“TheMary Anna. So?”
“So, Fenn, you utter, utterfool, if he named the most important thing in his world after my mom, didn’t you ever think that him calling you Mary’s nephew makes youmoreimportant, not less?”
I gaped at him.No. No, that had literally never occurred to me, any more than believing in Beale’s portents had occurred to me, or believing the treasure was real had occurred to me, or thinking I could morph into a unicorn had occurred to me.
“For fuck’s sake, cousin, stop psyching yourself out about what’ll happen if life goes wrong. Start thinking what might happen if it all goesright. I promise you from experience, if it goes to shit and you’re sad later, it won’t make you feel better knowing you wasted your chance to be happy.”
“Is this a pep talk?” I demanded. “Because I’ve never had one of these, and I need to know if we’re supposed to hug it out after, or if that’s weird because we’re related or…”
“Asshole,” Rafe said without heat. “And look, it causes me physical pain to say this, but you’re a good guy. A hard worker. A talented mechanic. Why don’t you let Dad invest inyou? Take one of his small-business loans. Open a garage.”
“Uh, because I don’t know how to—”
“Thenfind out. Jesus. Kids today! Want every damn thing handed to them.”
“But what if I fuck up—”
“What if you don’t?”
I frowned.What if I didn’t?
“And while you’re at it, why not call the hot doctor? A man could do worse than spending his life with you, that’s all I’m saying.” He tilted his head from side to side lightly. “I mean, not alotworse, but…”
I snorted as a kind of wild hope started spreading inside me. “Hey! Who’s the asshole now?”
“Still you.” Rafe grinned that full-on version of his smile just as a crack of purple lightning rent the sky, and then neither of us was smiling.
“Well, that was rude,” Rafe yelled at the sky. He rolled his eyes. “Especially since I still need to go climb on the fucking roof of the office to secure the rest of the tarps.”
I shook my head. “Can’t do that when yourdadhas the rest of the tarps, remember? Let’s just lock it down as best we can and figure out where he is.”
We finished securing the boat and the Goodmen Outfitters office, then ran up the dock to Rafe’s Jeep. We climbed inside and shut the doors just as the sky opened and rain began to pour down.
“Hot damn,” Rafe said. “Been a minute since we’ve had one like this. Makes all the other storms this season seem like a warmup.” His windshield wipers could barely handle the onslaught as he crept down the road toward the motel.
Meanwhile, I grabbed my phone from my pocket and texted.
Me:Mason, I…
Fuck. This was harder than I’d thought. I felt like I’d been apologizing to him since almost the first minute we’d met. I’d gottenhimwrong, I’d gotten hissituationwrong, I’d gotten myresponseswrong, over and over. And every damn time, I’d apologized and Mason had accepted it. Accepted that I was flawed and human and really fucking scared.
In exchange, he’d made me feel… incredible. Happy. Important. Simultaneously relaxed and ready to take on the world. His faith in me, inus, hadn’t wavered once, despite all the times I’d pushed him away.
So, yeah, a fucking apology text was not gonna cut it. I was gonna need to do something bigger. Somethingmore. Something that might convince him to accept just one more apology from me and give me one more chance.
But first I decided to start with the most pressing thing. I sent off a text:
Me:Mason, stay at the clinic. Don’t try to get home in this. I’ll pick you up.
“Well, shit.” Rafe pointed up ahead, at the pickup parked in the lot by the motel. “Found the tarps. No Dad, though.”
“He got a flat.” I pointed at the passenger’s front tire. “Looks like he dented the rim.”
“Bet I know how. While you were texting your honey bunch, I was navigating around a huge-ass pothole in the Pass ’bout a half a mile up from here.”
Texting my honey bunch.I snorted. I resisted the urge to tell Rafe what I’d actually been thinking.
“It’s the rain,” I said instead. “All these storms over the past month mean a ton of standing water eroding the rock under the asphalt.”
