by Lili Valente
“You thought what?” Lark crosses her arms over her chest, clearly not amused.
“I obviously didn’t think it through,” I say, feeling stupider with every passing minute. “I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have interrupted your time with Lisa.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” she agrees, the tight muscles around her mouth relaxing ever so slightly as she adds, “But you did. So say what you came to say and get it over with.”
I don’t want to get it over with. I want to erase history, turn back time, and take back all the hurt I’ve caused. But I can’t, so I’d better start talking before she runs out of patience.
“I made a mistake, Lark. A terrible, stupid mistake,” I say, the words rushing out. “I never should have broken things off the way I did. I mean, I never should have proposed in the first place, but I really shouldn’t have left without—”
Lark lets out a strangled sound, somewhere between a laugh and cry of pain, and jumps to her feet.
Before I can explain that the words are coming out all wrong, she rushes past me, her hip brushing my shoulder as she moves, knocking me flat on my back in the tall grass.
Chapter Three
Mason
“Wait!” I roll onto my side and scramble to my feet. “Wait, Lark. Please.”
She spins to face me, her chin hitching higher. “I don’t want to wait. I want you to go away!”
“Please, that came out all wrong; that wasn’t what I meant to say. I rehearsed this a thousand times, but my stomach is in fucking knots and—” I break off, lifting my hands in the air, fingers spread wide in supplication. “What I meant was that I was way too messed up back then to be ready to promise the rest of my life to another person. After all the stuff with my mom and my uncle… I just… I wouldn’t have been able to be a good husband to you, no matter how hard I would have tried.”
I pause, encouraged by the slight softening around Lark’s eyes.
“My baggage weighed more than I did,” I continue. “I got home that night, the night you said yes, and everything went to shit. Parker and I had the blow up to end all blow ups and…” I take a breath, fighting for the courage to be honest with her. “I looked at myself in the mirror after, with my swollen lip and black eye and the peeling wallpaper in my trashed bathroom and thought... What the hell was I doing? With a girl like you? When I clearly didn’t deserve you.”
“That’s not true,” Lark whispers. “You were always so good to me. Before.”
“I tried to be,” I say, pulse racing as I take a tentative step closer. “I loved you so much.”
“And I loved you,” she says, taking a matching step backward. “And then you left. Without even saying goodbye. Without saying anything. Do you know how hard that was? I kept waiting for you to at least call and explain, but you never did.”
“I’m so sorry, Lark.” My chest aches. “By the time I got my head on straight it had been months and I was buried in work and I… Well, I convinced myself you wouldn’t want to hear from me. That it was best to leave you alone.”
“And now?” she whispers. “What’s changed?”
“I…” I trail off, swallowing hard. I’m only going to get one shot at this, one chance to prove to her I might be worthy of a second chance. I have to get every word right. Tongue slipping out to dampen my lips and my fingers curling and uncurling anxiously at my sides, I say, “I’ve done a lot of work on myself. I’ve fixed so many of the things that were broken inside of me, but there’s one thing I can’t fix, no matter how much time I spend on my therapists’ couch.”
Lark arches a brow, clearly unimpressed.
Harder, asshole. Try harder. Or get ready to spend the rest of your life missing this woman as much as you have the past four years.
“There’s never been anyone for me, but you,” I say. “I’ve never felt anything for anyone else that even comes close to what we had, what I threw away when I was a stupid kid who didn’t think he deserved to be loved like that.” My breath rushes out. “And maybe I didn’t, and maybe I still don’t. But I promise, if you can find it in your heart to give me another shot I’ll make damned sure you don’t regret it.”
Lark blinks, sending twin streams of water rolling down her flushed cheeks, but she doesn’t say a word.
Not a word, for a moment so long and strained my throat begins to ache.
“I swear,” I whisper. “Whatever it takes. Whatever you need. I took a job at a practice in Atlanta, so I’ll be close enough to be here every night, sitting on your front step with flowers and an ‘I’m an Idiot’ sign to show the entire town how sorry I am, if that’s what it takes.”
Lark shakes her head, and the bottom drops out of my stomach.
“Is there someone else?” I ask after a moment, my voice tight.
“No.” Lark swipes the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’ve dated a few people, but nothing serious.”
“Maybe that’s a sign?” I risk.
“A sign of what?” Lark huffs out a humorless laugh. “That I’m too scared to trust anyone else that way again? After the man I thought was one of the sweetest people in the world dumped me so hard my tailbone still feels bruised?”
I wince. “I’m sorry, Lark. You don’t know how sorry, I swear—”
“No, I do know.” Lark rolls her shoulders back, staring me straight in the eyes. “You’ve been gone four years, Mason. Four years without so much as an email or a text message. If you’d said these things a few weeks after you left, or even a few months after, things might have been different.” She sniffs and swipes at her cheeks again. “You don’t know how many times I dreamed of you saying everything you just said to me back then.”
She presses her lips together. “But that was then,” she continues in a softer voice. “Now, too much time has passed. I’m not that girl you remember anymore.”
I nod, but I’m not giving up. Not yet, not until I’ve left it all on the field. “And I’m not the boy you remember, either. I’m a man with his head on straight and his heart in the right place who would love to get to know the woman you are now. And to prove to you he knows how to treat people he cares about.”
Lark lifts one bare shoulder, one bare, beautiful shoulder I will never press my lips to again if I can’t convince her to change her mind and shakes her head. “It’s too painful, Mason. I can’t do this with you. I don’t want to, and even if I did, I’m too busy. I have my family and a new niece and a business to run. This coming week will be the first time I’ve taken a vacation in over a year, and I can’t imagine—”
“You’re leaving town?” I ask. That would be just my luck, booking a weeklong stay at a motel in Bliss River the one week Lark won’t be here.
She shakes her head. “No, I’m stay-cationing at home. I’m exhausted, and tonight has only made me more exhausted. I just want to go home and sleep for twelve hours and forget this conversation ever happened.”
“That’s a great idea,” I agree, her words lighting a spark of inspiration. Maybe a second chance isn’t the right way to think about this. Maybe we need a completely fresh start. “Why don’t you go rest, have a relaxing day at home, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at six.”
Lark blinks. “Excuse me?”
“Let’s forget this conversation ever happened,” I say, praying she’ll go along with my spur-of-the-moment plan. “Let’s forget everything that’s ever happened between us. Pretend I’m an interesting stranger you met at a wedding who’s visiting Bliss River for the week and is dying for you to show him the sights. Give me one week to remind you why we should be together.”
“Mason, I can’t—”
“One week, seven dates,” I press on. “And if by this time next Saturday you still want nothing to do with me, I’ll leave Bliss River and never bother you again. If that’s what you want.”
Lark sighs, looking past me to where the wedding reception is still in full swing, her expression wistful. An upbeat song has
just given way to a slow one, an old country ballad about forever love that makes me want to pull Lark into my arms to dance.
But I can’t.
Not yet, maybe not ever, unless…
“What do you have to lose?” I ask in a hushed voice. “Except two hundred pounds of annoying ex-boyfriend once the week is over?”
Her lips quirk, a tiny sign of hope that nevertheless sets my pulse to racing.
“I’ll buy you pancakes every day,” I add. “Unlimited pancakes and unlimited Chinese from The Great Wall. I’ll bring enough takeout for your entire family. Your dad can eat his Moo Shu Pork off my back while he kicks me repeatedly in the spleen.”
“You know better than that,” she says, her gaze still fixed on the dance floor. “If my dad got a hold of you, he’d aim for a vital organ.”
“As he should. I’m willing to beg his forgiveness, too. Just give the word.”
Lark sighs again before shifting her gaze back to me with a businesslike shake of her head. “No. No more begging necessary. You can pick me up at my parents’ house tomorrow at six.”
A smile explodes across my face. “Thank you, Lark. I promise you won’t be—”
“Seven days,” she interrupts, holding up seven fingers. “One week. That’s it, and when I tell you to go next Saturday, you go, Mason, and that’s the end of this.”
“Unless you ask me to stick around,” I add, knowing she wouldn’t have said yes if there weren’t at least the ghost of chance she’s open to being us again.
Us.
God, it sounds so good it makes my bones itch with hope.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Lark says, firmly. “I told you, Mason, I’m not the same person, and from the sound of it, neither are you.”
And then she turns and walks away.
But that’s okay. I’ll see her tomorrow night.
Because I’m always going to bet on her.
Always.
Chapter Four
Lark
Date One
* * *
“This is crazy. You should be committed.” Aria wrangles another bite of smashed carrots into her baby’s mouth, tossing her encouraging words over her shoulder from the kitchen, while I marvel at her technique.
Feeding Felicity is a skill only her mama and grandmama have mastered.
When I try to feed my eight-month-old niece, I inevitably end up with more baby food on my shirt than Felicity does in her stomach, and the floor around her high chair looks like a vegetable garden has been brutally murdered.
“It’s not crazy, it’s romantic!” Melody twirls through the living room, her pink chiffon dress flaring around her, making the baby laugh.
Melody’s boyfriend is picking her up at six-thirty. She asked Brian to swing by our parents’ place, instead of her apartment, so she could provide moral support while I wait patiently for Mason to arrive.
While I pace the floor and chew my nails down to nubs is more like it.
I can’t remember ever being this nervous.
Ever.
Not even the first time I went out with Mason, when he was a twenty-four-year-old med school hottie, and I was a nineteen-year-old community college dropout working at the diner in downtown Bliss River, who couldn’t believe the hottest guy she’d ever met in real life actually wanted to take her out for ice cream.
I had known of Mason since I was little—known he had a rough home life, but was smart as anything, played first string on the basketball team, and was going to college in Atlanta—but it wasn’t until he started coming in for breakfast at the diner every Saturday that I really got to know him. To know his unique mix of humor and intensity, the way he could make me laugh out loud one minute, then steal my breath away with one of his see-through-me stares the next. To know his easy smile and good heart, the one that made him really listen when people told him about their problems.
He was the one who convinced me to go to culinary school instead of taking my dad up on his offer to manage one of the family BBQ shacks. Mason was positive I could make my dream of working as a chef at a fancy restaurant a reality.
My dreams have changed over time, but I might still be working at Donut Time Diner if Mason hadn’t come into my life.
As much as he hurt me, he also helped me.
I tell myself that’s why I said yes to his bargain, out of respect for the times he was there for me. It has nothing to do with the way my skin tingled all over when he touched me, or the way my heart jerked in my chest when he said my name. Nothing to do with the way my entire body began to sizzle when he fell on top of me in the field last night.
I gave up waiting for marriage a few years ago, when I began to suspect it wasn’t going to happen for me—at least not soon enough to spare me from being the oldest, most sexually frustrated virgin on the continent—but I’ve never felt half as turned on by being naked with another man as I felt lying fully clothed in the grass with Mason.
He’s just…hot as hell. Always has been. From our first kiss to our last, kissing Mason was like being shot through with lightning and loving every minute of it.
“Well, I think she should have told Mason to go straight to The Bad Place and rot there,” Aria says, pulling me from my dangerous thoughts.
I can’t think about kissing Mason. If I think about kissing Mason, there’s a chance I will actually kiss Mason in real life, and that’s a recipe for disaster. I’m giving him a week to see if we can be friends. Or at least end things in a way that will allow both of our damaged hearts to heal.
I’m not seriously considering getting involved with Mason again.
Not even a little bit.
Liar, liar, pants on fire…a little voice whispers inside of me. But thankfully Aria pipes up again.
“And if that didn’t work,” she says, “Lark should have applied for a restraining order.”
“It’s Mason, Aria,” Melody says, rolling her eyes. “He doesn’t need to be restrained. He would never hurt Lark.”
“He’s already hurt her.” Aria catches my gaze as I turn to pace back toward the kitchen. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she adds in a softer voice. “We can call Uncle Jim and have him personally escort Mason back to his hotel, or wherever he’s staying while he’s in town.”
Uncle Jim is our go-to for parental-type intervention at the moment. Mom and Dad are out of town on a two-week cruise, a last minute trip I suspect was spurred more by Mom’s need to get away from Aria than her profound longing to see the Alaskan wilderness.
Mom loves all her daughters, but she and Aria have been butting heads constantly since Aria moved back home. Mom loves having Felicity around, but her eldest daughter’s sour attitude rubs her the wrong way.
Our mom, Sue, is like Melody, a romantic who believes life is a beautiful adventure waiting to be twirled through. Mom is the one who refused to let me wallow in despair when Mason left. She insisted I think of something I was dying to do and then helped me become so immersed in my new project that I had no time for moping or sourness.
That project was Ever After Catering.
At first, even the name of my business had stung me a little. Yes, it was a great name for a wedding caterer, but after Mason left I had about as much faith in my own ability to find happily ever after as I did the tooth fairy.
But now…
But now, nothing. You can’t trust him. He’s proven that. If you fall for him again, you’ll just be giving heartbreak an engraved invitation to RSVP.
“Well?” Aria reaches for her back pocket where her cell phone always lives. “Am I calling Uncle Jim?”
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s only seven days. I can put up with anything for seven days, and then he’ll be out of my life for good with no more surprises.”
“A life without surprises…” Melody sighs as she sinks into Dad’s overstuffed armchair. “That sounds like the worst kind of life there is.”
“There are lots of worse kinds of lives,” Aria says with
an exaggerated roll of her eyes that makes Felicity laugh again. “Like life with cancer. Or war.”
“Life with leprosy,” I add.
“Life with chronic body odor,” Aria counters.
“Life with chronic body odor and an oozing leprous sore on your face,” I say, ignoring Melody’s insistence that this game isn’t funny.
“Life with chronic body odor and an oozing sore and a shriveled arm stump that smells like beef jerky,” Aria says, making Melody moan.
I’m still laughing when the doorbell rings and smothers my happiness like a blanket over a fire.
It’s six o’clock.
Mason is here.
“I’ll be back later!” I grab my purse and bolt, knowing better than to let Mason get sucked into sister drama.
I wrench open the door, ignoring the way my stomach flips at the sight of him looking as gorgeous as ever—there really should be a law against ex-boyfriends being this cute—and jab a finger toward the street. “Let’s go.”
“Have fun, you two!” Melody calls out sweetly. “So good to see you, Mason! Well, sort of see you, anyway.”
“Have her home by ten and don’t be a jerk,” Aria shouts as I hop out onto the stoop and shut the door behind me.
“Ready?” I breathe.
“So ready,” he says in that husky voice that makes me think about kissing again.
Already. Argh! I’ve got to get a grip or I’m doomed.
“Good, then let’s go.” I circle around him, giving every delicious inch of his yummy self a wide berth as I head down the walk to the shiny new car parked at the curb.
It’s a fancy sedan with leather seats so different from the old pickup Mason used to drive that when I first slide inside, it’s almost possible to imagine I’m going out with a different person. But then I catch a whiff of his familiar Mason scent—that mixture of clean laundry, man, and freshly toasted bread that always made me feel warm all over—lurking beneath the new car smell and memories come flooding back.