“Thanks,” he mumbles before turning around and going back to his spot on the couch.
I sit back down on the recliner and start thinking about ways to win Karoline’s trust back. It won’t be easy, but I know her better than I know anyone else, even if it has been three years.
Opening social media, I scroll through Karoline’s profile; her username, @karsalwayswright, is permanently etched into my search bar. I browse through old posts, my brain having already memorized many of them from late nights touring when the ache in my chest at missing her was too much to handle.
This one picture always got to me: she’s standing on a cliffside of red, clayish dirt with her back to the camera but her head thrown over her shoulder in a carefree, joyful manner. She’s wearing black athletic shorts, a red stretchy tank top, and black hiking boots with a floral backpack in tow. Her long legs are tanned, scraped, and a little dirty from her hike. But it’s the tattoo peeking out from behind her shirt, just below her neckline that throws me into a tizzy… a peppermint that looks to be a heart etched into the center. I can’t be sure, though, because it disappears beneath the red fabric of her tank.
One thing’s for sure: Karoline Wright has a peppermint tattoo on her body, and that fact alone leaves my emotions more tangled up than a group of people playing Twister. Despair, joy, guilt, and something akin to hope swims through my veins, and I take a moment to pray to God that by some small miracle, that tattoo signifies that Karoline has some love for me buried deep down underneath all her mounds of wrath.
Tucking my phone away, I grab my guitar and strum, thinking about the blessings the Lord has given me. I thank Him for the chance to reconcile with Karoline, even if it isn’t quite the way I was expecting to. I’ll have to work for her, and that’s okay.
Dancing stars, full moon of possibilities. You’re here in my arms again, this night can never end…
Setting my guitar aside, I jot down the lyrics in my notebook app on my phone.
Chapter Eight
Karoline - Three Years Ago
Just call me RotisserieChicken.
The July Texas heat has roasted me to a golden brown with my internal body heat blazing at a good thousand degrees.
That’s a lie, of course, but it sure feels that way as I stand underneath the bright sun. Even the brownish-blue lake water that’s up to my chest is too warm for comfort, and the mud at thebottom of the lake squishes warmly between my toes. But Mason wanted to swim, and he’s the one who took his last shot with that girl from college and was turned down at the Morgan Wallen concert a couple of days ago (yay for me!), so I’m doing whatever he wants today.
“Heads up, Vroom!”
I snap my head to the left in time to stare wide-eyed at Mason swinging through the air. He’s holding on to a thick, dirty rope with his ankles wrapped around a knot towards the bottom of the redneck contraption.
Oh, but it’s just a rope swing? How’s that redneck? I’m glad you asked…
This rope swing is dangling not only on a cliff, but from the top of a crane buried into the cliff.
Mason doesn’t let go as he reaches maximum distance. He volleys back towards the crane and pushes off the metal arms with his feet before wrapping them around the knot again. With the added momentum, his placement is…
SPLASH!
Mason lands not even a foot away from me, barely making it far enough to reach the drop off. Water floods me like the storm surge in a hurricane, stinging my eyes, invading my mouth, and shooting up my nose. While I'm coughing and spitting the nasty liquid from my system, hands grab my ankles, and I’m dragged under the surface and off the drop off.
With all the force I can muster, I kick at Mason (because I know there are no mermaids dragging me down in this lake) until he lets me go and I swim upwards, my lungs burning for air. I’m skilled at many things, but holding my breath for any small length of time is not one of them. In fact, I always pray that when I die, it won’t be from suffocation.
Someoneisabout to die from strangulation, though…
“Mason Jonathan Kane!” Water droplets fly from my mouth as I shout his name, peddling my way back to ground. He catches me from behind, his arms wrapping around my waist as he yanks me backwards and into his chest.
My body, all smashed up against a wet, shirtless Mason, decides its new response to fight or flight is to simply freeze. With my back feeling every ounce of bare chest he has to offer and my hormones still wanting more, I tilt my head back, fitting it perfectly against the nape of his neck.
Then I’m submerged under the water again.
What is with this guy? Is he so angry with that college girl that he’s resorted to drowning me?! No, sir. I don’t think so.
Fight mode resumes and I kick and punch my way out of his grip, bobbing back to the surface and swimming backwards towards land. Mason swims after me, laughing like a maniac. The wicked gleam in his dark chocolate eyes and the way his thick hair falls in wet strands providing a pretty frame for his pretty face is raining confusion down onto my nervous system. The woman in me wants to succumb to the handsome man prowling towards me while my logical half screams to get to safety.
I choose safety, crawling onto what we call “the Beach”—a small, rocky-sandy area with a few folding chairs and a fire pit where water meets land. I get out of the water and plop down into the oversized red outdoor chair.
“You’d think I was actually out to kill you by the way you were reacting, Vroom.” Mason slushes out of the lake—droplets of water sparkling like diamonds rolling down his chest—and sits in the blue chair next to me, his maniacal laugh still fully intact. When I don’t answer, he shifts from laughter into a low, seductive drawl. “Come on,little ma’am. Don’tcha trust me?”
Does he mean for that to be seductive? Or is my brain still on high alert from our bodies pressed together? It’s not the firsttime he’s called me “little ma’am,” but he rarely uses it, and when he does, it rewires my brain a little more to be attuned to only him.
