“’Cause she’s Alex!” Mason realized he was shouting when the people around them stopped their conversations to turn and stare. Clearing his throat, he added more calmly, “She’s smart and sweet and…and…all things good. She needs someone who’ll appreciate the gift she’s offering.”
“To hear her tell it, she doesn’t see it as a gift. She sees it as a burden.”
Mason didn’t want to know the answer to his next question, but he heard himself asking anyway, “Did she proposition you?”
“Sure enough.”
Once again, Mason was considering visiting violence upon the head of one of his closest friends. Red edged around his vision.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
Oh, right. Alex. Alex is what’s wrong with me!
He would lose his mind if she kept going around offering up her virginity to every Tom, Dick, and Harry.
“But she didn’t mean it,” Doc added. “She’s not really interested in an old warhorse like me.”
Mason grimaced. “He says with false humility while the blond at the end of the bar tries to eat him alive with her eyes.”
Doc’s lips twitched, and he tipped his beer toward the blond in a little salute. Mason thought she might’ve orgasmed on the spot. Her lips fell open and her eyes went half-lidded.
Then Doc returned to the subject. “It’s not like that between me and Alex.”
“Coulda fooled me. I saw the way she ran to you in the parking lot.”
“That’s because I’ve become her touchstone when things are tough. I’ve been helping her work through some of her feelings from that night on Garden Key, some of the fears and worries she’s had.”
Mason felt something inside him shrivel up. He thought maybe it was his heart. “She has fears and worries? I–I didn’t know.”
“No shit, man. You’ve been doing your best to avoid her since then.”
He had. Because she was so fucking tempting. Because he couldn’t trust himself around her. But he should have known she’d need someone to confide in. Someone who could offer her a shoulder to lean on, to cry on.
That shoulder should’ve been his. He should’ve become her touchstone.
He’d been there, after all. On Garden Key. He’d seen and heard and suffered all the same things she had. Which meant he was in the unique position to commiserate, to comfort.
He tried to swallow down the guilt and self-recrimination, but they both stayed stuck in his throat. When the bartender came over to ask after his drink order, he waved the man away. He was too busy thinking to drink.
Thinking about Alex and all the ways he’d let her down. Wondering if there was something he could do to make it up to her.
“You need to talk to her.” Doc cut into his thoughts.
“Not very good at that,” Mason admitted miserably. “You’re probably better when it comes to—”
“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.”
“I did,” 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 you do want her?”
Want her? That was too tame a phrase. Mason didn’t want Alex. He craved her.
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 he shouldn’t have 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 the other shit 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 deserved normal.
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? Should he 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.
She wasn’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?