“You’re right. You’re all a pain in my behind most of the time anyway.” She smirks and doesn’t break eye contact.
“What’s with that look?”
“Did you meet Mason’s sister?” she asks, her eyes twinkling with curiosity.
“Yes. Why?”
Her smile deepens, if possible. “Did you think she was pretty?”
I look at her deadpan. Maddie Grace looks like an angel on earth, and she knows it based on her expression alone. “Where are you going with this?”
“A mother can dream for one of my boys to date a nice young lady like that, with manners and a good head on her shoulders.”
“What the hell?” Leo cuts in. “Why didn’t you ask me?”
Rosa waves him off. “She wasn’t interested in you.”
Leo bulges his eyes, then looks himself up and down, smirking. “Have you seen me?”
“You’re unbelievable.” I shake my head alongside Dad as Mom laughs, used to Leo’s antics.
Luckily, Dad speeds along the goodbye, so we drop the subject of Maddie Grace, our best friend’s sister, and get another long hug.
“Love you, both.” She kisses us again for the tenth time as if we’re going off to war. “See you in three weeks.”
“Love you,” Leo and I respond, and then the second they’re gone, Leo questions me about Maddie Grace.
“You made a face.”
I drop my ass back on the couch and put my head in my hands, shaking it back and forth. “I had only said three words to her that weren’t a stuttering mess.”
“Oh, please.”
“Aliens must have taken over my body. Otherwise, how does anyone explain this? I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and Mason definitely saw.”
“Wait, you’re being dead-ass?”
I throw my head back out of frustration. “Yes! Why do you think I’m freaking out? Mason is going to bury me alive.”
Leo bursts out laughing uncontrollably. “Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?”
“I don’t know,” I yell. “I was a goner the second her eyes met mine. I need to see her again.”
“This is like a story out of one of Camila’sCosmomagazines, but seriously, Nate. Mason will break you into one million pieces.”
As if we summoned him, the cabin door flies open, and an irate Mason barges in. “You so much as look at my sister again, Davenport, I will fucking kill you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I play dumb.
He pushes me back down on the couch, looming over me. “Don’t fuck with me. I saw what I saw, and I also saw my sister all fucking giddy after you left.”
My ears perk up. “She was?”
The second the words are out of my mouth, I know they’re a mistake.
Mason’s hands wrap around my throat, and I’m almost positive I’ll die of suffocation right there and then until Leo steps in and pries his hands off of me.
I cough, trying to catch my breath, knowing I deserve whatever he serves.
