10. Mason
10
MASON
“That’s me finished my patrol,” I walkie-talkie in to Killian. He takes a few seconds to get back to me—I get the feeling he was probably dozing in the chair, exhausted from everything that happened yesterday.
“Right, right,” he replies, and I can hear him stifling a yawn. “Just let me know when you’re headed back…”
“Will do,” I tell him, and I turn toward the cabin where I’m meant to be spending the rest of my afternoon.
I still don’t know if this is a good idea. I have no clue if what Vanessa told us is true. I looked her up online last night, and it took a little digging, but I found a few articles published at a prestigious local newspaper that seem to have her byline attached to them.
But despite my doubts, I begin to head toward her place before I can find a reason to talk myself out of this. I don’t know what she’s going to say to me up there. No clue what she’s going to ask me. But I will take any opportunity to take on the people who leave this place worse than they found it, and this might offer me a chance to do just that.
Plus—if I’m being entirely honest—there’s a part of me that’s jealous about what Killian got to enjoy with her yesterday evening. He hasn’t shared any details, but he doesn’t need to—I can tell from the cocky grin on his face today that he can’t stop thinking about it, even if he swears up and down that he’s just smiling for no reason.
Because she’s hot, there’s no doubt about it. Not just the way she looks, though that’s part of it, but the way she carries herself—the way she moves as though she already knows she has every inch of attention in the room trained squarely at her, and doesn’t need to do anything to earn it.
And it’s been a long time since I’ve been with a woman. A long time. I had a couple of short-term relationships over the years since I moved out here, but none that came to anything. Women don’t want to be with you when you’re more focused on taking care of the forest for generations to come than going out to dinner with them. I can’t say I blame any of them. Given how unorthodox our life out here is, it’s not as though it would make for an easy sell.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. Not the same part of it Killian misses, or at least, so I think—he’s never seemed like the kind of guy who wanted anything more than the physical. But it’s the other side of it I miss. Being close to someone. Being alone with them. Knowing that there’s no call for you to be anything other than your true self. That’s the part I miss. Waking up wrapped around a woman, with her head on my shoulder and her hand in mine…
But that’s not what I’m here to do, not in this place. No, I am going to give her something for her story—something that will at least keep her off our backs for the juicer details of the story. I get the feeling that Jake doesn’t exactly like the idea of coming to her with all of his deepest darkest secrets.
I lift my knuckles to knock on the door when I reach it, and I hear her light tones from inside.
“Hey! I’ll be right there!”
I lean back on my heels, not entirely sure what to expect here. But a moment later, she opens up the door, her face bright with excitement.
“It’s so good to see you,” she tells me. “I wasn’t sure you were going to come today. I thought I might have overstepped the line last night, turning up at your house and all…”
“You did,” I reply. No point in playing with her—she’s not stupid. “But that hasn’t put me off coming here to talk to you. Though…it probably should.”
She chuckles. “Come on in, I think I owe you a coffee,” she tells me, waving her hand to get me to follow her. I do as I’m told. Being in this place without the stress of the fire alarm going off or my brothers around gives it a far more peaceful vibe.
“Where’s Callie?” I ask, waiting to spot the girl emerging from downstairs or out in the garden.
“My friend Lara came around to take her out for the afternoon,” she replies with a fond smile. “The two of them haven’t seen each other in a while and, well, I just couldn’t bear to keep them from each other.”
I smile too. I’m glad she’s got friends willing to step in for her, though I can’t help but wonder why she’s out here all on her own.
“Anyway, come sit,” she tells me, once she has the coffee in my hand. “I’ve got so much to ask you…”
She leads me through to the living room, which has a bright window on one side that looks out into the forest. Sunshine streams through, casting the whole place in a warm, comforting glow.
“So,” she begins, picking up a notebook that she’s left sitting on the table, and flipping it open. “I wanted to start with asking you about what happened last night, when you were called out?”
“There was a fire at a campsite,” I reply, figuring at least I can tell her that much. “Couple of kids showing off, and their tent caught fire. Nothing more to it than that.”
“Right, right,” she murmurs as she scribbles down a note on the paper before her. “And you get a lot of calls like this, around this time of year?”
“It’s going to get worse as the summer draws on,” I reply. “I always hope that this will be the year that people start getting their shit together and actually acting as though this place is something they should give a damn about, but every time, I’m let down.”
I reach for my coffee and wince slightly as I stretch the skin over the back of my right arm. It’s where I was singed last night—not badly, and I hardly noticed it till I got home. My suit wasn’t done up right in the rush—probably why the hose wouldn’t work when I needed it to—and when the fire briefly spread to the trees beside us, it didn’t take long for it to burn me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, tilting her head to the side. And then her eyes widen when she sees the mark on my arm.
“Oh my God!” she gasps, leaping to her feet and rushing over to me. She drops down on her knees and inspects the wound, and then stands up again.
“You need someone to bandage that. Did that happen last night? You should have gone to the hospital…”
She continues to speak to me as she leaves the room, and I shake my head.
“It’s not that bad,” I call back. “I’ve had worse.”
“Well,” she announces as she arrives back in the room with an emergency medical pack in one hand. “I’m not going to let you walk out of here like the walking dead. Stick your arm out, I’m going to wash it…”
She stoops down next to me again, and I can tell there’s no way she’s going to let me leave unless she feels like she’s done something to help me. I wonder if this has anything to do with making up for appearing at our house in the middle of the night. The closest I’ll get to a direct apology.
She smooths a disinfectant wipe along the purplish-red streak on my arm—it stings, and I suck in a sharp breath.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” she protests, glancing up at me. “I’ve seen worse.”
“You’re the one fussing over it. I said it was fine.”
“Yeah, and it will be, by the time you walk out of this place,” she agrees. She reaches for a bandage and carefully wraps it tight around my arm, tying it in a knot on one side to keep it in place.
“There,” she remarks, sitting back on her heels. She lets her hand linger on my arm for a second longer than she needs to, and then draws back, as though she was barely aware of what she was doing.
“Thank you,” I murmur as I inspect her work. “You’ve done a pretty good job. You a nurse or something?”
She laughs as she goes to replace the medical kit.
“No, I’m just the mother to a particularly adventurous five-year-old,” she replies, coming back in to sit down next to me. There’s something about being this close to her that feels almost…dangerous, like something I should be careful with.
“You really just walk around with burns like that?” she asks me softly, and to my surprise, she sounds genuinely sad.
I shrug. “We’re used to it.”
“You’re used to nobody giving enough of a damn about you to take care of you?”
“It’s not about taking care,” I reply gruffly. “It’s about…not burdening the others with whatever’s going on in our lives. We don’t need to go telling each other every little thing. That’s not who we are.”
“Right.” She doesn’t sound convinced.
“When it comes to looking out for each other, there’s nobody I trust more than my brothers,” I continue, almost defensive. “I wouldn’t go into something like this with them if I didn’t.”
“No, I get that,” she assures me at last. “And I—I think it’s great that you have such a close relationship with your brothers, I really do. I just don’t like the thought of you going through life with nobody to step in and help you with the small stuff, even if you don’t ask…”
She lets her hand rest on my arm again. Her touch sends a jolt of electricity through my system, and I can’t ignore it, not with her this near to me. I can feel the low throb of desire in my system, so urgent I can’t deny it.
Her lips part slightly, as though she has more questions for me, but before I can think about what I’m doing, I lean in and cover her mouth with mine.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m thinking, kissing her like this. I know what happened with Killian and her yesterday. And I know that I’m still not entirely sure of her, with all the questions she seems to have ready to throw at us. But honestly, right now, all I can think about is how good it feels to be this close to her, and how damn much I want more.