They said everything was my doing. They claimed they knew nothing.
I listened to the testimony, my fists clenching on their own, my eyes burning red, locked on Mason.
Mason's face was blank. His eyes were like a dark pool I had never once been able to read.
In seven years of prison, he never came to see me. Not once.
Yet after I got out, this cold, unreadable man told me he felt guilty. That he wanted to make things right.
The thought of it pulled a laugh out of me. A short, hollow sound, nothing close to joy.
I stared at my right leg. The wound was slowly scabbing over, a reminder etched into my skin of everything that had happened.
Two silhouettes walking side by side flashed through my mind, squeezing my heart like a fist.
I didn't sleep that night.
The next morning, my doorbell rang.
Mason. Again.
"Bridget, how's your leg? Let me take you to the hospital."
I looked at that handsome face, and the pain twisted through me so sharply I could barely breathe. I turned away from him and staggered into a chair.
Everything from yesterday flooded back.
A dull, creeping ache coiled through my body.
My eyes burned red. I ground the word out through clenched teeth: "Get out."