Chrissy’s grin melted when she tentatively asked, “He didn’t return the sentiment?”
“He did not.” Alex twisted her lips. “He got all flustered and started listing a bunch of excuses for why I shouldn’t love him.”
Chrissy looked toward the beach where Doc, Mason, and Romeo hopped out of the seaplane. Alex followed the direction of Chrissy’s gaze, and the minute her eyes landed on Mason’s big, brawny back, she felt a tug at her heart that echoed down into her belly, exacerbating the butterflies.
“So what are you going to do now?” Chrissy asked, the warm breeze playing with the ends of her ponytail.
“Guess I’m going to go face my fate.” When Mason disappeared inside the house, Alex turned to Chrissy. “Mind giving me a ride to shore?”
Five minutes later, she climbed the wide, wooden steps on the front porch. But she didn’t go inside the house. Instead, she took a seat atop the top tread and waited.
He would come to her. She knew he would. Mason was many things, but a coward wasn’t one of them.
For what felt like hours but could only have been minutes, she watched the whitecaps giggling and spraying as they slammed into the reef. Listened to the crackle and hiss of the palm fronds blowing in the breeze. And then the squeak of the screen door told her he’d arrived.
She didn’t need to turn around to know it was him. She’d always been able to feel when he was near. And her heart, which had already been pounding a mile a minute, somehow found a way to lay on more speed. So much so, she was dizzy by the time he sat beside her, his big shoulder brushing hers.
She breathed in his scent, that wonderful combination that was uniquely Mason. But she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She knew the answer to her question would be in his eyes, and she wasn’t ready to see it. For a moment more, she wanted to live in the wonderful gray area of not knowing. Of having hope.
“Welcome home,” she whispered quietly, her eyes trained on the hammock as it gently swayed with the wind.
“Thanks. It’s good to be home.”
She closed her eyes when his deep voice slid through her, warm and welcome as the memory of a hot island night.
“Gellman?” she asked after opening her eyes, but still not looking at him.
“Getting his just deserts even as we speak.”
She nodded. “Good. I’m glad. And your wound?”
“Healing up. Yours?”
“Same.”
For a while after that, they sat in silence. She would swear she could hear the solid thud of his heart. Or perhaps that was simply the rush of blood between her own ears.
“You should keep this, Alex,” he finally said.
She glanced over to see the Big Papi baseball in its brand-spanking-new display case. She’d had her parents ship both items to Chrissy’s house, and then had brought them to Wayfarer Island to place on Mason’s bed.
She’d wanted him to see them first thing so he’d know she was a woman of her word. So he’d know that, no matter what his answer, she would continue to be his friend.
“It means more to you than it will ever mean to me,” she told him. “I want you to have it.”
A sigh whooshed from the depths of his chest. “You make it impossible. You know that, right?”
She studied her bare feet. Water had sluiced off her bathing suit and down her legs to create wet marks on the wooden tread. “Make what impossible?”
“Everything!”
That had her glancing into his eyes. Those bluer-than-blue eyes that could be ice cold or as hot as blue flames.
He looked awful. As Doc would say, Like ten miles of bad road. And yet she thought him the most beautiful man she’d ever laid eyes on.
“I’m not good with words,” he said quietly. “I never know what to say or how to say it. And the truth is, I didn’t have any great epiphanies or sweeping changes to my personality while I was gone.” Alex felt the first tingles of warning. This wasn’t going to go the way she’d dreamed it might. “But I did think about you all the time.”
And just like that, the warning tingles turned into sparkles of hope.
“No.” He frowned. “That’s not right. ’Cause that would imply I was actively doing something. I wasn’t. You were just there.”
“Like an annoying gnat,” she supplied helpfully.
“More like the air in my lungs or the heart in my chest.”
Okay, and it was official. Hope. Sparkles and sparkles and sparkles of hope.
“Then Doc said something to me that made me start to wonder if it’s possible I could have the life I want for myself.”
Sparkles and sparkles and sparkles of hope!
“I do love Doc,” she managed, even though her breath had strangled in her lungs. “He’s great at cutting through the crap. What did he say?”
“That I’m not as fucked up as I thought I was.” Mason shook his head as if that wasn’t quite right. “Or that maybe I am, but it’s normal given all I’ve been through.”
“It is normal,” Alex assured him.
Mason went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I think I wanna try, Alex. I wanna try for that life.”
Her. World. Stopped. Spinning.
“What exactly are you saying, Mason?”
“I’m saying I want you, Alex.” His eyes searched her own. “I’m saying I want you to be the last thing I see when I close my eyes at night, and the first thing I see when I open them in the morning. I’m saying—”
She didn’t care what else he had to say because he’d already said enough. Besides, the heat and hint of desperation in his eyes told her more than words ever could.
Bright, shiny, incandescent joy filled her up until she was surprised rays of light didn’t shine out of her eyes.
He wants me! The mighty Mason McCarthy wants me!
It was all she’d ever wanted, and more than she’d ever dreamed. With a squeal of unfettered happiness, she jumped into his lap. Straddling him, she grabbed his face—registering the rough scrape of his beard stubble against her palms—and slammed her mouth over his.
If someone had asked her what she was thinking in that moment, she couldn’t have said. Maybe for the first time in her life, her head was completely hollow. But oh! Her heart was full.
Full in a way she’d never felt before. Full in a way she hoped to feel until her dying day.
At first, Mason’s kiss was tentative, as though the man who hated talking actually had more he wanted to say. Then a low groan sounded at the back of his throat, and wrapping his arms around her, he kissed her until they were both panting.