The air stills around me and I turn the phone in my hands.
“I’ll get this back to him,” I say, lips twitching. “Promise I won’t keep it and read all his texts, even though the temptation is very real.”
I rise to my feet slowly.
“I should go before this becomes a full-blown breakdown in front of two separate gravestones,” I mutter, gently tucking the phone into my coat pocket.
“My Mom and Dad say thanks for the flowers.”
Then I wipe my damp face, turn to leave, and stop cold.
Mason is standing a few feet behind me. His cheeks are wind-flushed, but it’s his eyes that freeze me in place.
So glassy and wet and devastating.
And he’s looking at me like I’ve just reached into his chest and handed him his own heart.
Chapter fifteen
Mason
The wind bites at my jaw, but I barely feel it.
Not when my breath is fogging the air in front of me. Not when Frankie Monroe is crouched a few feet away, talking to my father’s grave like he’s the only one on earth who might understand what’s cracking her wide open.
Her voice is soft, the words warm and shaky and beautiful—just like her. She doesn’t know I’m here, doesn’t know she’s saying the kind of things that could undo a man.
Not in some performative way, but the real kind. That makes me wish I had a pen to write it all down, so I don’t forget a single fucking word.
I thought she’d left without saying goodbye. I saw her at the lake, just for a second. Our eyes caught across the crowd, just long enough for me to hope. Then she looked away.
So I’d gone looking. Around the lake, back to the station and then to the cabin. Finally here, retracing my steps because I couldn’t find my phone, and all I wanted was to hear her voice.
And now she’s here. Facing my dad’s headstone with her heart in her hands, telling him that maybe it belongs here.
She says something about how I made her feel like she could matter to someone, and I swear to God, I nearly drop to my knees.
Because she already does.
Then she turns—and when her eyes land on me, she startles like she’s seen a ghost.
And maybe I am. I’ve haunted her inbox, haunted her life. I’ve been the one who disappeared, who tried to outrun grief and connection and ended up back here anyway.
With her.
The only person I think I’d like to haunt me.
Something shifts in her face. Confusion, maybe. Embarrassment. And yeah, I probably wasn’t supposed to hear all of that, but fuck it. I’m not sorry.
“I didn’t mean to overhear,” I manage, stepping forward slowly. “I just… didn’t want to interrupt.”
She blinks fast. Her scarf is flapping in the wind, her cheeks are pink from the cold. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more fucking gorgeous.
I clear my throat, glancing between the gravestones.
“I, uh… lost my phone this morning,” I manage, raking a hand through my hair. “I was retracing my steps, trying not to lose my shit. I didn’t expect to find you.”
She says nothing, just stares at me with those wide green eyes framed in damp lashes.
