Page 53 of Shattered Promise (Avalon Falls #4)

MASON

The storm's been pacing the horizon all evening, but it hasn’t broken yet.

Just thunder rolling low like a warning and the kind of wind that makes the trees mutter to each other.

I’m standing in the living room, arms folded tight across my chest, staring out the window like the rain might show up carrying answers.

Theo’s behind me, fussing in that overtired way babies do—small, sharp cries with no real teeth, just need. I should go to him, coax him into his favorite game of knock the blocks over . But I can’t move. Not yet.

Not while my words are still echoing in the kitchen like little wrecking balls.

You’re not his mother.

I should’ve grabbed those words and swallowed them the second they left my mouth. But I didn’t. I let them sit there, poison in the air between us, and then I just watched her go. Like a fucking idiot.

Now the house feels wrong without her. Too still.

Too quiet in all the ways that matter. And my boy keeps looking at the door like he expects her to walk through it.

He tried signing more earlier and then babbled something that sounded a lot like Abby , and I honestly don’t know which one hurt more.

I hear myself say it again, inside my head, like a bell that won’t stop ringing: You’re not his mother .

I can’t even remember how it started—what idiotic, self-preserving synapse fired and made me torch the only thing that made sense in this house.

I just remember the look on her face, that moment the air left the room and everything in her went still.

How she didn’t fight back, didn’t give me the satisfaction of another round.

She just calmly walked out the door like she already knew this was how it would end.

Because I’m a coward.

Because I’m terrified of ever letting myself want something that much again, and more terrified of what happens when I get it because I’ll lose it.

Isn’t that the Porter legacy? Want nothing, need nothing. So nothing can wreck you when it’s gone. Because it will leave.

I watch the last fingers of daylight slip under the stormfront and drag a hand down my face, palm rough against the stubble I forgot to shave. My heart’s kicking hard in my chest.

A flash of lightning splits the sky, throwing the field outside into stark relief. The thunder that follows is so deep it rattles the window glass. Theo startles, lets out a little yelp, and I finally snap out of it enough to scoop him up, pressing his cheek to my jaw.

The storm is close now, the way you can feel it in your fillings and the hair on your arms.

I rock him against me, murmuring nonsense, but my mind’s not on my kid. It’s focused on the cabin, on the other side of the snake pit, where my girl is holed up alone .

I picture her in that little kitchen, shoulders hunched and hair in a messy knot, staring at the same goddamn storm and thinking about what I said. I want to take it back so bad it feels like there’s acid behind my ribs.

Theo pulls back enough to pat my cheek, babbling with earnest, like he’s just as worried about her as I am.

“Fuck it,” I murmur. I’m not going to wait another minute. “Let’s go get our girl, yeah, buddy?”

Theo wiggles his little body in my arms, and I take it as encouragement.

I’m going after her.

She might slam the door in my face. Hell, she probably should. But I can take it.

I grab my keys and shove my feet into my boots by the door. I snag Theo’s blanket from the back of the couch, tossing it over his head to keep him as dry as possible.

“Alright, buddy. We’re going for a drive.”

The wind has picked up, rattling the porch furniture and blowing bits of gravel across the steps.

I shoulder through it, clutching Theo tight, and get him buckled into his car seat with hands that shake a little more than I want to admit.

Back behind the wheel, with the storm gnawing at the edges of the world, I turn the key and let the engine rumble beneath my hands until my pulse finds a rhythm to match.

Driving to her place takes longer than walking to it, and tonight it feels even longer.

Like the road is stretching just to fuck with me.

Every tree flattens itself against the wind, each mailbox blurs by in the dark.

Theo babbles from the back seat, not quite crying, just making these soft, uncertain noises that sound too much like loneliness for me to stand.

The wipers can’t keep up. Visibility is shit by the time we hit the cabin’s gravel drive.

I park close so I can make a clean dash, then hustle Theo out of his seat and up to the porch, the rain coming at us sideways now, cold and insistent.

The porch light is on, but the windows are dark—no glow from the kitchen, no shadow moving behind the curtains.

I knock. Wait. Nothing.

Theo squirms, pulling his blanket down so he can look at the door.

“Trouble, open up. It’s me.” I knock again, louder, and try the knob. It turns easy, and the door swings open with a brittle little click.

I step inside, blinking against the sudden dark. The hush is absolute, a vacuum that sucks all the sound from the storm the second I cross the threshold. I toe off my boots, so I don’t trail wet prints all over her floors.

At first glance, it doesn’t look ransacked or disturbed—but something’s wrong. A hollow kind of wrong. The edges of the room don’t breathe right.

Theo shifts in my arms, whispering something close to “more,” and it cuts.

I call her name once, then twice. My voice sounds wrong in here, too loud and not loud enough. The kitchen’s empty, so is her bedroom and bathroom. There’s no sign of her anywhere.

The air in the cabin is wrong. Not just empty, but hollowed out. Like someone scooped the living out of it and left the shell behind.

I move through her house again, every sense on high alert.

My eyes sweep the room, cataloging the strangeness in real-time: the suitcases are still stuffed in her laundry room, the small pharmacy of vitamins and face serums that always lined her bathroom sink are gone, the row of shoes by the door reduced to a single old pair of tennis shoes, and a bottle of shampoo, still wet from a recent shower were left behind.

Her laptop is still open on the kitchen table, the screen black but the little power light pulsing slow and steady like a heartbeat.

Two yellow legal pads sit stacked beside it, a pen laid neatly across the top—her handwriting all over the top page, half a grocery list, half a to-do list, both abandoned mid-sentence.

I scan for anything else, any sign she’s just stepped out.

But the usual mug she nursed coffee from every morning is missing, and when I open the cabinet, I notice all the mugs are gone except for one chipped travel tumbler shoved in the back.

The espresso cans she hoarded are still in the fridge, and I know she doesn’t leave anywhere without those.

I step into her bedroom, my heart hammering like it’s trying to burst through my ribcage. The closet door’s open and half of her clothes are missing.

“What the fuck,” I whisper, eyes scanning, lungs tightening like a fist is closing around them.

I backtrack to the front door, the way you do when you’ve lost your keys and you’re hoping retracing your steps will fix the part of reality that glitched.

I scan the floor, the empty hook where her jacket used to hang, the table in the entryway—nothing.

But as I shift Theo to my other arm, I notice a flash of white caught behind the leg of the table, just above the baseboard.

It’s an envelope with my name on it.

Mason. Just that. My name, in her handwriting, neat and slanted, nothing like the mess inside my head.

I stare at it for a long time, thumb pressed so hard against the edge I feel the paper cut into my skin. Theo fusses, restless, so I set him down. He goes straight for the living room, crawling fast, making a beeline for the basket of soft blocks Abby left on the rug.

I sit on the edge of her couch, the envelope foreign in my callused hands.

I think about all the letters I never wrote.

The ones I wanted to send her after she left for college, and the ones I almost sent after Theo was born, every time I wanted someone to tell me I wasn’t fucking it up.

The letters always started with her name and ended with nothing, because I could never figure out what to say.

I open the envelope, careful not to rip the paper. Inside is a single sheet, folded in thirds, and something else—thicker, heavier. I flatten the paper on my knee and read the first line.

Mason,

I wasn’t sure how to do this, how to tell you. I thought about waiting, I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do. Wait, I mean. But that didn’t really feel right.

I’m still wrapping my mind around it all. It feels a little surreal, you know?

But I wanted you to have the chance to be a part of it from the beginning. If you want to. I know how much it hurt you to not have that with Theo.

I don’t expect anything from you. And I don’t want to pressure you or scare you.

But I love you. I have for as long as I can remember.

xo—A

I read it again. Then a third time, slower.

There’s something else inside the envelope. A little plastic white wand with a pink cap. I flip it over and stare at the pink happy face with the word pregnant , dumbfounded for a full minute. My brain refuses to slot the pieces together for a full beat.

Then it does, and the nausea rolls up from my gut and through my throat—sharp and electric, nothing like the slow, dull ache I’ve been floating in. My vision blurs at the corners, like my body’s trying to reject the rush of feeling crashing through it.

“Oh fuck,” I mutter, panic clawing at the edges of my consciousness. “Where are you, Abby?”