Chapter 3 Gabby
GABBY
His hand was warm. That was the first coherent thought I had after everything he’d said—after the sweet tea confession and the shift switches and the way he’d looked at me when he said I was the only thing on his radar.
Mason’s hand was warm and big and wrapped around mine like he was afraid I’d disappear if he let go.
I’d asked him to tell me something he’d never told anyone else.
It was a test, sort of. If he gave me some generic answer—I’m afraid of spiders or I cried during Marley & Me—I’d know this was just talk.
Just a guy saying what he thought I wanted to hear because we were stuck together and he was bored.
But Mason didn’t give me a generic answer.
“I almost didn’t become a firefighter,” he said, his thumb tracing absent patterns on the back of my hand. “I was going to be an accountant. Had a full ride to a business school and everything. My dad was thrilled.”
I blinked. “An accountant? You?”
He laughed—a real laugh, low and warm. “I know. Can you picture me in a cubicle?”
I absolutely could not. Mason was built for action, for movement, for running into burning buildings and hauling people to safety. The idea of him hunched over a spreadsheet was almost comical.
“What changed your mind?”
His smile faded a little. “There was a fire. Apartment complex near my college. I was walking back from a party and saw the smoke. By the time the trucks got there, people were hanging out of windows, screaming.” He paused, his jaw tightening.
“I couldn’t just stand there. I went in.
Helped get a couple kids out before the firefighters took over. ”
“Mason.” My voice came out softer than I intended. “That’s…you could have been killed.”
“Yeah.” He shrugged like it was nothing, but I could see the weight of the memory in his eyes. “But those kids made it out. And I knew, standing there covered in soot while the building burned…I knew I couldn’t spend my life staring at numbers. I had to do something that mattered.”
My heart was doing something complicated in my chest. This huge, quiet, unexpectedly sweet man had given up a stable future because he couldn’t stand by when people needed help.
“Your dad must have been pissed,” I said.
“He didn’t talk to me for two years.” Mason’s voice was matter-of-fact, but I caught the ghost of old pain. “He’s come around since. Mostly. But it took a while.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I made the right choice.” He squeezed my hand. “Your turn.”
Right. Fair was fair.
I thought about what to tell him. Something real. Something I’d never told anyone else. The problem was, my deepest secrets weren’t dramatic or noble. They were just…embarrassing.
“I’ve never been anywhere,” I finally said. “Like, anywhere. I’ve lived in Wildwood Valley my whole life. The farthest I’ve ever traveled is Knoxville, and that was for a dentist appointment.”
Mason tilted his head. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“There is when you’re twenty-three and you’ve never seen the ocean.
” I let out a breath. “I have this list. Places I want to go. Things I want to do. But I’m always saving for something—new tires, rent, my mom’s medication.
The list just keeps getting longer and my savings account keeps getting emptier. ”
“What’s at the top of the list?”
I smiled despite myself. “The Grand Canyon. I know it’s cliché, but I’ve wanted to see it since I was a kid. There’s this picture in my mom’s old National Geographic—the sunset hitting the rocks, all those colors. It doesn’t even look real.”
“It’s not cliché.” Mason’s voice was quiet. “It’s beautiful. I went once, when I was nineteen. Stood at the rim at sunrise and cried like a baby.”
I laughed. “You did not.”
“Hand to God.” He held up his free hand. “Something about it just…gets you. Makes you feel small in a good way. Like your problems aren’t as big as you thought.”
The way he described it—I could almost see it. Almost feel the vastness of it, the ancient quiet. And suddenly I wanted to be there, standing next to him, watching the sunrise paint those impossible colors across the rock.
Which was crazy. I’d known this man for all of an hour. Well, technically I’d known him for days, but we’d only actually talked for an hour.
But it didn’t feel like an hour. It felt like something bigger was happening. Something that had been building since the first night he walked into the roadhouse and I felt the air change.
“Your turn again,” I said. “Something else. Something deeper.”
He thought for a moment. “I’m terrified of ending up alone.”
The admission hung in the air between us. I hadn’t expected that—not from him. He seemed so solid, so self-contained.
“Most of my friends from the academy are married,” he continued. “Kids, mortgages, the whole thing. And I’m thirty-five, and I’ve never even come close. Every time I meet someone I actually like, I freeze up. Turn into this…” He gestured vaguely at himself. “This mute idiot who freezes up.”
“You’re doing pretty well right now,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, well.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “Nowhere to run.”
I looked at our joined hands again. His thumb was still moving against my skin, a slow, hypnotic rhythm. The truck cab had gotten warmer somehow, or maybe that was just me.
“My turn,” I said. My heart was beating faster now. “Something I’ve never told anyone.”
He waited, patient. Not pushing.
“I’m a virgin.”
The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them. Mason went very still.
“I know,” I rushed on, feeling my face heat.
“It’s weird. I’m twenty-three. Everyone assumes I’ve…
but I haven’t. I’ve just never met anyone who felt right, and then the longer it went on, the weirder it got.
Now it’s this thing, you know? This big embarrassing thing I have to explain to guys, and they always freak out. ”
Mason still hadn’t said anything. His hand was still wrapped around mine, but his thumb had stopped moving.
“And now you’re freaking out,” I said flatly. “Great. This is exactly what I—”
“I’m not freaking out.”
I blinked. “You’re not?”
“No.” He met my eyes, and his gaze was steady. Warm. “Gabby, there’s nothing weird about waiting for the right person. Nothing embarrassing about it either.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“I mean it.” His thumb started moving again, and something loosened in my chest. “Any guy who freaked out about that isn’t worth your time. You deserve someone who sees it for what it is—a gift, not a burden.”
A gift. He said it like he meant it.
I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe it was the warmth in his eyes. Maybe it was the way he’d opened up to me, real and raw and vulnerable. Maybe it was the snow falling outside and the fog on the windows and the feeling that this moment existed outside of normal time.
Or maybe it was the fact that I’d been watching this man for days, wanting him, telling myself it would never happen—and now he was here, holding my hand, looking at me like I was something precious.
“Would you?” I whispered.
Mason’s brow furrowed. “Would I what?”
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. “Take it. My virginity. Would you take it?”
He stared at me.
The silence stretched. One second. Two. Three. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. No sound came out.
Oh god. I’d broken him. I’d finally gotten him to talk, finally cracked through that shy shell, and then I’d gone and scared him right back into it with the most forward question of my entire life.
“Forget it,” I said quickly, trying to pull my hand away. “That was crazy. I don’t know why I said that. Just pretend I—”
“Yes.”
I froze. “What?”
“Yes.” His voice was rough, strained, like he was holding himself together by a thread. “If you’re serious. If you actually want—god, Gabby, yes. I’ll do it. As soon as we get out of here. I’ll take you somewhere nice, somewhere you deserve, and I’ll—”
“No.”
He stopped. Confusion flickered across his face, followed by something that looked like hurt. “No?”
“Not later.” I shifted closer to him, closing the distance between us until our knees were touching. “Not somewhere nice. Here. Now.”
“Gabby…” His voice cracked. “We’re in a truck.”
“I know.”
“In a ditch. In a snowstorm.”
“I know.” I held his gaze, letting him see how serious I was.
“I’ve been waiting twenty-three years for someone who felt right.
And you feel right, Mason. This feels right.
I don’t want to wait anymore. I don’t want to go somewhere nice and overthink it and talk myself out of it.
I want you. Right now. In this truck. Before I lose my nerve. ”
His breath was coming faster. I watched his chest rise and fall, watched his hands clench and unclench like he was fighting for control.
“We have an hour,” I reminded him. “Maybe less. But right now, nobody’s coming. It’s just us.”
I reached for the zipper of my coat.
Mason’s eyes went wide.
I pulled the zipper down slowly, deliberately, then shrugged the coat off my shoulders. Underneath, I was wearing my work shirt—just a simple black tee with the roadhouse logo. Nothing special. But the way Mason was looking at me, you’d think I was wearing diamonds.
“Gabby,” he breathed.
I let the coat fall to the seat behind me and turned to face him fully.
“Your move, Mason.”