Chapter 7: Salt in Old Wounds
The air between them was warmer now—less like war, more like truce.
But peace was never quiet in Marissa's world. It was always the calm that came right before something cracked.
That evening, Mason came over again. No invitation needed. She didn't ask him to leave.
They ended up on her tiny couch, shoulders brushing, knees touching. A movie played in the background—neither of them really watching. The real cinema was happening in their silence. In the way her fingers curled against his forearm. In the way his thumb absently drew circles on the back of her hand.
She didn't know how to talk about what hurt.
So he did it for her.
"I should've never left you alone after the funeral," Mason said, his voice low, the words scraped from somewhere raw. "I thought I was doing the right thing. Giving you space. Letting you breathe."
"You disappeared," she whispered.
He flinched. "I know."
"You said you'd stay. And then you ghosted me for seven months. Seven, Mason."
His jaw tightened. "I was drowning. I didn't know how to show up for you when I couldn't even face myself."
"That's not an excuse."
"It's the truth," he said, voice shaking now. "And I hated myself every single day for it."
Tears pooled in her eyes. "You left right after my mother died. You were the only person who knew how much she meant to me. And you left."
He looked like she'd hit him.
Good. It was supposed to hurt.
"That night," she continued, her voice breaking, "I stayed up till 3 AM waiting for your call. I kept thinking, maybe you were just late. Maybe something happened. But nothing happened. You just… stopped choosing me."
Mason leaned forward, elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands. "I was scared that I'd break you more than you already were."
"You broke me by leaving."
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was too full. Of grief. Of the past. Of everything they couldn't say back then.
Then, softly, like a confession:
"I never stopped loving you," he said.
She didn't speak. Couldn't. Her throat closed up, a storm rising behind her ribs.
"I love you," he said again, turning to her, eyes red. "Not the idea of you. You. Even when you're angry. Even when you don't believe in us."
Her breath shook. "You can't just say that and expect it to fix everything."
"I know," Mason said. "But I needed you to hear it anyway."
They sat in the wreckage of what they used to be.
And still something flickered. Something small and defiant.
Hope.
Later that night, Marissa found an old journal buried beneath her dresser drawer. It still smelled like lavender and ink. She flipped through the pages, finding one from the week her mother died.
"I can't feel anything but pain. I think I've forgotten what joy tastes like. The only thing that makes sense is Mason's voice and even that's fading now."
She closed the book, her chest tight.
He had been everything to her once.
Could he be again?
The next morning, she did something brave.
She drove out to her mother's grave.
Mason was already there.
He stood beside the headstone, hands buried in his pockets, eyes soft with memory. When he saw her, he didn't speak. Just opened his arms.
She stepped into him without hesitation.
No words.
Just warmth.
Just healing.
And as they stood in the stillness of the cemetery, surrounded by the ghosts of what had been, Marissa realized something powerful.
This wasn't about forgetting the pain.
It was about facing it and choosing to love anyway.