Still nothing worked.
At her wit’s end, she whispered his name again, “Mason.” Tears falling, she began to rub his arm instead of trying to shove him away. “Please.”
His fingers flexed again.
With her other hand, she slowly touched his back and began to rub him there too. “I’m here, Mason. It’s just you and me. No one will hurt you.”
A heartbeat later, he released her, letting loose a string of curses as he sat up in bed, facing the wall and away from her.
“Mason,” she said, scooting closer to him.
“Don’t.”
Her hand hovered over his shoulder for a minute before she let it fall to the bed.
“I’m sorry,” he said and then stood, pulling on his jeans.
In any other circumstances, she would have enjoyed the sight of his bare behind and muscular thighs, but not these. “Where are you going?”
“Back to my own place,” he said as he shoved his head through his t-shirt.
Wrapping herself up in the sheets, she got up from the bed and stood in front of him, blocking his way. “I don’t want you to go.”
His jaw flexed. “I don’t want to go either, but it’s for the best.”
“Whose best—yours or mine?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I almost hurt you.” He ran a hand over his face. “I could have broken your neck like it was nothing.”
Yeah, he could have. She wasn’t stupid, but she also wasn’t going to punish him for something he had no control over. He wasn’t choosing to hurt anyone. And if she were going to be with him, then she would be with him all the way.
“But you didn’t, and that says a lot.”
He slashed a hand through the air. “It says I noticed you were a woman and gave you the benefit of the doubt. Stupid, since I could have gotten myself killed for hesitating.”
“It’s stupid to hesitate?”
“In war it is.” Giving her a dark look, he said, “We need to stop seeing each other.”
Her mouth dropped open, then she snapped it shut and marched up to him. “No. You are not doing this to me. I refuse to let you turn into some kind of love-them-and-leave-them asshole because it won’t stop with me.”
“Keeping you safe, yeah that makes me a real asshole.”
“We can work through this,” she insisted. “I bet there’s therapy or techniques we can try.”
“What’s this we nonsense?” He tilted his head to one side. “And I already see a therapist, Skylar. I already take enough meds to kill a horse and yet, I can’t enjoy one fucking night with you in my arms. I can’t sleep without nightmares. I can’t stop the reflexes that kept my ass alive in places that people around here never dreamed existed.”
“I know,” she said, trying to comfort him.
“You do not know.”
“I know I don’t know.” She winced. “I’m trying to be supportive.”
“I get that, sweetheart, I do, but this isn’t going to work.”
“Why?”
“You were my attempt at living, and I fucked up by almost killing you years.
“Your attempt? Like an experiment?” she asked.
He nodded once. She could see the pain on his face, the deep grooves that had been put there by what had just happened and everything he’d been through in the past few years.
But his words still cut deep. So she stepped out of his way and let him go.
Chapter Twelve
‡
Mason had no clue why he’d decided to stop by the local VFW watering hole, but here he was, drinking warm beer and getting his ass handed to him in Gin Rummy by a guy who was at least a hundred and fifty.
“Rummy,” the old timer rasped. “Son, didn’t anyone teach you how to play?”
“No, sir.” Mason set his cards down and settled back in his chair. Thank God the chairs were comfortable. He glanced around the room—judging by the various injuries and the average age of his compatriots, they were probably as thankful as he was.
“Your brother’s a fine player.”
That got Mason’s attention. Tristan came here? “I’ll have to get Tristan to teach me.”
“You do that, and then we’ll play like men should.”
Mason toasted the Korean War Veteran and grinned at him as he left the table. The door opened, and who but his brother walked inside.
“The Force said you needed me.”
Mason rolled his eyes and drank down the rest of his beer, then pointed to his graphic Grumpy Cat t-shirt with the word NO written beneath the image.
“Okay, so someone posted a picture of you and Clarence playing cards on Jessamine’s Facebook page.”
“You come here a lot?”
Tristan leaned forward. “You’re not really my type.”
“Shut up.”
“I come here as often as I can.”
Mason grunted.
“What brings you here?” Tristan asked, his expression serious.
“Thought it made sense.”
“As opposed to being with Skylar?”
“Don’t want to talk about her.” He scratched his nail across the label on the bottle. “Didn’t come here to talk about her.”
“Fine. What did you come here to talk about?”
Mason exhaled. “Nothing. Okay, fine…I screwed up.”
“With Skylar?”
There was no use in denying it. “Yes.”
“Bad?”
He nodded. “I…thought she was attacking me in my sleep.”
Tristan’s eyes closed briefly and when they opened, they were filled with compassion…and pain. “Is she physically okay?”
Mason clenched his jaw so hard it popped. “Yeah, but I couldn’t take the chance on doing that to her again, so I left.”
“That seems like a reasonable reaction.”
“But not before telling her she was an attempt at living again, and I screwed up so badly that we didn’t need to see each other anymore.”
“Shit.” Tristan rubbed the back of his neck. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Were you looking for me to kick your ass or tell you to go back to the woman and apologize?”
“I deserve the ass kicking and even if I apologized, there’s no way she’d take me back.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I wouldn’t take me back.”
“Then it’s a damn good thing Skylar isn’t you.”
“Do you miss it?” he asked his brother.
“The military?”
“Yeah.”
“Sometimes. You?”
“All the fucking time. I just want one more chance to get something right, you know?”
“I get that,” Tristan began. “Seriously, brother, I do. But you can’t keep blaming yourself for their deaths.”
“I was the breacher. It was my job to get us through.”
“And it was their job to cover you. It was war—you of all people know this. Shit happens. Bad shit that no one wants to talk about, but it doesn’t make it less real. It doesn’t make the pain go away.” He jerked his head towards Clarence. “You think he doesn’t remember the pain, that he doesn’t remember a war that everyone else has forgotten? Every guy in here is suffering, but what they’re not doing—what I’m not doing—is giving up just because I fall down.”
“For though the righteous fall down seven times, they rise again.” It was his and Tristan’s favorite verse in Proverbs. He had it tattooed in Hebrew on his left arm as did Tristan. Only he didn’t feel righteous.
“Exactly. We don’t have any other choice.” Tristan glanced away, but not before Mason glimpsed the pain that shone bright in his twins eyes.
*
Skylar sat across from Lemon in Yates’ Diner, eating her weight in brownies. Or at least attempting to.
“Would you like some more chocolate syrup?” Lemon asked, sympathy in her gaze.
“I already used an entire bottle of it.” Skylar stirred the
brownie and fudge sauce together. Her heart ached and her stomach hurt—but she couldn’t blame that on Mason. Well, she could since he was the reason she was eating so much in the first place.
“Maybe he’ll apologize. Change his mind?” Lemon sighed. “I hate this. I’m supposed to come from this long line of legendary matchmakers and I can’t even help you.”
“Nothing to do.”
“There’s a sale at the—”
“I don’t want to go to him this time. I’m always going to him,” Skylar said. “I’ve practically thrown myself at the man. Besides, it’s not really his fault. He’s…dealing with things that are bigger than me. Us.”
“There’s nothing bigger than love. Love can handle anything,” Lemon said firmly.
Skylar raised her brows. “Where’s the love of your life?”
“He’s off somewhere.” Lemon waved a hand in the air. Suddenly, she scowled at whoever was behind Skylar.
“Still practicing that wave, I see. It’s all in the wrist,” Tristan said as he walked up to their table. “Skylar.”
Despite the fact that God had spared her from dealing with an identical twin, Tristan and Mason looked just enough alike to make her heart pinch. She rubbed at the spot, trying to get it to stop, but only succeeded in getting chocolate syrup all over her shirt. Great.
“Tristan.”
Lemon narrowed her eyes. “You were just leaving, weren’t you, Tristan?”
“No.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and smiled. “I’m eating dinner here tonight. Would you like to join me?”
Lemon opened her mouth to reply, but Tristan cut her off.
“Skylar. Would you like to join me, honey?”
Lemon’s face turned red. “Are you seriously hitting on the woman your brother was dating?”
“An invitation to dinner is hardly flirting.”
“When it comes to you, an invitation to anything is an invitation to—to”
Tristan placed a finger against Lemon’s lips. “Don’t hurt that pretty head of yours trying too hard to think of a suitable comeback.” Her eyes blazed as she looked down and then back up at him. Something passed over his handsome face as they gazed at one another.
“Thank you for the invite, but I’m still in a serious relationship with my dessert, and I think he would get jealous if I left him,” Skylar said, not taking her eyes off the two of them.
“If you don’t move your finger, so help me God, I will bite it off,” Lemon practical growled.
“Do it,” he said softly. “Bite me.”
“As much joy as you two are getting out of driving each other bonkers, Lemon and I were having girl talk, so…dinner for one. Thanks.”
Clearly amused, Tristan not only removed his finger from Lemon’s mouth, but he also apologized for interrupting before walking to the back of the restaurant and settling into a booth.
“He has really nice manners,” Skylar said, carefully watching her friend’s face. “Maybe I should consider going out with him?”
“Tristan asked you to dinner,” Lemon all but hissed. Then she composed herself. “Do you think that’s such a good idea since you’ve sle—dated his brother?”
“I thought I could make some notes, compare them to yours, and see how they stack up.”
Lemon’s face went pale. “I do not know what gave you the impression that Tristan and I were…are…have ever been together. We haven’t. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you would think such a thing.”
Somehow, Lemon made properly outraged sound so funny and heartbreaking at the same time. “I was only kidding. I have no desire to go out with Tristan. Ever.” She slung her spoon around in her bowl. “Like ever. Ever.”
“He’s not that bad.”
Skylar shrugged her shoulder. “He’s kind of pretentious.”
“Is there something wrong with a man who has an education and uses it?”
“And he’s always dressed like he’s going someplace fancy.”
“The clothes make the man, Grandmother McCoy always says.”
Skylar struggled not to laugh, but gosh, teasing Lemon like this was a million times better than wallowing in her own misery. “And honestly, he’s not even the good-looking twin.”
Lemon smacked her hand on the table. “You are liar, Skylar Jernigan. Tristan Lawson is a beautiful man, and you know it.”
Skylar snorted.
Lemon covered her mouth, her eyes darting around. “He didn’t hear me, did he?”
Tristan raised his glass to Skylar and winked. “Nope,” she lied.
“Good.” She took a big bite of her strawberry shortcake. “I hate for anyone to think I actually defended him. I’d never live it down.”
“That doesn’t seem right.”
“Oh, everyone knows we don’t get along.”
“Why?”
Lemon grew thoughtful. “Because we don’t and that’s just what we do. In any case, I want to help you get your man back.”
“I’d love to get him back, but like I said before, I’m not going to be the one knocking on his door.”
Lemon covered Skylar’s hand with her own. “I have a very good feeling that he’ll come knocking on your door.”
Too bad Skylar didn’t have that feeling.
Chapter Thirteen
‡
In two hours, all of Skylar’s students from her day camp would perform at Jessamine’s Fourth of July ceremony, which gave her just enough time to sample everything before her.
She adjusted her blue, sleeveless wrap dress and wandered over to the row of food vendors. The smell and din of the crowd reminded her of home, or what she’d considered home.
Funny how she’d never shared her background with Donovan. Maybe she had instinctively known he would have judged her, then again, Mason was the only one who knew.
Mason had also left her.
Stopping at the next food truck, she bought a funnel cake and began pulling pieces off, the light and fluffy dessert making her body happy.
Growing up, she had met so many people that she couldn’t begin to remember their real names, only their stage ones, and those changed whenever a wild hair hit them. Reinvention was the name of the game.
However, the day her daddy decided to put down roots in Ahoskie and work at the wood pulp mill had been a blessing and a curse. Finally, she could make friends. Finally, her transcripts could catch up with her, and she would be able to apply to audition for Julliard.
Everything about that magical move had been perfection. Everything about her life suddenly turned picture-perfect and there she was at the school of her dreams with a boyfriend who got her music.
Until her dad got sick from a chemical the mill shouldn’t have been using. But it broke down the wood faster.
So what had she done? She moved. And when things got difficult in Charlotte, she moved again. But had things really been that difficult in Charlotte or was wandering in her blood? Was she her mother’s child or her father’s daughter?
Things had gotten difficult here, but for once in her life, she had no desire to pack up and run. Jessamine was her home. That house was her home.
For a while, she had hoped Mason would be her home, too.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she barely noticed the man standing in the center of the street, directly in her way.
“Excuse me,” she said and tried to go around him.
He put a hand on her arm and she looked up, her eyes widening. “Mason. What are you doing here?” She glanced around, automatically concerned for him. “It’s starting to get crowded.”
“I know.” He let go of her and stepped back a little. The crowd didn’t get any closer and miraculously, no one bumped into them at all.
She glanced around again and noticed several men in uniform had formed a loose circle around them. “Are they here for you?”
“Yeah, they’re my buddies from the VFW. We support each other—it’s not easy for a lot of us to be here for things like this�
�even though we want to be.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. Bomber stood by his side, a leash tethering him to Mason’s wrist. “They’re helping me accomplish this mission.”
“What mission?”
He rubbed her cheek and she almost leaned into his touch, until she realized he was brushing powdered sugar off her face.
She jerked away.
He exhaled.
Bomber sat.
“I’m not here to ask you to take me back, and not because I don’t want to be with you. I do. I’m here because I hurt you and I need to apologize for it.”
“You couldn’t help—”
“Not that—I’m truly sorry about that, too. But I did have a choice in what I said to you, so I’m sorry for hurting you, Skylar. You are more than just some lame attempt at living. For a while, you were my only reason for living.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I can’t take this much longer, sweetness. But I wanted to try for you, and I’m sorry I can’t be at the concert tonight. I’m sure those br—your students will set everyone but their parents’ teeth on edge.”
Skylar could only gape at him.
He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “You look pretty in that dress. The color suits you.” Then he walked away, Bomber at his side. His buddies, old and young, all ethnicities, surrounded him, keeping him safe. Keeping each other safe.
Her heart swelled at their thoughtfulness. At the way they helped each other.
“If you don’t go after him right now, I will never speak to you again,” Lemon said as she joined her.
“He doesn’t want me back. He just came to apologize.”
Lemon ate a spoonful of strawberry sherbet. “Too bad. I thought his gesture was rather grand, braving this Fourth of July crowd like he did.”
“I did, too,” Skylar agreed, but an apology wasn’t an invitation.
In fact, it had sounded like a good-bye.
*
The next day, Mason sat on his front porch, his feet on the railing as he watched Skylar’s last student leave for the day.
Her brown hair gleamed in the summer sun. She tucked her hair behind her ear and waved as the car backed out of the drive. Arms wrapping around herself, she turned and made her way back to her house, not even glancing his way.
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