8. Mason
EIGHT
Mason
I was up and out of my room at five hoping that the hotel shop would be open for early morning coffee seekers and that there would be no hockey players wandering around looking for the gym.
Yesterday’s plan had worked perfectly—the pink swimming trunks were exactly what I’d had in mind in my devious scheme to get Xander to look past all the reasons why kissing me was a bad idea.
I’d packed the fact that Eli would kill him into a box marked “not if we hook up on the sly” and added to it all my own worries about why I was even doing this in the first place.
The moment he leaned his forehead on my stomach as if I was the only thing holding him up, I knew.
He could love me.
It wouldn’t take much for me to show him that I could keep secrets as much as the next guy and that he could embrace his sexuality with my help.
I could help him realize that it was possible to love me.
I wasn’t above the devious means to get him to crack because that kiss had been explosive, and he’d said he was too rough and that he couldn’t use me for sex. I beg to differ. He wasn’t rough, he was strong and persuasive and hard, and he could use me for sex all he wanted.
It will just be sex. I can leave my heart at the door.
Liar.
The shop was open, the short woman behind the counter tracking me as I went straight for the rack of swimsuits at the back.
Yesterday’s bottoms had a matching pair in yellow, with tiny cartoon suns on them, and I needed all the ammunition I could get in my plan to pull Xander.
I picked them up, plus a muscle T in the same orange as the suns, then added matching yellow sunglasses.
With extra sunscreen, backup condoms because a man can never have enough of those, and more lube just in case, I paid for it all and refused to rise to the smirk on the cashier’s face.
“Have a good day,” she said straight faced, and I channeled my inner child by winking at her.
“I intend to.”
I deliberately added a sashay as I left the shop and walked straight into a hard chest. Hands steadied me, and I stared right into the bemused expression of one Xander Holden.
“My bad,” I murmured, relishing the feel of him holding me and hoping that he wouldn’t let me go.
“You’re up early.” He released me and stepped away. I don’t think he really needed an answer but there was no way I was letting him leave.
“This isn’t early,” I lied. “Up until I resigned, I was commuting, working nine to five, which let’s face it’s never just those hours, plus trying to set up a brand-new company with Becca in my limited down time, plus organizing this vacation which my brother has then gone and messed up.
Whatever. I’ve gotten used to getting up at five just to fit it all in.
” I really needed to stop talking because I could see him taking another physical step back from me.
He glanced past me at the shop. “You’re shopping.” Oh boy, he was a man of few words this morning. I saw shadows bruising his eyes, but he looked a hell of a lot better than he had yesterday, which was a step in the right direction.
“I needed toothpaste,” I lied, again, when he glanced from me to the bag and up again.
“You ready for the catamaran adventure?” I asked and closed the distance between us in the empty hotel lobby.
“I know I am. Do you like yellow?” The last I whispered close to his ear, and he yelped.
No joke, he seriously let out this surprised noise that I wouldn’t expect from such a big bad hockey D-man.
“Yellow?” This time he backed away, and I let him move out of touching range, watching him with no small amount of regret when he couldn’t quite meet my gaze.
Part of this plan to show Xander that he could love me was to get him to take that first step and kiss me again, but all the barriers he had in the way were insurmountable this morning it seemed.
“Well, I had pink swim trunks yesterday. Today they’re yellow.”
He turned sharply and stalked away. I felt a twinge of worry at pushing him but had no time to think about it because Eli appeared in the lobby, looking a hundred times hungover, and when he saw me, he held up a hand to indicate he didn’t want any shit from me.
But that’s what little brothers are put on this planet for.
“N’awwww, are you feeling poorly? You want me to kiss it better?”
“Fuck off,” he growled and stepped to the right to get around me, only I knew the dance, and I pretended to go the same way.
He might be fast on the ice, but I was faster on the carpet, and he knew it, so after a couple more steps he just stopped trying to get past me all together and put his hands on his hips. “What?”
“Nothing.” I blinked at him with my best innocent expression, my mind working overtime as to how I was going to take this first step at sowing the seed in Eli’s brain that Xander needed someone like me in his life.
“Well, it’s Xander.” I leaned in, and I saw the moment his pissed expression cleared.
“I’m meeting him for breakfast, is he okay?”
“I’m worried about him since the big reveal. You know what it was like for me.”
A shadow passed over Eli’s expression, and I knew I had to be serious.
I’d only just come out to our parents before they were taken from us in a car accident.
They’d been one hundred percent supportive, but I’d been kind of lost for the longest time, and it had been Eli who’d hugged me and told me that he’d always have my back.
“Shit, has something happened? He was a mess after the flight. Do I need to talk to him? I don’t get why he didn’t tell me.”
“If you thought it would help, I could probably talk to him.”
“Okay, yeah, good idea.”
“But I think he’s avoiding me?”
Eli frowned, the last thing he would want is for his brother and his best friend to be at odds. “Shit, really? Okay, I’m on it.”
I grinned at my brother and then bypassed him and left with a wave. I’d played my brother, pulled at emotions that were a mix of guilt and sadness, and felt a tug of guilt.
But one way or another I would help Xander.
“… shallow water and sandy bottoms. Arashi Beach has small colorful fish, but you might spot a few larger ones in between. You’ll see a lot of palometas near the shore as well as cute bottom feeders.
There’s hard coral about fifty meters out, so you may want to make your way over there.
” Lucas, snorkeling expert and catamaran owner, was at the side of the boat, having just finished the instructions and explaining what we might see.
“So, having said that, if you could pair off.”
I noticed that Eli immediately stepped closer to Dunny, which left Xander with me.
I’m not sure anyone else would have noticed but step two in the great plan had worked so well that poor Xander hadn’t known what hit him.
From the moment we left the hotel, Eli had been encouraging Xander and me together, and at first, Xander hadn’t really noticed.
Only when Eli did some creative shuffling so that Xander and I ended up sitting next to each other on the jetty, something clicked, and I watched Xander as his eyes narrowed.
“What the fuck is your idiot brother doing?” he asked me through gritted teeth.
I patted his arm. “I thought you’d like to talk things through,” I said with complete innocence. “And Eli thinks because I’ve been through all of this… ” I waved between us.
“Through what?” Then his eyes were comically wide, but my chest hollowed at the fear in them, and for a brief moment, my scheme to get him to talk looked like a really shit one when he lowered his voice. “I don’t need your advice.”
“I know that.” We were the last ones on the boat now, and Lucas was watching us curiously. “I just thought you’d like to talk to me about the kiss.”
“Fuck no. I hurt you. I split your lip. It’s not right.”
“You didn’t hurt me—”
“I don’t know how to… ” He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. “I won’t hurt you.”
Before I got a chance to react, he went to the side of the boat and sat on the edge then without a backward look he eased himself into the ocean, and I followed him as quickly as I could.
He hadn’t hurt me, not in the way he thought he had, but there was so much trapped inside him as if he wasn’t comfortable in his own skin, and I wanted to help.
Correction, I wanted him to fall in love with me.
I swam toward him and we snorkeled for ages, only stopping when it was time to get to the beach and eat lunch.
I refused to feel hurt that Xander chose to sit as far away from me as possible when we were eating, sitting with his back to me, chatting with Dunny.
Suddenly my stupid plan to wow him with new yellow swim trunks, to force him to look at me, seemed the worst one on the planet because the trunks were very small and the blood supply was being cut off. Idiot.
Getting him into bed with me to get him to admit how he felt was a shit thing to do, and this wasn’t a game.
Back on the boat he deliberately sat on a seat next to a huge cooler, which meant there was no room for anyone to sit next to him, and when he glanced over at me and caught my gaze, he immediately stared back at his feet.
Dunny was telling some story about the night they did something with a puck and a stick that was, in his words, amazing, and I pretended to listen, but in actual fact, I was checking on Xander and hoping my new yellow sunglasses would hide my stare.
He had his head tilted back, leaning on his elbows, eyes closed, soaking up the sun, and all I wanted to do was go over and hug him and tell him everything would be okay.
I caught Eli glancing over at him as well, and when he looked back he was frowning.
I wish I hadn’t put that worry into my brother’s head this morning.
Fuck, I wish I’d thought about all of this a bit more.