“No onethinksthey need an intervention, Mason. That’s the first law of interventions! But we miss you, and it’s been four months since Victoria… you know.” He cleared his throat. “Did what she did. So—”
“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a gift for euphemisms?” I glanced around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear, then said quietly, “I think you mean four months since my fiancée left my ass for another guy?” And not just any guy butGunner,our engagement photographer—honestly, with a name likeGunner, the writing had been on the wall there—who’d stolen Victoria off to cavort with him in the jungles of Central America. “Might as well call it what it is. First step to treating a disease is knowing what you’ve got.”
Micah huffed out a breath. “It doesn’t need to betreated, Mason. This was never aboutyou;it was about Victoria.”
“Meh. It was kind of about both of us. Vic said she hadn’t been really happy in a while, and I guess I was sleepwalking through it, so that’s on me.” I still felt a dull, guilty sort of ache about not seeing the signs. I felt even guiltier about the fact that, while I missed having someone around, and I missed the future we’d planned… I hadn’t really missed Victoria as apersonvery much at all. In fact, I’d started thinking some of the accusations Vic had leveled at me before she left were kinda true.
Ididn’treally feel deep passions, and that probablywaswhy she’d never felt deeply passionate about me.
There might actuallybesomething broken in me from growing up the way I had, that meant I could never love someone fully or be loved in return.
She might even have been right about me being too obsessed with status… although that one I was pretty sure she’d enabled a whole lot.Shewas the one who’d taught me about wearing tasteful but expensive clothes, after all, and taking exotic-but-not-flamboyant vacations, and driving luxurious-but-not-ostentatious cars—all the stuff that got her likes on Instagram.Shewas the one who’d introduced me to her parents’ friends at their Water Mill garden parties, and encouraged me to think big about my career and the future.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d gotten on board with that shitrealfast, because to people who were important and wealthy, those fancy things were like a shorthand for “I’m important also. Take me seriously,” and for a guy who hadn’t known cashmereexisteduntil he was past his second decade of life, that feeling had quickly become addictive. But you couldn’t teach a man a better way of living and then blame him because he’d listened.
Not that blame really mattered now, anyway.
“That’s not why I called either, though! I have some exciting news.”
“Uh-oh.” Micah’s worry turned to suspicion. “You sayingexcitingwhen you’re in this mood is a little terrifying. Am I talking to the Mason who thinks reorganizing his polo collection is exciting? Or the old Mason, whose brand of excitement involved construction chutes and lube?”
I sighed. The trouble with having a family who loved you was that they never forgot the shit you pulled, even half a lifetime and several big-deal degrees and certifications later… and they never letyouforget it either.
“First off, it was coconut oil, notlube. If you’re gonna tell the story, get it right. Second, this is not amood. I’m starting a new chapter of my life.” A chapter I liked to callDr.Mason Bloom Takes Charge of His One Goddamn Life and Lives Fearlessly.
Catchy, right?
Ironically enough, living fearlessly was scary as hell. My stomach had been flopping around like a fish on a line for the last two weeks. This either meant I was on the right track or coming down with some form of gastrointestinal illness. It was so often hard to tell.
Right or wrong, though, making a change wasnecessary,because as much as I’d learned to love the lifestyle Victoria and I shared—the fun Instagram poses, the little luxuries and privileges, theshoes—when Vic left I’d realized just how much of that life hadn’t really beenmine—not the Water Mill friends, not the exposed brick loft Vic hadadored, not the ho-hum position at the well-established suburban family practice that paid for it all.
Four months post-breakup, I realized life without Vic felt empty because I hadn’tchosenany of it. I’d slotted myself into a lifeshewanted, and I’d beenperfectly okaywith it at the time. But there was no structural integrity in a life that could come crashing down when a single pillar was knocked out from under it. There was no structural integrity in “perfectly okay.”
Perfectly okay was the kind of life you slid into. Perfectly okay was when you didn’t have a plan for the future, or when you settled for living someone else’s dream because it was safer that way. Perfectly okay was a trap, and I’d escaped it.
Not everyone was so lucky.
I scanned the crowded area for my remaining suitcase, and my gaze snagged on a man leaning against a pillar across the room.
Whoa.
I blinked double time, because it was like some higher being had been listening to my thoughts and conjured up a real-life cautionary example, just to tell me I was on the right track.There, in the flesh, was the kind of bitter-looking human who’d probably just let life happen to him. He reminded me of my idiot teenaged self. The ghost of the Mason Bloom who might have been.
My eyes traveled up and down the guy’s form from his overlong, sun-streaked hair, to his thin, stained T-shirt, to his plastic flip-flops, and I felt my lip curl just a little in distaste. He had handsome features from what part of him I could see—the dude was wearing sunglasses indoors, which wasn’t weirdat all. The cut of his jaw was sharp, the line of his nose was straight, his muscles that popped beneath his sleeves when he folded his arms over his chest were thick and well-defined. But the man scowled at the floor with malevolent intensity, like the linoleum had personally offended him and he was ready to make it pay. He sneered at anyone who walked too close. He held himself rigidly distant from every other person in the baggage claim like a feral animal who’d bite with the slightest provocation. All in all, I felt like I was watching an episode ofCriminal Minds, becausethiswas the kind of guy whose mug shot would flash on the screen while the actors said, “Our unsub is a drifter with anger issues. He’s killed before and will kill again.”
And okay, yeah, that wasn’t the kindest thought I’d ever had, but whatever. I disliked him because I’d almost been him. And because I never wanted to be like him again.
Serial Killer Guy’s gaze drifted in my direction and he caught me staring. He thrust his chin in my direction like he was two seconds away from throwing down with me, right here in front of carousel six.
Charming.
I ran a hand over the front of the button-down shirt I’d ironed that morning, and straightened to my full five feet ten inches. There was zero chance I’d actually get involved in fisticuffs—for one thing, I hadn’t thrown a punch since high school, and for another I’d rather let him kill me than show up to my new job all mussed and wrinkled—but I wouldn’t show weakness to Serial Killer Guy either. I made sure he looked away first.
“I’m excited that you’re excited. Really.” Micah injected his doubt into my moment of badassery. “Just maybe don’t do anything too rash. No drunken revelry, okay? No weird tattoos? No swan dives?”
Micah’s words coming on the heels of seeing this alterna-Mason-Serial-Killer-Guy made me clench my teeth in annoyance… which probably made me a shit person. I mean, if there were anyone on the planet who’d earned the right to give me shit, it was the brother who’d spent most of his adult life living like a monk so he could take care of our sisters and me, right? The guy who’d bailed me out of trouble so many times as a teenager, I couldn’t count them? The man who’d give me akidneyif I needed it, without a second of hesitation?
Thing was, I had no use for a kidney. I just really wanted to be treated like a competent adult.
