He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 207

Chapter 207

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Chapter 207

Zara’s POV

I found out through a conversation I wasn’t supposed to overhear.

I had been at the printer when two people at the adjacent workstation discussed, that Alex Voss had cleared his schedule for few days and that the car had left the house that morning.

I set the printed pages down.

Stood very still for a moment.

Then I went to my office and called Mason.

“They’re leaving town,” I said when he answered.

“I know,” he said.

The two words landed….

“You already know,” I said

“Since this, morning,” he said.

I held the phone

“We should follow them,” I said. “Before they disappear somewhere we can’t reach them. If they spend these days alone together….”

“Zara”

His voice. The flat, unhurried version that preceded the thing he had already decided.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you don’t need to chase them.”

I pressed my hand against the desk

“If we don’t go after them,” I said, “how is any of this supposed to work? Every day they’re together, every hour they spend…”

“Is irrelevant,” he said.

The calmness

Always the calmness.

“The vacation doesn’t change anything,” he said. “They can spend those days in whatever quiet place Alex has arranged. They can have the time they’ve been waiting for. When they come back, the question I’ve introduced will still be there. Real doubt doesn’t disappear because two people had a pleasant few days.” He paused

“If anything, time away gives Alex’s mind room to work without the immediate distraction of crisis management.

31

I looked at the window.

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“You want him to think about it,” I said.

“I want him to have space to think about it,” he said. “Which is different. Chasing them closes the space. This opens it.”

“The first part of my plan has already begun,” he said.

“What plan?” I said.

“You’ll see,” he said.

“Come on Mason….”

“Thanks for calling…. You are trying your possible best to make yourself useful, but I must tell you the truth, your usefulness is not needed right now.” His voice sounded cold.

The line went dead

I held the phone.

Looked at it.

At the screen returning to its default display, the call ended, Mason on the other side of it and unavailable for the follow-up questions I had been assembling since he stopped answering them.

Three steps behind….

That was the phrase that arrived as I sat in my office with the call ended and the knowledge that Alex and Maya had left town this morning and Mason had known before I called and had arranged something he was calling a plan and had not provided the details

Every conversation with him left me three steps behind…. and unappreciative of my little help.

Not from incompetence…. I was not an incompetent person, and the past several weeks had required a level of competence that most people in the same situation would not have sustained. I had made mistakes, but I had also made correct decisions and had navigated several genuinely difficult situations without the resources or the advance knowledge that Mason apparently operated with as a matter of course.

Three steps behind was not about incompetence.

I stood.

Went to the window.

For the first time since agreeing to work with him, I began wondering whether I was helping Mason… or simply helping him win his battle.

The thought sat in my mind for a couple of minutes.

MASON’S POV

She was already seated when I arrived.

Near the window…. her choice, which communicated something about how she was feeling about this meeting. People who chose window seats in private conversations were people who wanted the option of looking at something other than the person across from them.

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I had noticed this in Brenda Osei from the beginning. The girl I met in this same restaurant about her past with

Maya.

She was not comfortable with what she was doing

She was doing it anyway.

Those two things, in a person, could be useful for a certain period before they became liabilities.

I sat down….

She looked at me with the expression that had replaced the calculating assessment of our first meeting….

“It went better than I expected,” she said.

I leaned back…

“Tell me”

She looked at the window briefly.

Then back at me.

“I ran into her exactly the way we discussed…” She paused. “She recognised me. There was a moment where she might have kept moving, but she didn’t.”

“She stopped,” I said.

“She stopped,” Brenda said. “And we talked. Nearly twenty minutes.” Another pause. “By the time we finished, she apologised…”

I looked at her.

“She apologised.”

“Fully,” Brenda said. “Without prompting.” She held my gaze. “She meant it….”

The smile arrived before I had fully processed the full picture…. Not because Maya’s apology mattered, the history between them were the vehicle, not the destination…..

The apology had produced a trust.

“So she trusts you again,” I said.

Brenda looked at me.

“Yes,” she said. The word carrying something underneath it…. “She was…. she was genuine. She asked how I’d been. She told me about her situation. She was…..” She stopped. “She was exactly who I remembered before all of it.”

I looked at my coffee….

“And yet here you are,” I said

She was quiet for a moment.

“I said I’d tell you what I found,” she said. “I’m telling you.”

“What happens next?” she said.

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I looked at her.

“You don’t force people to doubt someone they love,” I said.

She looked at me.

“You plant questions,” I said. “Small ones. Things that don’t require defending against because they’re not accusations…. they’re observations. The kind that sit in a person’s mind and return occasionally. That accumulates slowly.” I paused.

“From now on,” I said, “you become part of Maya’s life again. Not forcefully…. she’s already opened the door, which means the entry is hers……” I held her gaze. “Be kind to her. Be the person you were before the dispute. Earn her confidence. Not as a performance…. as whatever genuine thing existed between you before everything fell apart.”

“You want me to actually befriend her,” she said.

“I want you to return to a friendship that she has apparently been willing to continue,” I said. “Which is something she has offered you, without prompting, because she is the kind of person who apologises when she believes she has caused harm.” I paused. “Use what she’s given you”

Brenda looked at the table again…

“And then what?”

“And then, when you’re close enough to be in her confidence…. when she tells you things she wouldn’t tell a stranger… you’ll understand what to share and what to leave.” I paused. “Not invented things. Real ones. The kind that exists in the gap between what she’s told Alex and what she’s been managing privately.” I held her gaze.

“There will be gaps. There always are.”

She was quiet for a long time

I let it run because I understood what the silence was… not resistance, not planning, but the honest assessment of someone who had found themselves further into something than they had expected and was determining whether they were going to continue.

“She apologised to me,” Brenda said finally.

“Yes,” I said

“Genuinely”

“Yes,” I said again.

She looked at me.

“What kind of person am I becoming,” she said, “if I use that?”

The question arrived plainly. No performance in it.

I looked at her.

“The kind who has a choice,” I said. “Which most people don’t.”

She held my gaze for a moment.

Then she stood

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Picked up her bag

“I haven’t agreed to the next part,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“What you’re describing,” she said, “takes time. And commitment. And a willingness to…..” She stopped. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” I said.

She left

I watched her through the window.

The plan had not collapsed yet.

The plan had, if anything, advanced beyond what I had structured for this stage… Maya’s apology, freely given, had moved the friendship from manufactured proximity to something that had weight on Maya’s side. Weight on Maya’s side made it considerably more durable.

Brenda Osei was not comfortable

Brenda Osei was also still in motion.

Uncomfortable people in motion were still in motion.

I watched the street.

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