I hear the pride in his compliment, and something else… something that sounds like sadness.
“He’s my brother. I love him,” is my candid, truthful response.
I’d do anything for Brandon. Sacrifice anything. It’s why I’m here in Dearborne. Brandon needed me.
“And he knows it. That’s what’s most important. He knows he’s loved and that your love is permanent. He can rely on it. Feel safe in it. Trust that it will always be there. Not everyone is so lucky.”
The heaviness of what he says settles over me, cinching my heart. Even though he’s referring to Brandon, he’s also referring to himself. I think I’m starting to understand now. It’s like alight bulb moment. A grand epiphany. Mason is scared to love. He’s scared to have someone love him. That’s why he couldn’t say it to me that night. The concept of someone loving him terrifies him. He grew up transient, shuffled from one family to the next. Mason told me a little about his life. Not much, but enough for me to know there was so much more buried deep in the darkness. Bad things. He had no one who cared. No one permanent in his life who truly loved him. Not until Bennett and Carter. But the love of friendship and brotherhood is different from the love I wanted to give him. Tried to give him. He didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust it would last. Is that why he walked away?
But he came back.
Yeats wrote a poem, “Never Give All the Heart.” It was one of Mason’s favorites from my book that he would often read to me while we cuddled in bed. The poem spoke to men, advising them to never give their love to one woman because that love wouldn’t last, and the man would be left heartbroken when the woman eventually walked away. I often wondered why he would go back to that one poem. In his own way, Mason opened up to me. Allowed me to see his vulnerability. I just didn’t know it then.
With a hand, I reach up and cup the face of this beautifully tragic man. His head lists to one side, sinking into my touch. I take a step back when Brandon pokes his head inside.
“Hurry up. I’m starving. You guys can make out later.”
“Brandon!”
Mason just laughs, picks up the rest of the stuff, and carries it outside with a “you coming?”
With those two simple innocuous words, my thoughts dive right down into the gutter.
Chapter 11
ARIA
Lying on the blanket, I peer up at the night sky as the warm summer’s breeze fans its florally perfumed breath over my face. Our picnic dinner ended a little while ago. Brandon left to spend the night with his friend Nico, who lives in the cul-de-sac at the end of the street.
My body is snuggled to Mason’s side, his arm cushioning the back of my head like a pillow, lulling me into a peaceful bliss I haven’t felt in a long time. I gave up trying to figure out this‘whatever the heck it is’between us hours ago and decided to just let what happens, happen—regardless of how that mindset completely goes against my Type C nature. I didn’t even know there was a C personality until I took one of those career-slash-personality aptitude tests in high school. For someone like me who is cautious and logical, I’m starting to understand that sometimes in life, I don’t have to have all the answers. Sometimes, it’s okay to sit back and enjoy the journey without knowing the final destination.
“I found a unicorn.”
Mason pulls me closer, and a swarm of excited butterflies flutters wildly inside my chest when his head leans in until we’recheek to cheek. I get distracted by the rasp of his day’s growth of stubble and how his subtle cologne invades my lungs.
“Show me.”
Straightening my arm, I reach up to trace the pattern for him, connecting the starry dots with my finger.
“It looks more like a banana with feet.”
Giggles tumble out of me. “It does not. Look.” I connect the stars again for him. “See, there’s its body and there’s the horn.”
“Still a banana.”
“Whatever. Clearly, you have no artistic vision.”
“And you’re just figuring that out now?” he teases.
Mason rolls onto his side, facing me, and those butterflies inside my chest explode into bombs of confetti when he tickles his index finger over the bridge of my nose. My breath catches as sparks of desire shoot straight between my thighs.
“What are you doing?”
Is that my voice, all wispy and needy?
“Creating my own constellation,” he quietly replies, his face filled with concentration as he looks down at me.
Memories of long-ago rainy mornings come flooding back. Mason would spend hours drawing a finger over my skin from one freckle to the next as we laid in bed and listened to the music of the raindrops pattering against the windowpane.
