“I’m not talking about what happened on Garden Key, dipshit.” Doc’s tone was exasperated. “She’s already worked her way through most of that. I’m saying you need to talk to her about why you’re holding yourself back from what she’s offering. Admit what you’re truly feeling. What you’re truly afraid of.”
“Idid,” Mason insisted. “Told her this morning on the catamaran that if we started up something, I probably wouldn’t wanna stop.”
Doc’s eyes widened. “So youdowant her?”
Want her?That was too tame a phrase. Mason didn’t want Alex. Hecravedher.
All of her. Above him. Beneath him. Around him. Inside of him.
He craved her so much it terrified him. Especially because he couldn’t have her. Or he knew heshouldn’thave her.
He didn’t say any of this aloud, however. What he said was, “What red-blooded man wouldn’t?”
For a long time, Doc was quiet. Contemplative. But eventually he murmured, “So it’s what happened with Sarah that’s keeping you from taking another chance?”
“No.” Mason shook his head. Then he reconsidered. “Maybe. Fuck, I dunno. I think it has more to do with theothershit in my life. The stuff that’s changed me, hardened me.”
Alex deserved a man who didn’t need to sit with his back to the wall in a restaurant so he could watch the entrance without worrying about his six. She deserved someone who didn’t feel naked without a weapon strapped to his body. She deserved someone who wasn’t plagued by nightmares of the people he’d killed or the friends he’d lost.
She deservednormal.
Of their own accord, his fingers strayed to the tattoo on his arm. Doc saw the move and said softly, “We all have ghosts, you know. The trick is to let them haunt you and not possess you.”
Mason snorted. “You been hanging around Wolf too long. Careful, or you’ll be spouting Plato and Buddha next.”
“The truth is the truth no matter who says it.”
Mason let loose with an irritated exhale. He’d had about all of Doc’s Mr. Miyagi he could stand. “Can you just sit there and be quiet so I can try to figure out a way to like you again?”
Doc clutched his heart. “You wound me, sir. Oh, how you wound me.”
“I’m considering it,” Mason mumbled, a million and one thoughts bouncing around in his head like the pinball machines at the Boston Bowl in Dorchester.
Was Doc right?Shouldhe go talk to Alex again? Try to better explain his position?
“I think my work here is done.” Doc stood. “Now, I need to go see a woman about a horse.”
With that, Doc headed in the blond’s direction, leaving Mason to stew in his own uncomfortable juices.
* * *
10:48 p.m.
Alex stared at her carton of french fries, trying to decide if there was a way to regain her appetite before they got soggy, when a hard knock sounded at her door.
Oh, thank goodness.
It was Doc coming to see if she was okay.
Shewasn’t. Not by a long shot if her lack of hunger pangs were anything to go by.
She couldn’t decide what was making her more nauseous. That awful run-in with Mason at the bar when she’d taken the low road and insulted him instead of just being honest and explaining how he’d hurt her and how he should’ve told her the truth from the beginning? Or the images of the morning that’d instantly assaulted her the moment she stepped into the cold, dark, far-too-big-and-empty hotel room?
At some point over the past few months, she’d stopped being good at being alone. She’d grown accustomed to her little daybed on the screened-in porch of the Wayfarer Island beach house. People coming and going. Meat barking. Li’l Bastard—their resident rooster—crowing. And Uncle John blaring Jimmy Buffett or Bob Marley from his eighties-style boom box.
Once upon a time, silence and solitude had brought her comfort. Now they only made her nervous. Twitchy. Shelikedbeing part of a big, rambunctious, noisy family.
Securely cinching her robe, she threw open the door with a gushing “How do you always know when I need—” As soon as she saw who was standing in the hall, the last word came out accusatory. “You!”
