you’ve never been,” I said. “Somewhere no one will look for us because no one would think to look there.” I paused. “I know a place. Small. On the water…..”

She looked at the garden.

At the notebook on the table.

At her coffee…

Then she rested her head against my shoulder.

“some weeks, off ” I said

“Some weeks?,” she said.

“And we take nothing with us except the restaurant booking,” I said.

She laughed again

Chapter alb

Quieter this time. Against my shoulder.

“You’re still thinking about the restaurant,” she said.

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“I have been thinking about that restaurant for two months,” I said. “From a hospital bed. It is the only item on my agenda that predates everything else and it is non-negotiable.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Twenty covers,” she said.

“East-facing window,” I said.

“Weekly menu,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

We sat in the morning light

The garden doing its quiet thing.

The notebook on the table, closed, patient.

We stayed on the balcony until the light changed.

From the street below, the house was the same house it had always been…. the front, the garden gate, the balcony at the side where two people sat in the morning with cups of coffee and a notebook on the table between them.

An ordinary house…

Containing an ordinary morning.

The person with the phone would not have known, from the distance they maintained, that the woman on the balcony had been managing a murder investigation and a corporate governance battle and a pregnancy and a man returning from a coma simultaneously.

Would not have known any of it.

Would have seen only what the frame contained.

Two people.

The morning.

The notebook.

The phone raised.

The photograph taken.

The phone lowered.

The person turning

Walking away down the street like someone who had gotten what they came for… Silly reporters