Chapter 8: The Things We Don't Say
There's a certain kind of silence that doesn't beg to be filled.
It just sits there, heavy and holy.
That's how it felt as Marissa and Mason sat in the car after visiting the grave—hands entwined, breath shared, hearts beating in a quiet rhythm that once would've terrified her.
Now, it felt like coming home.
But peace, she was learning, didn't always mean safety.
Because when you dig deep enough, something always bleeds.
—
"You okay?" he asked, eyes on the road but mind on her.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "I feel like… something's coming. I just don't know what."
He didn't ask her to explain. He knew her intuition well enough to respect it.
But still, his grip on the steering wheel tightened.
They ended up back at her place. Rain tapped against the windows, soft as a lullaby. Mason kicked off his shoes, made them both tea without asking. She watched him from the couch, a storm quietly rising in her chest.
"I found a letter," she said suddenly.
He turned, mug halfway to his lips. "From who?"
"My mother. It was in one of her journals. She wrote it for me, but she never gave it to me."
She handed it to him.
He read it in silence, his throat moving with every sentence. When he finally looked up, his eyes were glossy. "She really loved you."
"I know," Marissa said. "But she also knew."
"Knew what?"
"That I was running from myself. That I let people love only the version of me that looked put together. Even you."
He didn't argue. Just sat beside her and held her like something precious.
"She said love should be soft. Not sharp. That real love doesn't bruise."
"Then let's unlearn the bruising," Mason whispered.
She looked at him—really looked. "That sounds impossible."
"It's not."
His thumb brushed her cheek, slow and reverent. "We just take it one night at a time."
That night, they didn't sleep right away.
They talked.
And talked.
About the summer they fell in love. The fall they unraveled. The winter she buried her heart. The spring he broke apart in silence.
There were tears.
And laughter.
And long stretches of staring into each other like the answers were buried in their pupils.
Then he kissed her.
Not like the boy who broke her.
Like the man who would never do it again.
Later, wrapped in sheets and the dark, she said the words she never thought she'd say again.
"I want to try."
He turned to her, the moonlight making silver halos in his hair. "Try what?"
"Us."
She didn't need fireworks.
Just this—his hand resting over her ribs, right where her heartbeat lived.
But the past doesn't always stay buried.
And some ghosts don't stay dead.
The next day, she got a message.
A name she hadn't seen in two years.
TAYLOR.
The one person who knew the real reason Mason left.
And the one person who could blow everything apart.