“What do you mean,go? Gowhere?” I demanded. What the hell was he talking about?
“Home. Seattle.” There was something in his eyes, something he was trying to communicate without speaking, but I was too befuddled to understand it.
“What? Why?” I demanded, my brain racing as he answered me.
“Um, I had an, uh, emergency come up, and I—” it was so obvious he was lying that I couldn’t even let him finish it.
“Seriously?” I demanded, my raised voice drawing attention from other people in the waiting room.Fuck, I didn’t need this right now. “You’re going to lie to my face? I have one brother in surgery, the other in the ICU. My parents’ hearts are breaking, and you’re going to fuckinglieto me?”
I saw my moms glance over at us as they talked to a baby-facedlooking kid in a lab coat who had come in as we followed the police officer. I was too distracted by what was happening right in front of me to be concerned about their conversation.
“Would you give us a minute, please?” Mason asked the officer through gritted teeth. Dowling’s grin looked like a shark’s, but he replied, “Sure thing, Mr. Cameron,” placing strange emphasis on Mason’s last name. “I’ll just step right over here. But you don’t have too long,” he said, tapping his watch, an edge of threat in his voice that made me bristle.
Mason hustled us into one of the waiting areas where doctors came to tell families bad news. It wasn’t exactly private. There were windows on two sides that looked out across the waiting areas. I could see the officer’s bulk leaning by the door, his body casting a dark shadow as he watched us through the door. The officer moved to the doorway of the room, his eyes still focused on Mason and me. Mason’s gaze jumped back and forth between us, then he walked over and firmly shut the door to the room, blocking out Dowling. His gaze finally rested on me and I could see the pain and anguish hiding there. I just didn’t know what was causing it.
“I’m sorry, Lee, but I have to leave. I can’t… I can’t handle all of this,” Mason said.
“What? That’s bullshit,” I said. “What’s going on, Mason? You’ve been acting strange since yesterday.” Yesterday. When he was alone with strangers for several hours. And when he came home, he was in pain, limping, hardly able to walk… Fuck. How did he get hurt? What did they do to him?!
“Mason,” I hissed, anger starting to build as I finally started to give voice to my fear. “Baby, did something else happen last night? Did they… Did they do something you didn’t tell me about last night? Did they hurt you? Is that why the cop is here? We can file a police report, get them arrested…”
“No, Lee.” He said, as if reading the train of thoughts going through my brain. “No. This is my issue. Mine. I need to solve it.”
“No, it’s not!” I said angrily. “You are not alone anymore, Mason.You have friends who care about you. I care about you. I…” I took a deep breath, then spoke. “I love you.”
Mason froze in shock as I said the words that had been percolating in my brain for the last few days, and at first, I thought maybe I’d gotten through to him as I saw a small glimmer of hope in his eyes. Then we heard the shifting of the officer who appeared to be leaning against the room door and I saw Mason glance at it then back to me, and he shook his head.
“I… No, you don’t loveme, Lee,” he said tiredly. “You love being the hero and riding to everyone’s rescue. The thing in your life that almost broke you wasn’t the loss of Mack, it was the fact that you couldn’t save him. You weren’t able to be his hero.”
“No, that’s not true,” I growled, struggling to control myself as I tried to understand why he would leave. God damn it. His comment was so off base, I didn’t even know how to respond to it. My heart was racing as I gathered the shreds of my temper. I saw a tremor pass through Mason as his gaze shot behind me to the door where the cop stood. Something wasn’t right here, but I couldn’t get the pieces to fall into place…
“I know what you’re doing Mason, and it won’t work,” I said, leaning forward and gripping the table in front of me.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, his voice a monotone.
“You damn well knowdoknow what I mean,” I said, slamming my fist on the table.
His voice was neutral, and his face was blank as he stared straight ahead from where he sat in one of the chairs. His hair curled softly around his face as he avoided my gaze. His hands were gripping his knees, etching wrinkles into his jeans.
“You’re pushing me away,” I said, walking to where he sat, I knelt down on the floor in front of him and gently covered his hands with my own. “You think you’re not good enough for me for some reason, and you’re pushing me away. But that’s bullshit, and I’m not going to let you.”
His skin was shockingly cold, and his grip on his knees was so tight it was turning his knuckles white. Gently, I pried his fingersfrom their death grip on his knees, one finger at a time. He tried to pull his hand away from me and I simply stopped moving, my larger hands enveloping his until he stopped fighting me. I began gently chafing them with my hands, trying to transfer some of my warmth into him.
He finally looked me in the eye, a crack appearing in the neutral façade he had been showing.
“Iam no goodfor you, Lee,” he whispered as I knelt in front of him. “I’m trash. I’m nothing but a whore, a son of a whore, who somehow convinced himself he had a shot at something different. You deserve better than this, better than me. If I stay, all I’m going to do is ruin your life, too.”
I looked up at his gorgeous eyes, his thick dark lashes wet with the tears he’d been trying to hide from me. His eyes were pleading with me, struggling to convey some message I couldn’t quite understand.
“The only way you could ruin my life is to leave it. Let’s make sure our definitions match here, Word Boy,” I said, his tears melting the rock-hard ball of ice that had substituted for my heart for so long.
I brought one hand up and cupped the side of his face, gently running my thumb back and forth across his cheek as his hands rested gently at my waist.
“If by ‘trash’ you mean ‘amazingly talented, heartrendingly compassionate, and mind-blowingly intelligent’, I can agree with your statement,” I murmured, pausing with each adjective to lay a series of gentle kisses across his forehead. “And if by ‘ruin’ you mean ‘bring back to life, renew, restore and revivify’…” We both chuckled at the last word, remembering our round of Scrabble. “…then I guess I’d agree with that, too. Otherwise, I think I need to challenge your definitions.”
Tears were falling freely at that point, and I realized suddenly he wasn’t the only one crying. Mason’s hands tightened on my waist, his fingers sliding under my shirt until they were against my skin.
I pulled him forward slowly, his eyes darting to my lips. I saw his lips part nervously and groaned as his pink tongue darted out to wetthem. I wanted nothing more than to kiss him right then and there, but I had to get to the bottom of this.
