“Here,” she said when I was staring at the pack. I looked up to see her holding out a lighter as she propped open the door before disappearing inside.
It had been a while since I’d smoked, and it burned as I sucked it into my lungs, and the taste was like an ashtray, but I welcomed both sensations. Really, what I needed was something to take my mind off what had just happened, to stop payingattention to the pounding and ache in my chest, and focus on something else.
I was lighting up the second one when I heard the door, and I sighed, knowing this was bound to happen. “I’m fine, you didn’t have to hunt me down.”
“Sure I did,” Mason said, surprising me.
I turned to find him standing on the steps above me, winking as he pulled out a thin cigar and lit it. “Or maybe I’m just here for a smoke of my own. Pretty much everyone was done anyway except Micah. The kid is a machine when it comes to food.”
“We all were at that age.”
“Mm, especially you.”
“Yeah, my body was storing all that food for years, so my final growth spurt at eighteen was primed and ready.”
“I thought you’d grown a few inches since the last time you were here.”
“People do that sometimes,” I said slowly. Something was up with him, and if I knew Mason, he had something on his mind he wanted to say. “Didn’t know you smoked.”
“Only cigars, usually the big ones that don’t come cheap. I might as well have a big fat one to feel like one of those fat cat millionaire businessmen.”
“That’s...certainly an aspiration.”
“Don’t judge me.”
“Please, everyone judges you all the time, Mason, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“True,” he said, lighting the cigar and giving it a few puffs before blowing a thick cloud of smoke. “Sometimes I smoke them to celebrate, sometimes to mourn something, and sometimes just because I feel like it.”
“Pragmatic,” I noted, eyeing him again. “So...which of the three reasons to smoke one of them is this?”
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, tapping the thin cigar on the railing to flick off the ash. “Bit of all three, I suppose.”
“Alright,” I said, sensing the rhythm of the conversation and deciding to follow it. “What’s there to celebrate?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “You coming back.”
“I’m touched,” I said, eyeing him warily. “And what’s to mourn?”
“You coming back.”
“Ah.”
“See, I have a few problems. And you taking off like someone lit your ass on fire was the perfect opportunity to see if I couldn’t deal with them,” he said, leaning on the railing.
“So you’re the reason you’re here instead of Dom,” I said, turning so I could see him now that we’d come to the real reason he was out here.
“Yep,” he said lightly. “I told him to stay put, I’d go find you and bring you back. It was about time you got to deal with the family without him around.”
“You do realize he didn’t buy that for a second, right?”
“Oh, absolutely. Dom is a lot of things, but he’s not a fucking idiot,” Mason snorted. “He knows I’m up to something, but he let me do it, so that says something.”
“Probably means he’s not happy about it, but he trusts you.”
“Silly man.”
“Is he?”
