13. MASON
MASON
Watching one of the guys pop in, a giddy expression on his face, I rested further into my seat at our round top table, unable to get my mind off of Bailee. The guys and I hadn’t been instant friends when we first met, but throw in a couple of bonfires, parties, and a whole lot of booze – we were thick as thieves. Benji saddled up on the other side of me, that stupid grin widening as he knocked on the wooden table to get Angelo’s attention.
I signaled for another round of drinks as I focused on Angelo, our resident DJ. “What’s the deal for tonight?” I threw an arm over the seat behind him, fingers grazing the back of his neck. Angelo let out a little noise, leaning back into my touch as if it was a lifeline that he needed.
He didn’t answer for a few moments and then shrugged, fingers scrolling through his phone. He lived his entire life on that thing unless he was DJing, but it was his lifeline. I still remembered the one time someone had cracked Angelo’s phone, and I thought the guy was going to have an aneurysm. “Something simple in the back. Too tired for anything else. These tourists can fucking party one night without me.” He sounded tired, too. Unlike Benji and I, Angelo had an actual, full-time job entertaining the locals. I couldn’t imagine being stuck around the squeals, yelling, and boozed-up kids all day and all night.
“Fucker’s still got all that dough coming in without even doing anything,” Benji mused.
“Yeah, that’s always great,” Angelo smirked but lost the smile and continued scrolling. The fucker had bought one of the bars at the end of the pier, dressed it up, and then promoted it as a one-stop shop with cheap ass booze and sleazy beach themes. For the more lax, mature crowd, Angelo had outfitted the back rooms into a lounge that were strictly crazy people-free.
Angelo settled back even farther, leaning into my side, his body going lax. He really needed to take a few days off, breathe, maybe even not leave our bed for several hours until all the stress left his shoulders. A soft kiss to his temple had him making another one of those soft sounds that had me trying not to groan at the way my cock thickened between my thighs.
Benji snorted at our embrace, but I caught a hint of mischievousness lingering in his eyes. “What the fuck is up your ass, Benji?”
He smiled, which was an extremely uncomfortable and abnormal sight. The Russian rarely ever smiled, and when he was happy, he’d merely grunt or laugh, but even that was a bit creepy.
Angelo glanced up from his phone, “What’s with the smile? It’s creepy.”
“No way a girl’s got you smiling like that.” I offered, unsure of how Benji would respond.
“ Maybe .” He paused, a rare flush of red coloring his cheeks. “Found a girl who can surf, talk, and she’s hot.”
“The trifecta? No fucking way.” Angelo whistled and I snorted, wondering how the fuck we had both found our trifecta in a matter of days.
Angelo and Benji’s eyes were immediately on me as I mouthed a ‘what’ but I couldn’t keep a straight face. The DJ huffed, setting his phone down for a rare moment before gripping my chin to meet his eyes. His lips quirked up in a devilish smile, one that I had fallen in love with over the last several months. “Hell, you found your trifecta too, didn’t you?”
I nodded. Wounded. Timid. Silently fierce. Angelo was my trifecta as well, a hidden gem that I had only noticed recently and then kicked myself for not paying attention to sooner. He thrived from the attention I gave him and I thrived in giving him everything he needed.
Angelo released my chin after placing a quick kiss to my lips and grabbed his phone again. “Damn, seems I got to work a bit harder.”
I managed a shrug, jabbing a playful elbow into his side. Benji outright laughed, a foreign sound. “She’s just visiting on vacation. One of those rich families up there in those big houses. Doesn’t look like she fits at all.”
I froze because I knew all those families. I had moved in almost every single one of them and did repairs for the rest, which meant there were all of two possibilities that fit that description. “What does she look like?” Benji’s description of her sucked ass, but I got the gist by the way he described her. “Fuck. Lee?”
Benji’s brows raised clean off his forehead as he sat forward. “How do you know her?”
“I moved her family in two days ago.” Angelo’s eyes widened beside me as Benji and I silently tried to wrap our heads around the mindfuck of a mess we may or may not have created.
“Please tell me you didn’t fuck her. That’s so goddamn unprofessional.” There was a hint of a smirk playing on Benji’s lips but a bit of seriousness there that told me I had in fact overstepped.
The problem was that my self control had been shot in that moment and I couldn’t have held myself back if I had wanted to. Still, this could end up being a huge mess. Still, I decided fucking with Benji was easier than dealing with our reality. I leaned back and folded my arms across my chest, bracing myself for Benji’s response. “And you were her surfing instructor.”
Benji froze, realizing how much of a hypocrite he was but if I was going to antagonize him, I might explain why I forewent my self-control. “She’s got this silent fierceness to her that I can’t explain. Like, at first she looked terrified, and then it was just one of those natural things that happened.” I couldn’t explain it any better than that.
Angelo’s head was whipping between us, his eyes slowly narrowing until he cut in. “You don’t think she could possibly be-”
The thought had crossed my mind, but there hadn’t exactly been a good moment to bring up a desire we rarely shared with the women who vacationed here. That and the fact that Bailee was here for a week. In no world, would she agree to a proposal of a three-way evening between me, my boyfriend, and our best friend. It wasn’t exactly a conversation to be had seconds after I had fucked Bailee on her kitchen counter.
I swallowed nervously, dragging a hand through my hair before pulling Angelo fully into my side. He let out a little huff but I didn’t release him. “Angelo, you’ll probably see her at some point but don’t fucking bring it up. She’s here for a week.” It was one of many issues since we had all come together like this.
The fact that the three of us fell hard and fast. Many broken hearts and disastrous relationships as a result. And still, the one woman we shared had been the highlight of our messy lives.
I didn’t even fucking know Bailee but I knew I wanted her. She was perfect and she deserved to know just how beautiful and amazing she was. And if that meant we only had another five days to prove that to her, I was going to find every which way to do that.
Angelo, Benji, and I had been on this stretch of island too damn long and we knew how it worked. People vacationed here, used us as their summer romance, and then fucked off back to their world. But I didn’t want to be someone’s afterthought or memory. I wanted to be someone’s forever.
So did Benji and Angelo.
There were two things I was pretty sure of at this point. One – Bailee and Angelo would most likely hit it off. Angelo was the easiest to get along with, a few inches shorter than myself and a lot less intimidating. The second thing was that Bailee might – no, she was most definitely going to break all our hearts at the end of the week when she returned to her regularly scheduled life.