Epilogue

Mason

The chapel was so quiet, it almost made me believe in a peace that didn’t exist. The scent of beeswax and old wood surrounded me, cut only by the barely-there perfume of the fresh flowers Loretta always left near the altar. Soft light filtered from the stained-glass windows, painting the old stone floor in fractured watercolors. It was beautiful in an austere way, a place where time felt slower, almost reverent.

But I wasn’t here for reverence. I’d turned the chapel into my makeshift office. The pew in front of me served as a desk while I sifted through paperwork I barely had the energy to read. The packet was thick, heavy with legal jargon and procedural minutiae, the kind of thing that would bore anyone to tears. Not me. I thrived on it—usually.

Today, the words were bleeding across the page no matter how thoroughly I cleaned my glasses. My focus kept slipping with every muffled sound echoing through the house. Footsteps. Laughter. The unmistakable timbre of Gage’s voice, booming with unrestrained joy as he and Wyatt played some chaotic game with the kids.

The sound should have annoyed me, but instead, I caught myself smiling. Gage deserved this happiness. Wyatt, too. After everything they’d been through, they’d earned this messy, sprawling joy. Even if it made my work impossible.

“Shouldn’t you be using Boone’s office for this? Or mine?” Gideon’s deep voice broke my flagging concentration, dragging me back to the present. I didn’t even have to look up to know he was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, that slight tilt to his head that always made him look like he was seconds away from giving unsolicited advice.

“It’s quieter in here,” I replied, flipping a page even though I hadn’t absorbed a damn thing from the last one.

The heavy tread of his steps against the stone warned me he hadn’t taken the hint. “Quieter?” he asked incredulously. “With Gage hollering like that?”

My lips quirked despite myself. “You should hear them from the office. It’s chaos out there.”

“Chaos you could use,” Gideon said, lowering himself to the pew in front of me and draping his arms over the back. “You’ve been running yourself ragged too long, Mason. You don’t seem to know how to stop.”

I set the file down and peeled off my glasses, pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off my brewing headache. “I’m working,” I said evenly. “I can see how it’d be confusing, since I’m the only one of us with a real job.”

“You’re killing yourself,” he countered solemnly. The certainty in his tone sent a chill of warning down my spine. “First, it was the fast track to get your law degree. Then it was working as Boone’s personal attorney. Now it’s the task force. You’ve kept up this inhuman pace for years, but Ben is free now. You can breathe.”

“He’s not free,” I shot back, sharper than I’d intended. I had no time or patience for this. “He’s out , sure, but he’s still wearing that damn ankle monitor. I can’t even visit my own brother without Colt’s approval. He’s not free, and he won’t be until he’s fully acquitted. You know that as well as I do.”

Gideon took a long, measured breath and squared his shoulders, the way he did when he had more to say but knew I wouldn’t listen. So—all the time. “You can’t carry the world on your back forever, Mason.”

I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. There was no point. Gideon was great at seeing people, but that didn’t mean he always understood. This was my burden. My fight. We were all brothers, blood or not, but Ben was mine. My twin. I’d been protecting him since before we’d even drawn breath.

Gideon knew better than to press me. He left me to my silence, with only the soft click of the door to serve as a punctuation mark for whatever had been left unsaid.

I stared blankly at the gilded crucifix above the altar.

Maybe I couldn’t carry the whole world on my back, but I could damn well try.

I slouched down in the pew and loosened my tie. The paperwork had lost my attention. Instead, my focus drifted to the laughter echoing down the hall.

If anyone deserved a little peace, it was Gage. In most ways, he’d had it the hardest, but he’d never let it break him. He and Ben were the best of us, the purest, and the most honorable. They’d never stooped to getting their hands dirty like the rest of us, and with Wyatt at Gage’s side, I knew he never would.

I wasn’t a fanciful man, but sitting in a room filled with holy silence, I swore I could see them standing at the altar. A vision of something impossibly whole and good. Gage, dressed to the nines and wearing that crooked grin of his. Wyatt, steady and solemn, watching him like he was the only source of light in the world. The thought of them saying their vows in this chapel one day felt undeniably right. It wasn’t a memory yet, but it felt like one. A future memory, the kind that would add some joyful ghosts to this house’s long, haunted history.

My phone buzzed, rattling across the pew and breaking the spell. I blinked. The screen lit up with the very last name I wanted to see, and my stomach lurched. I despised this feeling, this painful mix of irritation and longing that twisted me into knots.

“What do you want, Silas?” I demanded before the phone even made it to my ear.

A low, husky chuckle rumbled down the line, rich as molasses. “That’s how you answer the phone for me? You wound me, Counselor.”

I could practically see the smirk on his face, the one that promised trouble and always delivered. My fingers tightened around the phone, and my breathing started coming faster despite how hard I fought to control it.

“It’s late,” I said, putting enough ice in my voice to discourage any flirtatious banter. It was just Silas’s personality. I’d seen him flirt the same way with dozens of men and women at the Dead End. But it was easy to believe he meant it when he was flirting with me, and that was so, so dangerous.

“Not too late,” he replied, dropping into that smoky, honeyed timber that always managed to crawl under my skin and sit there, uninvited. “You never sleep unless it’s in my back room. Tell me, Mason. Why are you buried in briefs somewhere else when you could be here—buried in my briefs?”

My jaw was clenched so tight I swore I felt my teeth creak. I counted to ten and forced myself to exhale slowly through my nose. “Why are you calling?”

“Maybe I just missed hearing you bark at me,” he drawled lazily. “Or maybe I was thinking about that conversation we didn’t finish last time. You know, the one we had through the door, with you moaning and me?—”

“Enough,” I snapped, but it was too late. My pulse was already spiking. The bastard laughed again, deep and throaty, like he knew exactly the effect he had on me. The man had no shame, and me…I had enough shame for both of us.

The worst part was that I’d been thinking about that night too. More than I cared to admit.

“Careful, Mason,” Silas murmured, his tone softening to something almost kind. “You keep overreacting like this, and I’ll know exactly how bad you want to come over.”

I stood abruptly, cursing when my papers scattered into a disorganized pile at my feet. But I needed to move. I couldn’t sit still with that deep, sexy voice crawling all over me. “I don’t have time for this,” I muttered, crouching to retrieve my files with hands that shook.

“Don’t you?” Silas’s voice dipped lower, quieter, like a secret meant just for me. “Don’t lie to me, Mason. You’re running on empty. You think I don’t know what you need?”

My breath caught, but I clenched my teeth and kept everything I wanted to say behind them. Refusing to respond felt like my only power in the moment, but we both knew he was right.

Damn him, he was always right.

“Come over,” he said in that velvet and steel voice that was so, so compelling. He wasn’t teasing anymore. “You don’t even have to talk if you don’t want. Just let me take care of you.”

For a long moment, the only sound was the rickety, stricken pace of my breathing. The walls of the chapel felt like they were closing in. The dim glow filtering through the stained-glass windows suddenly felt too intimate.

I could almost feel him here, right beside me, towering over me.

“You never give up, do you?” I whispered.

“Not when it comes to you.”

A shiver ran through me, and I rubbed the back of my neck like I could physically shake it off. I hated how he could strip me bare with just a few words. Hated how much I wanted him to.

“Fine,” I muttered, stripping off my tie and stuffing it in my pocket, as if that would help me breathe. “Don’t make me regret this, Silas.”

“Never,” he promised, and there was a smile in his voice again, sly and wicked. “I’ll see you soon, sexy.”

He dropped the call, leaving me standing in the middle of the chapel with a dead phone pressed to my ear and the echo of his sinful voice ricocheting around my skull. I couldn’t go anywhere yet. Not until I got control of myself. I was achingly hard and tenting the fly of my dress pants from his voice alone.

Dropping back down on the pew, I popped the button on my collar and let my head fall back, staring up at the rafters. If Eden really was haunted, I could imagine its ghosts watching me and shaking their heads in disappointment.

Silas McKenna was going to be the death of me—and God help me, I was starting to think I wouldn’t mind.

Thanks for reading!