Page 33 of The Golden Hour

Honey was leaving him.

“No…”

“You’re a goddamn emergency physician, and you couldn’t recognize preeclampsia in your wife because you weren’t home!” she says, and every word stabs him like a knife. “You’re never home for her. You left her alone and sick and scared. You stressed her out until she had to come home to us because she couldn’t rely on you anymore.”

“Mom, please—” Mason’s voice cracks.

Melissa’s face collapses for one second before maternal rage knits it back together.

“My little girl called for Mommy before she collapsed,” she says, voice breaking. “She needs me, not you.”

A sob tears from Mason’s throat as he pictures it clearly. His sweet girl falling to the floor, over and over, replaying in his head, tormenting him. And he wasn’t there. He was never there.

He’s a husband and a father, and he thought just declaring those words was enough. They were never enough. He’s barely a husband, and certainly not a father. Not the one Daisy deserves. Not the one Honey deserves as her child's father.

It all collapses around him, this image he has been propping himself up with for the last nine months.

Senior resident, golden boy, best emergency physician in this fucking hospital—as strong as wet cardboard.

But Honey’s husband, and Daisy’s father? Those should have been as strong as steel.

He chose wrong, and it collapsed as if it always would.

“If she dies…” Melissa squeezes her eyes closed, like the words are too horrible to look at. When she opens them again, they are full of a horrible grief that causes Mason to shiver. “If she dies, I will never forgive you.”

With that, she turns and sprints down the hallway after her daughter. Mason is frozen in the middle of the ED, the place he once felt the most at home in, and can feel everyone around him staring.

He glances down at his hands and sees Honey’s blood all over them, staining the skin around his wedding ring.

It is never going to come out.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MASON

In junior year of high school, Mason got into his first and only fistfight.

Eric Preston was this huge football player a grade ahead of them. He was the kind of guy who thought he ran the school because everyone else was too afraid to tell him that he was an asshole. People only tolerated him because his daddy owned liquor stores and Eric supplied half the parties in town.

Mason stayed under his radar since he didn’t fit into a single archetype in high school. He was in the science club, played baseball, and played trumpet, so he had a broad spectrum of friends.

Above all, he had Honey.

She was in almost every single one of his classes, ate lunch with him, and walked to and from school with him. They went on dates every weekend and took road trips to the Jersey Shore with her parents. He would visit her at the ice cream shop where she worked, and she would come over after for dinner at his house.

They were inseparable.

Life for him in high school was perfect.

Honey had always been beautiful to him, ever since he first saw her freshman year with a mouth full of metal braces and eyes like melted chocolate. She was like pure sunshine, but the summer between sophomore and junior year was when Honey hit a growth spurt and a glow-up.

She got her braces off in August, developed more curves over the summer that he was definitely appreciating, and her mother took her to get her hair done and buy new clothes. She was getting more into “girly” things, like doing her makeup and hair every day, wearing sweet-smelling perfumes, and painting her nails.

She was happy, glowing, and radiant.

And Mason loved her joy, and he was reaping all its benefits.

He loved her so much, and she loved him.