Chapter 14 Mason
Mason
I lie sprawled on my back in my new bed, staring at the fan that loops lazily on the ceiling, around and around. I smell freshly brewed coffee. Hear birds singing in the trees outside the new windows, the purr of farm equipment in the distance, and the soft shoosh of the sea beyond.
But I can’t seem to muster a fuck to give about getting up and getting started with my day.
Now that this is my bedroom, it feels entirely new. New paint, new floor, new furniture. Not one hint remains of the years my parents spent in here, or my dad’s parents before that. My grandpa said this was right, that I needed to make it mine. But I needed it, too: the change.
How could I rest, sleep, fuck in a bedroom with my parents’ ghosts?
This was the last room to finish in the extensive renovations that my dad began and I finally just completed. But somehow, the family house still doesn’t feel like mine.
I want it to.
I don’t know if it ever will.
Maybe because it wasn’t supposed to be mine nearly so soon.
I lived in this house for the first eighteen years of my life. But nothing has quite felt like home since the accident.
Or maybe it was long before they died that this problem began.
Maybe it started when I came back to Orchard Cove, all those years ago, a different man than the one who left.
Maybe I thought there would be a change once the primary bedroom was mine and I moved into it. A shift inside me.
I’m still waiting for that shift to happen.
But every morning this week, since I finally moved up here, it’s been the same sense of dread when I open my eyes and smell the coffee my brother’s brewing downstairs. The house is done, but it’s not home yet. That’s the feeling.
I’m not at home.
Something is missing. Out of place. And I don’t know what it is.
I keep telling myself it’s because I’m not used to living with people. It will be better soon, when Layne and Kaylie and Scar move into their cottage, and everyone is finally settled in their own home. Just a few more days, and we’ll get there.
But what if they move out, and the shift never comes?
I need to get up, get on with my day, get to work. Get busy. That’s the only way to escape the dread. I’ve learned that over the past year.
But my daily routine, my work, no longer provides the escape that it used to.
Because Sierra Daniels is now all up in it.
Now, I need to first work up the will to face another day battling with that woman. Over the most stupid shit. Fighting her, because I can’t fuck her.
That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it?
Yes, I want Pier Seven.
My body wants her more.
I’ve tried to fight my attraction to her. Tried like hell not to get caught up in whatever she’s doing and where and with who. But all week long as we’ve prepared the town center for the festival, I’ve only become more preoccupied with her.
Just laying eyes on her, even knowing she’s around, fucks with my head.
And she’s always around.
In the corner of my eye, coming and going from Pier Seven, stopping to talk to someone outside of Bev & Bill’s.
Getting to know the locals. Winning them over.
Popping into my bar to ask one of my staff some inane question or bringing them smoothies to “taste test,” like she’s just putting herself in my face to irritate me.
All while ignoring me.
I have no idea if she notices my fixation. But my growing obsession with her hasn’t gone unnoticed by my friends, who continue to bombard me with unsolicited advice. Maybe you should just fuck her and get it over with. (Jace.) Maybe you should just stay away from her and save your sanity. (Evan.)
And my personal favorite: What the fuck is wrong with you, bro? She’s gorgeous. (Layne.)
My brother doesn’t even bother with advice, just makes it clear he thinks I’m being a dumbass. He doesn’t understand my fixation on Pier Seven, or why I wouldn’t be all over Sierra by now. But Layne has already carried on our family’s legacy. He has Kaylie.
What the hell do I really have?
Selfishly, I could flirt with Sierra, try to get her into bed.
But what good would that do for my family?
Layne has no idea of the responsibility I feel as the older brother, the pressure of one day stepping into our grandpa’s shoes. And the shit that I would be willing to give up, sacrifice for him and Kaylie and their future.
I’d give up anything. The woman in my dreams included.
I’m still haunted by memories of the night we spent together, especially at night.
Instead of fading in intensity, they’re only getting worse.
In my dreams, I’m running my hands over her body all over again, seeking out every sensitive place she’ll let me touch, and savoring her shivers when I find each one.
I wake each morning to the sound of her soft, hungry little moans.
And in the hazy moments between sleeping and fully awake, I’m acutely aware of how much I want her. When I’m alone and hard as hell, and she’s in my head . . .
No filter. No stopping the direction of my thoughts before I’ve got my hands wrapped around my cock and I’m stroking, pulling, aching for release. Fantasizing about things we’ve never even done.
Her mouth, teasing and biting my nipple.
My fingers, slipping between her legs and finding her hot, wet, slippery insides as she moans.
My cock, pushing into the back of her throat as my balls—
“Uncle Mason!”
My hands fly off my cock like I’ve been struck by lightning. I shove a pillow over my crotch as my niece’s footsteps pound up the stairs toward my bedroom, and my thoughts scatter like marbles. Jesus. Did I lock the door?
Yes.
Maybe?
Fuck. I yank the covers over myself.
“Mason! I Can’t Find My Labubu Have You Seen It?!”
“Kaylie!” Layne shouts up the stairs, and the footsteps abruptly stop. “It’s down here.”
“You found it?”
“Yes. Stay out of Mason’s room.”
The footsteps pound back down the stairs.
I blow out a breath and sink back into the bed, heart thudding.
Three seconds later, I tense when Kaylie screams, “Mason!!” and my nervous system fires up again. “Breakfast is Readyyy!!!”
“Okay!” I call back.
It’s like she truly believes no one can hear her unless she screams the place down.
I groan, shove off the covers, and get up, still half hard. Trudge to the shower. Consider jerking off as I get the water running.
Instead, I make it cold and quick.
Try to be grateful that my brother just made me breakfast.
But fuck me. I need to get the renos finished on that damn cottage. Get Layne and Kaylie and the dog moved out of here.
I just need some fucking space.
Some alone time. One fucking moment of sanity in my goddamn day, to jerk off or do whatever the hell I want to, in fucking peace.
Just a few more days.
The sun has just gone down and the smoothie bar has closed for the night when I find Sierra on the pier.
The set of steps down the side of the pier to the sand, right outside Pier Seven, is the only public access to the beach in Orchard Cove’s town center, and it’s the one that’s used by most tourists. Which is one of the main reasons this is such a prime location for a restaurant.
But there’s no one else on the beach that I can see in the fading light right now, or on the pier.
Just her.
As I approach, she’s holding out her phone and posing with a refillable Cutie Fruitie cup under one of the pier’s lamp posts, fiddling with the angles. Unzipped hoodie, hot-pink sports bra, yoga pants, platform sneakers. Hair smoothed back into a ponytail and braided.
Lips glossed. Nails done. Pierced navel showing.
She looks like a woman who could sell millions of anything without trying so hard, but has no idea.
“Taking selfies?” I inquire. “Hashtag: suck it, Mason Grant?”
She lowers the phone. “Just some social media,” she mutters irritably. “For Cutie Fruitie.”
“You got your phone working?”
“I’ll upload it later” is her non-answer. She stashes the phone and the cup, which turns out to be empty, in her bag. “What’s up?” She zips up her hoodie, blocking my view of her cleavage.
Doesn’t matter. She’s sexy as hell either way.
But less distracting, at least.
I turn to look back at the pier building, slide my hands into my pockets. “It’s beautiful from this angle, isn’t it? All lit up in the evening, with that backdrop. The dusk sky in the west shifting colors.”
“Yes, it is,” she says warily.
“There used to be tables out on this side, and dancing on summer nights.”
“Really?”
I look at her. Decide to take a chance. Because I haven’t really tried to talk to her.
To reason with her.
“Maybe this is what bothers me the most. That you don’t know anything about the history of this building. Or understand why it’s important to Orchard Cove.”
Or why it’s important to me.
She crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m just selling smoothies for the summer, Mason. Maybe I don’t need to understand.”
I consider that. And this disturbing feeling under my skin, the strange, conflicting tension that stirs in me whenever I think of her staying . . . or leaving.
“Do you even know why it’s called Pier Seven?”
“Because there are at least six other piers?” she guesses.
“No. There’s no official numbered pier system around here. My great-great-grandfather built the original pier here in Orchard Cove. His wife, my great-great-grandmother, was the seventh in a family of seven children. He would call her his lucky number seven. He named the pier after her.”
“Oh. That’s . . . nice,” she admits.
“That original pier burned down, but my great-grandfather, my grandpa Tommy’s dad, and June’s dad were friends and they rebuilt it.
They also added the building. It started out as a fish and chips stand, then was expanded into a larger restaurant and meeting place.
It served as a social hub for the growing community at the time. ”
“So, how did June Spencer come to own it?”