I didn’t relax.
That would be too generous.
But at some point, I stopped bracing for disaster and started feeling the ride.
Mason noticed immediately.
His shoulders loosened under my chest. One hand dropped briefly from the bar and tapped my clasped fingers where they rested against him. Approval, maybe. Or warning. With him, the difference seemed mostly semantic.
I should have pulled back.
Instead, I let myself stay.
Just for the curve.
Then the next one.
Then the mile after that.
The sun climbed higher, and my body kept registering every point of contact like data I didn’t want but could not stop collecting. My thighs against his hips. My breasts against his back. The hard flex of his abdomen under my palms when he shifted. The faint taste of mint in the air when he turned his head to say something I couldn’t hear over the engine.
I tried to think about anything else.
Watershed contamination.
Rent.
Bandit’s rabies shot.
Whether my apartment had decent locks.
Whether Dolores would survive long enough to become a charming anecdote instead of a financial crime scene.
None of it worked.
Mason was too present. Too solid. Too warm. Too annoyingly good at making danger feel structured.
That was the worst part.
Not that he was hot. Hot was manageable. Hot could be categorized, mocked, avoided, and reduced to chemical response.
It was the steadiness that got under my skin.
The way he watched the road. The way he adjusted before bumps so my body didn’t take the worst of them. The way he slowed over gravel without making a production of it. The way his hand came back once, briefly, when a gust hit hard and my grip shifted.
Protective, but not performative.
I did not know what to do with that.
So naturally, I got mad.
I leaned closer to his ear at the next stop sign. “For the record, I still think this is a terrible idea.”
He turned his head slightly. Close enough that I caught green eyes behind the sunglasses when he lifted them onto his head. Close enough that mint hit me again.
“Your truck’s dead.”
“Temporarily deceased.”
