MADDY
I drive back to the barn with a rehearsed apology playing on repeat in my head. I'm sorry I froze you out. I was hurt and confused. I should have trusted you. The words feel clumsy and inadequate, like using a bandage to patch a crumbling dam, but they carry the weight of absolute truth. Mom's voice echoes in my ears, the soul holds many seasons. Mason contains multitudes, and I, in my fear and my stubborn black-and-white thinking, have refused to see the whole, complicated, beautiful picture. I've been so focused on the winter of his past that I've ignored the spring he's trying to build. For himself. For this town. For me.
My stomach churns, tight with nervous energy, as I pull into the gravel drive. I brace for his cool dismissal, for the polite but impenetrable wall he's likely put back up between us. I'm willing to chip away at it, to earn back the fragile trust our cold war has worn down. I'm even ready to grovel if I have to, because the man who stepped between me and disaster with the Jacksons deserves more than my pride. The man who turned myhumiliation into a success story deserves the apology I've been too proud to give.
But when I step inside the barn, the words I've rehearsed die in my throat. The air feels dead, sucked of oxygen, leaving behind a vacuum of pure dread. The vibrant, chaotic energy that is the barn's lifeblood, my lifeblood, has been strangled. Even the scent of roses feels wrong, funereal.
I glance toward the loft, heart pounding. And then I see him.
He's upstairs, standing behind the railing, staring down at a point I can't see, like the floor itself holds the answer to an impossible question.
My breath catches. He is a ruin. The confident man who coolly dispatched the Jacksons is gone. The cold, distant stranger who has haunted the barn for days is missing too. In their place stands a man hollowed out from the inside, carrying invisible chains that pull his shoulders low.
His dark hair, always immaculately in place, is a wreck, evidence of hands raked through it in desperation. And when he lifts his eyes and meets mine, the devastation there knocks the air from my lungs. This is a man staring down at the end of his world.
The apology I've been practicing slips away before I can say a word. Whatever anger I'd been holding onto, whatever bruised pride I brought with me, vanishes.
It's gone.
Because this? This isn't about us arguing or misreading each other. This is deeper. Heavier. It feels like I've walked into the wreckage of an explosion I never heard coming.
"Mason?" The whisper escapes me as I take a tentative step forward. My voice sounds small and lost in the cavernous silence. "What is it? What happened?"
He looks at me, fully meets my gaze, and there's a rawness in his eyes, like the truth's been eating him alive.
"I need to tell you something," he says, voice rough and worn thin. "I thought about not saying anything. Figured maybe it wouldn't matter. But you hate me, and I don't think it's possible for you to hate me more than you do right now, so yeah. You need to know."
"I don't hate you," I say. "I"
"No," he cuts in, shaking his head. "Don't say anything yet. Let me get this out."
Terror grips me as he gestures toward the consultation area, where I talk dream proposals and champagne towers, and begins to walk me through his personal hell.
We sit, or at least I do. He paces. He can't seem to stay still, like the truth might catch fire if he lets it settle.
And then he starts talking. About the portfolio, the lawsuit, the injunction. He paces, the words torn from him.
"He's using the Anvil," he says, his voice rough. "It was a strategy I designed ... the one I used on Silver Creek."
He stops, turning to face me, his expression devastated. "And now he's coming for us with it. He's using my own sins to tear down everything. I would give anything to undo it all," he says. "To go back and choose differently. To never have created these weapons, never have destroyed those communities. But I can't."
He paces as he speaks, but it's not movement, it's unraveling. His composure, his certainty, the last scraps of his pride. All of it.
"… So that's my choice," he finishes, his voice dropping to a whisper. "My best friend's financial ruin, or my own destruction."
He looks at me, not for a fix, not even for forgiveness. For someone to see the cost.
And a part of me breaks. Not from sadness, but from the relief of hearing the one thing I didn't know I needed to hear.
He's not hiding. He's not sorry, he's haunted.
And somehow, against all reason, I believe him.
"Mason," I say, my voice thick with remorse. "Before we talk about any of this, I need to ... I owe you an apology. A real one."
He looks at me, confusion creasing his brow. "Maddy, now isn't"
"Yes, it is." I stand up, needing him to see the truth in my eyes. "I didn't give you a chance to explain your side. I accepted Mrs. Patterson's story as the whole truth and left you holding all the responsibility. After what Daniel did to me, stealing my ideas, my trust, I was already primed to see betrayal where there might have been something else entirely. I watched my best friend Savvy do this exact same thing to Henry, put him in the bad boy box because of his connection to Richard, treat him like he was dangerous when he is one of the kindest people either of us has ever met. I watched her let fear and other people's opinions cloud her judgment about someone who deserved better."
