“Most of my friends from the academy are married,” he continued. “Kids, mortgages, the whole thing. And I’m thirty-five, and I’ve never even come close. Every time I meet someone I actually like, I freeze up. Turn into this…” He gestured vaguely at himself. “This mute idiot who freezes up.”
“You’re doing pretty well right now,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, well.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “Nowhere to run.”
I looked at our joined hands again. His thumb was still moving against my skin, a slow, hypnotic rhythm. The truck cab had gotten warmer somehow, or maybe that was just me.
“My turn,” I said. My heart was beating faster now. “Something I’ve never told anyone.”
He waited, patient. Not pushing.
“I’m a virgin.”
The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them. Mason went very still.
“I know,” I rushed on, feeling my face heat. “It’s weird. I’m twenty-three. Everyone assumes I’ve…but I haven’t. I’ve just never met anyone who felt right, and then the longer it went on, the weirder it got. Now it’s thisthing, you know? This big embarrassing thing I have to explain to guys, and they always freak out.”
Mason still hadn’t said anything. His hand was still wrapped around mine, but his thumb had stopped moving.
“And now you’re freaking out,” I said flatly. “Great. This is exactly what I?—”
“I’m not freaking out.”
I blinked. “You’re not?”
“No.” He met my eyes, and his gaze was steady. Warm. “Gabby, there’s nothing weird about waiting for the right person. Nothing embarrassing about it either.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“I mean it.” His thumb started moving again, and something loosened in my chest. “Any guy who freaked out about that isn’t worth your time. You deserve someone who sees it for what it is—a gift, not a burden.”
A gift. He said it like he meant it.
I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe it was the warmth in his eyes. Maybe it was the way he’d opened up to me, real and raw and vulnerable. Maybe it was the snow falling outside and the fog on the windows and the feeling that this moment existed outside of normal time.
Or maybe it was the fact that I’d been watching this man for days, wanting him, telling myself it would never happen—and now he was here, holding my hand, looking at me like I was something precious.
“Would you?” I whispered.
Mason’s brow furrowed. “Would I what?”
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. “Take it. My virginity. Would you take it?”
He stared at me.
The silence stretched. One second. Two. Three. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. No sound came out.
Oh god. I’d broken him. I’d finally gotten him to talk, finally cracked through that shy shell, and then I’d gone and scared him right back into it with the most forward question of my entire life.
“Forget it,” I said quickly, trying to pull my hand away. “That was crazy. I don’t know why I said that. Just pretend I?—”
“Yes.”
I froze. “What?”
“Yes.” His voice was rough, strained, like he was holding himself together by a thread. “If you’re serious. If you actually want—god, Gabby,yes. I’ll do it. As soon as we get out of here. I’ll take you somewhere nice, somewhere you deserve, and I’ll?—”
“No.”
