Disgrace

Chapter 20: Concussion

Mason

Two fucking days.

Forty-eight hours since I'd seen her. Since I'd touched her. Since I'd had her pinned beneath me, her nails raking down my back, her lips parting on a gasp as she moaned my name.

And it was driving me insane.

I kept myself busy—had to. Morning conditioning, back-to-back classes, sparring in the afternoons, team meetings in the evenings. Between the drills, the weight training, and keeping my grades from tanking so I wouldn't get benched, my body was running on pure muscle memory.

But my mind?

It was in that hospital room. With her.

For the past two days, I made sure my obsession didn't show. That my professors didn't catch me zoning out, that my frat brothers didn't notice the way I threw every hit too hard during practice, that my coach didn't pull me aside to ask why I looked like I was seconds from snapping.

I took it out in the gym, in the cage, in the weight room. Every rep, every strike, every bead of sweat rolling down my body was just another way to burn off this restless, maddening energy.

I nearly took out one of my training partners earlier. Some guy from another school, cocky as hell, who thought he could keep up. He tapped out in under a minute.

Still wasn't enough.

Unlike Kat and Jack—whose lives were structured, their careers set—I was still clawing my way to something real. A college athlete, a frat boy, a fighter, barely keeping my grades up to hold onto my scholarship, my D1 status, my entire future.

Yeah, I had money. My last name carried weight. But I didn't want to rely on it. I wanted to be self-made, to prove that I wasn't just another rich kid coasting through life on a trust fund.

More than anything, I wanted her to be proud of me.

I didn't want her to look at me and see some reckless, privileged kid playing pretend. I wanted to be a man she could respect—someone who deserved to stand beside her.

But no matter how hard I tried to focus on my future, my degree, my damn career—none of it mattered more than her.

Jack was busy—I knew that. Running the neurosurgery department, drowning in surgeries, barely having time to breathe, let alone check on the woman he was supposedly courting.

Over my dead fucking body.

Because while Jack was buried in work, too occupied to make sure she was taken care of, I was watching.

Always.

That's why I found myself here. Again.

Ditching my last class, pushing through the hospital doors, coming up with some bullshit excuse to get past the front desk. My phone buzzed as I walked in.

Jack: We need to talk. Meet me at the house.

I clenched my jaw, irritation crawling up my spine. I didn't need to guess what it was about. Jack, in his perfectly pressed scrubs, with his perfectly respectable career, always doing the right thing, always knowing best.

And me?

I was the reckless little brother. The problem child. The one who never took things seriously.

Except when it came to her.

With Kat, I wasn't playing. I wasn't fucking around. I wanted her. In every way. In my arms, in my bed, in my life. I wanted her carrying my kid, wearing my name, making every single person in this goddamn hospital know she was mine.