Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 130512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Mason continued to look only at me, and I did the same, and dammit, my eyes watered as tears slid down my face.
I was going to get my heart broken.
Mason saw the realization land with me and started for me. “Sam,” he said.
I shook my head, holding up a hand. “No. Just—” My voice broke. I needed a second. A fucking second. I was a mother, goddammit. Pulling myself out of the trance, Maddy was at my side, tugging on my arm. “Mom! MOM!” She was yelling, in my face, trying to get my attention. “Mom?” she whimpered.
“Maddy,” Max tried to soothe her, pulling her into his arms.
She evaded his hold, not moving an inch from my side.
I looked over our daughter’s head and asked her father, “Does she need to be here?”
“What? Be here for what? She is me, right?” She was looking between us as Mason came closer. He could now see the other boys, who had drawn closer as well. A new hardness cemented over his face, but he softened it as he looked at Maddy. “It’d be better if she wasn’t—” He glanced at Max, who’d been following everything with a keenness that belonged to someone twice his age.
He gave us both a brisk nod. “Maddy, let’s go to your room.”
“What?”
He began pulling her away.
She dug her heels in. “No!”
He took her hand.
She shook him off. “I’m not leaving. Something’s going on with my parents, and I—” Her tone trembled, breaking. “I need to be here for them.”
He was watching us over her head.
Mason gave him another nod.
He clipped his head down before he bent forward and tossed my daughter over his shoulder.
“Hey—HEY! No! What are you doing?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’ll keep her in her room as long as possible, but you both know you won’t have long to do what you need to do. Also, make sure I’m breathing when she comes back down.” He went up the stairs after that, my daughter struggling and yelling over his shoulder.
It was the three boys and us now.
All were quiet, all so on guard.
I waited, wondering if Mason would dismiss them, then deliver what news he needed to tell me, but as I waited, he didn’t.
What…
I inhaled sharply as new comprehension settled into place. This—whatever he had to tell me—it had to do with them?
I continued to frown as Mason turned to them, facing them as he stood at my side, and I held my breath, not knowing what was about to happen next.
“Tell her who the fuck you are.”
What?
Tell me?
The boys? But—I studied them. Each of them.
Beltraine’s eyebrows were pulled together, his head cocked to the side. Confused.
Axel… He was pissed. Clenched jaw. Hands in fists at his side. His shoulders were so rigid.
“Tell her. Now.” Mason was looking at him. Dominant authority came off him in waves. There was no room to move here. He would tell me or he would face the consequences of Mason, but my husband took another step forward.
He wasn’t speaking to Axel.
My eyes trailed, finding who my husband was addressing, and there was a faint pitter patter in my chest. The last boy.
Steele… His last name wasn’t coming to me right now, but Steele.
Unlike his two friends, there was no confusion on his face. He stood at his tallest height. His shoulders back. His head lifted. He wasn’t even focused on Mason. There was no fear. His eyes were on me, directly on me, and they weren’t wavering. A new light shone from them. A new resolve or was it something else? He was calm, but there was more. He was resigned to whatever was about to happen.
I blinked, though, and I took a step toward him.
I’d felt a pull toward him since I first saw him in the warehouse. I’d done a double-take because for a second, just a brief second, I thought I saw someone else in him. But I looked again, and it was gone. I only saw a boy in pain, someone I didn’t know, but someone I wanted to help.
He continued to hold my gaze.
“Steele is a nickname, and Manning is from my mother’s side. My actual name is—”
I gasped as I saw it.
It happened in a flash, so fast. All the pieces connected, but I’d been wondering in the back of my mind all evening myself. I’d been focused on other items, more prominent issues first, but since that double-take, there’d been something nagging at me, a whisper from the back of my mind that I knew this boy. I may never have met him, but I knew him.
His name wasn’t Steele. Not his real name.
The truth rocked through me.
He started, “Stirling—”
“—Brickshire,” I ended.
He was my brother.
46
MASON
“You’re my brother.” Sam said the words quietly, a slight hint of wonderment mixed in.
Beltraine fell back a few steps, his entire head rearing back. Axel had moved his hands up, grabbing onto two fistfuls of hair, but at Sam’s statement, his mouth fell open at the same time his hands slid slowly down, landing with a thud against his legs. Their eyeballs were almost bulging out.