Chapter 5 Gabby
GABBY
We scrambled to get dressed like teenagers who absolutely deserved detention.
Headlights flared through the fogged windows of Mason’s truck, bright and damning. There was no hiding what we’d been doing. Not with the glass all steamed up.
My jeans stuck halfway up my thighs. My hands were shaking—from the cold, from the rush, and from that creeping dread settling right under my ribs. The kind that whispers, you should’ve known better.
Mason, infuriatingly, was already put together. Belt buckled. Coat on. Hair raked into something presentable, like he hadn’t just been inside me seconds ago.
“Hey,” he said when he caught me staring. “You okay?”
“Fine.” My voice came out thin as ice.
I wasn’t fine. The guys were here now—the same ones who’d spent all night razzing him about me. The same ones who’d turned his love life into a running joke.
This was the part where I became the story.
A knock hit the driver’s window. I startled so hard, my elbow knocked the door. Through the fog, Conner’s grin appeared like a jump scare.
Mason wiped the glass and cracked the window. Cold air sliced in with laughter and snow.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Conner said. “Looks like somebody finally learned how to talk to a woman.”
“Those windows are steamed, man,” Hux added. “What, you two running a damn sauna in there?”
My face flamed. I clutched my coat, suddenly very aware that my hair was a wreck and my mouth still tingled.
“Called it,” Briggs crowed. “You owe me twenty, Knox.”
“The bet was that he’d talk to her, not—”
“I think he did more than talk. Look at her hair.”
I braced. This was it. The joke. The high-five. The part where I disappeared into a punchline—some warm distraction during a snowstorm.
“No.”
Mason’s voice cut clean through the noise.
He wasn’t smiling. He opened his door and stepped into the snow like something had shifted inside him—solid, immovable.
“This is Gabby,” he said. “My girlfriend.”
Silence crashed over the group.
I forgot how to breathe. Girlfriend?
Mason came around and opened my door. Cold hit my legs, but his hand was warm and sure as he helped me down.
“You will be respectful,” he said to them, calm as a warning bell. “She’s not a joke. She’s not a story. She’s mine.”
Mine.
Conner’s grin faded into something else—surprise, maybe even a little awe. Hux stared at his boots. The others suddenly found the snow fascinating.
“Sorry, Gabby,” Conner said. “That was out of line.”
“Yeah,” Hux muttered. “We’re idiots. But no disrespect.”
My heart was still sprinting. “It’s…okay.”
“Not with you,” Mason said quietly. “Not anymore.”
Something warm bloomed in my chest. I looked up at him—this huge, quiet, impossibly protective man—and felt my eyes sting.
He meant it. He actually meant it.
“Come on,” Conner said. “Let’s get out of here before we all freeze to death.”
“What about getting her home?” Mason asked. “That’s why we were out here in the first place.”
Conner shook his head. “Mountain road’s a no-go.
There’s two more trees down past the curve, and the snow’s drifting bad.
Even the rescue truck isn’t making it up there tonight.
” He shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Gabby. You’re stuck with us for the duration.
Kameron’s already setting up cots at the roadhouse for the staff. ”
Stuck at the roadhouse. Across the street from the firehouse. Across the street from Mason.
I tried very hard not to smile. “I think I can manage.”
Mason’s hand tightened on mine. When I glanced up at him, he wasn’t even trying to hide his satisfaction.
“Gabby, you can sit up front,” Conner added. “It’s warmer.”
The ride back was cramped and quiet. Mason’s thigh stayed pressed to mine, his hand warm around my fingers, steadying me with each slow brush of his thumb.
“You okay?” he murmured.
“You called me your girlfriend.”
“Yeah.”
“We met officially, like…two hours ago.”
“I’ve known you longer than that.”
“Creepy,” I whispered.
He smiled faintly. “Persistent.”
“And I get a vote in this, right?”
His jaw tightened. “Do you not want to be my girlfriend?”
I made him wait just long enough to suffer. “I didn’t say that.”
Relief softened him instantly. He kissed my knuckles. “Good. Because I’m not letting you go.”
From the back seat, Briggs groaned. “Great. He’s gonna be that guy now.”
“The whipped one?” Knox asked.
“Absolutely,” Mason said without shame. “Prepare yourselves.”
I laughed—real laughter, the kind that feels like release—and let myself lean into his side.
The roadhouse lights cut through the snow like a promise. Kameron burst out the door as we pulled up.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I was about to send another team—”
“We slid off the road,” I said. “But Mason took care of me.”
Her eyes dropped to our hands. Then back up. Slowly. “Ah.”
Behind the window, Elsa was grinning like she’d just won a bet.
“I have to head back to the station,” Mason said, tipping my chin up with his thumb. “But I’ll be back first thing tomorrow.”
He kissed me—slow and unapologetic—right in front of everyone.
“Get some sleep, girlfriend.”
“Drive safe, boyfriend.”
I watched the rescue truck vanish into the snow until Kameron nudged me.
“Well. That escalated.”
Inside, hot chocolate waited. So did questions. So did warmth.
And for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t bracing for disappointment.
I had Mason.
And tonight, that felt like everything.