Chapter 14 - Mason
Mason
Cass’ fingers pressed gently into the muscle just below my collarbone, and I cursed under my breath.
“Sorry.” Although, she didn’t sound sorry at all.
Because she didn’t stop what she was doing.
Her hands moved with a quiet kind of focus, calloused fingertips brushing over the tender edge of the bruise blooming across my chest. I tried to sit without flinching, to breathe evenly.
But every shift, every accidental graze, sent a fresh ripple of heat through me that was only partly due to the pain I was in.
Cass stood close, so close the smell of her shampoo tickled my nose. I so badly wanted to lean in and just… shove my nose into her hair. Breathe her in.
“You’re lucky it’s not dislocated,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “But you’re going to feel it a lot more in the morning.”
I was already feeling it. But I didn’t say that out loud.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said, keeping my tone light. “Not like I went in there planning this.”
I moved to take off my jersey. The sweat had dried, making the fabric cling to my skin like it had grown roots. I lifted my arm, and sucked in a breath when white-hot pain tore across my shoulder. Felt like I was ripping it off my body.
“Don’t.” Her hand came to rest over mine, light and steady. Her palm brushed my knuckles, and I looked up. Her eyes met mine, soft but unflinching.
I dropped my hand, leaving hers there to do the work.
She stepped closer, and began easing my jersey up, careful not to pull too fast, or too hard.
Her fingertips barely grazed my ribs as she worked it up over my head.
I bit back a groan and closed my eyes for a second, not wanting to make her feel bad.
She wasn’t the one hurting me. This was all my fault.
“There we go,” she murmured when it was finally off. Her voice was a soothing balm working through the knots of tension in my neck.
I opened my eyes, and she was still right there, gazing at me. Or maybe I was the one gazing. Couldn’t tell. Her eyes dropped from mine to assess the mess of purple and red spreading down my side. I didn’t need to look to know how bad it was.
“You should have told someone about this.”
“It’s fine,” I grimaced through her prodding and poking. “It’s pretty much cleared up. Fixed itself.”
“Like your shoulder?” My bravado deflated and Cass smiled faintly. “You suck at pretending you’re fine. For future reference.”
I grabbed her hand, and it was as though that simple touch sent a jolt of electricity surging through us both. She froze.
“Talking about a future with me already?” I asked.
“Or whatever hapless fool finds herself as your after-hours nurse,” she said without hesitation.
I watched her get the ice pack like she did last time, going through the motions.
I swallowed the inexplicable lump that pushed up in my throat.
Cass was always so guarded, protected by this wall with barbs for edges, that to see this kind of tenderness in her eyes, feel it in her touch… it was almost too much.
“I thought you’d say no to my platonic request,” I said then, my voice low.
Her attention didn’t waver, hands moving with self-assured confidence. “I was going to.”
Honest. No apology in it. That was a glimpse of the Cass I knew, and my lips twitched into a careful smile.
“Why didn’t you?”
She let out a long, drawn out breath, thinking for a moment. “I remembered what it felt like… Watching you take that hit, and not being able to do anything. I was ready to run onto the ice in my day shoes and pluck you from that fight myself.”
Laughing hurt, and I groaned my way through it until the feeling passed. I could just imagine her, in all her diminutive form, forcing her way through the burly refs and opposing players to come rescue me.
“My knight in shining armor,” I said, gaze lingering a little too long on the way her teeth sank into her bottom lip. The memory of what she tasted like was still too sharp and real.
I tore my eyes away.
“Does that make you my queen?” There was a playful gleam in her eyes when she looked at me, her hands still applying steady, careful pressure.
There was nothing casual in the way she moved after that. Every touch was deliberate. She set the towel on the table beside me, took the ice pack, and pressed it gently to the worst of the bruising. My jaw clenched, but I didn’t pull away.
“So, you met Hallie,” I said, just to pierce the silence with something other than what I really wanted to say. That thing wasn’t allowed. “How did that even happen?”
Her brows lifted. “She wandered into the workshop when I was busy with the lift valve. Said she got lost trying to find the locker room.”
“Go figure,” I chuckled. “Probably hoping to catch a glimpse of the guys in something less than their uniform.”
“I don’t know,” Cass said, easy and light. It was clear she and my sister had hit it off. “It looked like she didn’t really care where she ended up. At that age, I was always up for whatever adventure was in the cards.”
“And now?”
There was a pause, and she looked at me pointedly. “We’re talking about your sister. And she’s great. Reminds me a lot of you.”
She pursed her lips, like she was holding something back. I knew the feeling. The air was thick with all the things we were stopping ourselves from saying.
“Well, she’s nosy and stubborn,” I said. “Recipe for trouble.”
“Nosy, stubborn, and awesome,” Cass corrected firmly. “You’re lucky.”
Of all the things I thought she’d say, that wasn’t it.
“I’m an only child,” she continued, dabbing at a cut near my temple. “I always wanted to know what it would feel like to have a sibling. It’s like a built-in best friend for life. Someone who gets it. Someone to talk to without having to explain the whole world first.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure what to say if I did.
She pulled back slightly and tossed the used cloth into the trash behind her. “I’ve had to be the strong one. Especially after my mom died. I think my dad still looks at me like… like I’m supposed to be parts of her, and me, all at once.”
My throat tightened with a wave of emotion. “That’s a heavy ask.”
“It’s not fair, no,” she said, almost too quiet. “But he’s harmless, and I love him.”
Silence came over us, like the space around us was its own living, breathing thing, taking time to feel.
“I think we’re more alike than you realize,” I said after a while.
Cass looked at me, her gaze searching, questioning.
“I lost my mom too,” I told her. “And nothing’s been the same since. Not bad. Just… broken. Like something cracked in a way that can’t ever heal. It doesn’t make our family wrong, but it’s—”
“Sad,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
The quiet came back, even more full than the last time. It wrapped around us like a warm cloak soaked through with shared pain and deep understanding.
Her hands moved slowly to my shoulder, fingers brushing my skin, trailing down to the edge of the bruise there. Her touch was gentle, almost reverent as she worked. She shifted slightly to sit beside me on the table, the heat of her body close enough to make me start sweating all over again.
Neither of us moved to escape it.
We just sat there, our faces inches apart, breathing the same air and feeling the same pain. The kind that nobody could see unless they felt it too.
My gaze flicked to the freckle beside her nose, the way her lashes lowered when she looked at my mouth.
God, I wanted to kiss her.
I leaned in against the warning voice in my head. Whether she had the warnings screaming in her head too, I didn’t know. But in that moment, it didn’t matter.
Cass parted her lips, wetting them with her tongue when we were nothing but a breath apart. But something inside me halted at the last second. It was bigger than us, the risk too real.
I stopped right when her lips grazed mine. “I want to,” I murmured. “But— Oh, God, Cass.”
She didn’t move. “If you want to, you should.”
Fuck. That didn’t make it any easier.
And still, we didn’t move apart. I was the one to stop, but that took everything I had in me. She was going to have to help me out and walk away, because there was nothing left in me capable of that feat.
Her hand was still resting against my side, warm against the bruised muscle. I could feel every beat of her pulse in her fingertips. Every breath she took brushed my cheek.
“Nothing good will come of this,” she whispered, her gaze flickering down to my lips and back up again.
I let out a low breath, one that ached in my ribs. “What is it you’re scared of?”
“What are you scared of?” she countered.
And I didn’t answer. Where would I even start?
I was at the point where my career was set to take off. All eyes were on me, and one wrong move would screw that all up. Everything I’ve been working for my whole life. There was that, but there was another fear. Just as chilling. One that told me if I fumbled Cass, I’d regret it forever.
Her body was so close that whatever pain I felt didn’t matter anymore. Not the bruises. Not the fallout. Not the past or future…
Just her.
I leaned into the warmth of her hand and let my eyes drop to her mouth again. Her lips parted, waiting, like maybe she wanted me to be the one to cross that final line. The line that would wreck everything I was supposed to be protecting.
But I’d never felt safer than I did with her like that. Pummeled and broken in her steady hands.
I let my forehead brush against hers. Let my hand rise to the back of her neck, fingers sliding into her hair. Because fuck it.
Like she’d said: If I wanted to kiss her, I should.
“What the fuck, Calder?”
We jumped apart like the electric current coursing through us snapped back and backfired. Cass dropped her hand, face flushed. In my alarm, I’d slid off the table too fast and pain flared all the way from my side, up to my shoulder.
Grayson stood in the doorway of the med bay and glared at me, jaw set. His eyes moved from me to Cass, and I could see it… He knew. He didn’t have to say it, but it was written all over his face.
Coach’s voice bellowed from somewhere down the hallway behind him, but he didn’t so much as blink.
“Post-match talk’s about to start,” he said. “You better get your ass to the locker room. Now.”
Then he turned and walked out.