Chapter 14 Mason #2
I’m glad she’s asked, because it shows that she actually has an interest. I want her to know why this place is important to my family. Though this is definitely my least favorite part of the story.
“Well, the government owns the actual pier now. But the building we call Pier Seven . . .” I rub my hand over my face. “Now that I think of it, you might not even believe me if I tell you. It’s so ridiculous.”
Her eyebrow lifts. “Now I really need to know.”
I sigh quietly. “Tommy’s dad and June’s dad were friends, like I said, but they became rivals. Stopped talking to one another. Except for one fated night when they sat down to ‘settle’ their dispute, probably after a few too many drinks. With a poker game.”
Sierra gapes at me. “Are you telling me that your great-grandfather lost this building to June’s father in a poker game?”
“That is exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Wow. How embarrassing for you.”
I hold back a laugh. “You could say that. June’s father didn’t care to run a restaurant here, but he also didn’t care to give, gamble, or sell it back to Tommy’s father, so it sat empty for a long while.
One of June’s sisters and her husband ran the last active restaurant here for many years, but they struggled with it.
I don’t think they ever fell in love with it.
They moved away from Orchard Cove eight years ago.
It’s been empty since then, except when June rents it out to the community or local businesses for events, exhibits, pop-up shops . . .”
“Okay. I can see why you’d want it back to run a restaurant. But you have to understand, I didn’t know any of this when I came here. I didn’t come here to compete with you.”
“But you’re so good at it,” I say dryly.
She actually smiles. Genuinely smiles at me.
It makes my pulse pick up—and my defenses rise.
“Why do you want to extend your lease here, Sierra?” I press.
Her smile dies. “That’s really my business. Not yours. What kind of warrior would I be if I just handed my enemy more ammunition for his gun?”
That’s perfectly sensible, of course. But I’m not looking to shoot to kill. I just want the damn building. Butting heads hasn’t gotten us anywhere so far, and maybe my unfortunate crush on her has given me the idea that if I offer her a chance to understand my position, she’ll back off this fight.
I take a deep breath and tell her, “Buying back this building for my family isn’t just something I want.
It was my parents’ dying wish. The last thing they were working on before they died.
I’ve come to realize, especially in recent days .
. . that I feel an extreme responsibility to carry out that wish. ”
I fully expect her to put up some argument, to tell me that none of this is her problem.
It’s not.
But instead, she says, “That sounds like a really heavy responsibility to bear.” She gazes at me with sympathy.
I look away, over the water.
“What were they like?” she asks, her voice gentle. “Samantha and Christopher.”
Fuck.
Do I really want to stand here and talk about them? With her?
Yes. How can I not talk about them? With anyone who asks?
How else do I keep them alive?
“They were . . .” I rub the back of my head, an old nervous habit.
Scrape my fingers through my hair. “Great parents. They were always . . .” How do I even put it?
“So excited about the idea of us as a family. But it wasn’t just an idea.
We lived it. Matching pajamas and yearly photos by the Christmas tree and marking our heights on the wall every birthday.
We ate every breakfast and every dinner together around the table.
And if we fought, they told us we had to have each other’s backs, me and Layne and Haven, no matter what—”
“Wait. Who’s Haven?”
“My sister.”
“You have a sister?”
“Yeah. A little sister. She lives in Seattle.”
“Hold up.” Sierra blinks at me. “Your sister . . . is a city girl?”
I chuckle, caught off guard. “You could say that.”
She stares at me. “Who the fuck even are you, Mason Grant? Just when I thought I had you figured out, you throw me a curveball. I thought you hated city people.”
I don’t even know what to say.
As usual when I find myself talking to her, I’ve hit a point where I don’t even know what the hell is happening. I have so many conflicting thoughts and emotions fighting to get to the surface, I don’t know which one to respond to first.
“Who the hell are you, Sierra?” I growl, letting some of my frustration slip to the top.
She laughs shortly. “What do you mean? I’m no mystery. What you see is what you get.”
I swipe my hand over my mouth, considering whether to go there.
Yup. I’m going there.
“Well, what I saw is a meme. With you in it. You . . . and a purple dick?”
Her eyes widen comically. “Oh, Jesus. Did someone send it to you?” She looks panicked, and I’m overcome by the urge to reassure her.
“No. When I found out you’d leased Pier Seven, I looked you up. It was in a comment on one of your social posts.”
“Oh, dear god.”
“It disappeared later,” I say. Though in telling her so, I’m revealing that I looked her up more than once. “I have to admit . . . I didn’t know what to think.”
“Ugh.” She walks over to the edge of the pier and drops her bag. She sits down, legs dangling over the side.
I hesitate only briefly.
Then I go sit down next to her. We watch the water lap and froth against the rocks in the shadows below the pier. I wait for her to explain, or to tell me to fuck off, or to do anything.
I don’t care if I have to wait here all night, I need to know. I need to know her. Just a little fucking something so I can stop fucking wondering and driving myself crazy.
She is a mystery.
Beautiful and kind of sweetly awkward, sassy and sharp and a fucking mystery.
I have no idea what really makes her tick, and at this point, I would kill to know one fucking thing.
One thing she tells me herself, and not when she’s drunk.
“Look, I did not make that meme,” she says softly.
“I told you my boyfriend broke up with me days before I arrived in Orchard Cove. The whole story is, his family was investing in my business. I was going to buy a small brick and mortar store in Vancouver to open a permanent Cutie Fruitie location. And they were providing the down payment, connections, experience. I really couldn’t have done it without them. ”
She kicks her feet slowly in the air, and I wait for her to spill the rest of her secrets to me and the sea. As many as she’ll give us.
“We were on a video call, to celebrate, because they’d found me the perfect location,” she goes on.
“Kyle, me, his parents, and several other relatives involved with their family-run investment business were on the call. And I made the incredibly stupid mistake of not realizing that there was a large, anatomically detailed dildo on my bedside table in the background. Everyone noticed it before I did. Kyle was at his place and like, yelled at me over the video call. His family hung up. But not before I guess his sneaky, pimply little cousin recorded the whole mess so he could immortalize me in a purple dick meme. Which he then blasted out to Kyle’s entire contact list for shits and giggles. ”
Silence stretches, marred only by the rhythm of the water hissing over the rocks below.
“Fuck me” is all I can say.
“Yeah. Technology in the hands of the children. Terrifying.”
“So . . . that comment about how ‘big’ it was . . . ?”
“I was talking about the location Kyle’s dad found for me, for the smoothie shop. It was way beyond my expectations and I was fucking thrilled.”
I swallow the urge to laugh and clear my throat instead. “I mean, I could see that. You seemed very excited about the size of it.”
Our gazes connect and she bites her lip. Is she trying not to laugh?
“I suppose it wouldn’t salvage some small part of your opinion of me,” she ventures, “if I were to explain that the dildo was just a gag birthday gift from my best friend, and not, like, my faithful bedtime ritual or anything. Kyle sure didn’t believe it.”
“Hey, no judgment here. My opinion of you is already as low as it gets, based entirely on our business rivalry.”
A hint of amusement flickers over her pretty lips. “Well, thank you. I appreciate the professional courtesy.”
We sit in silence for a moment, warmth in the air between us. A tension effervescent with humor that almost bubbles to the surface and breaks. I’m still not totally sure if she’s struggling not to laugh, but I sure as fuck am.
“So . . .” I test the waters. “Never used it, huh?”
“Oh, I did,” she says sharply. “Once. After Kyle dumped me and refused to even hear that it was brand new and had never been sullied, because he was so offended I’d subjected his parents’ eyeballs to a sex toy that had intimate knowledge of my vagina . . . there was a definite hate-fuck situation.”
I study the side of her face as she gazes into the water, and heat spreads through my body. “You . . . hate-fucked the dildo to get back at your ex-boyfriend?”
“Oh, yeah.” She glances at me, eyes sparkling, but covers her mouth with her hand. “It made a lot of sense at the time.”
I swallow. “Very sensible.”
“Therapeutic,” she agrees.
Then she laughs, snorting into her hand.
I laugh. I laugh so fucking hard, my eyes tear up.
She drops her hand and laughs out loud, her pretty voice floating away over the water.
“Anyway,” she says as she calms down, wiping the tears from her eyes, “I had to get some pleasure out of it. That stupid blunder cost me everything.”
My smile fades. “What?”
She sighs. “It’s not about the stupid meme.
That was just a prank from a thirteen-year-old.
Embarrassing, but I’ll get over it. The worst part was Kyle dumped me like yesterday’s trash after that call.
And his parents snatched back their investment.
They all dumped me. And life as I knew it fell apart overnight.
That clumsy mistake put my business in serious jeopardy. ”
I digest this. “Sierra. Christ. That is so not okay.”
“I know,” she says, so lightly I have to wonder. Does she know? “But what am I gonna do about it? The relationship is over, and with each day that passes I understand better what a good thing that is.”
“Okay. But what about your business?”
She eyes me. “Oh, I’m sure you’d love it if I still had some wealthy investor to help me set up shop far, far away from here . . .”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s fine. I’ll figure it out. And this whole thing . . . The dildo, the meme, my boyfriend breaking up with me and diving into bed with his beautiful best friend—”
“Wait. What the hell?”
“—it’s all just so stupid compared to what you’ve been through.”
But it’s not.
“No, I get it,” I tell her. “Your whole life plan fell apart overnight. That’s no joke.” No way am I telling her about Jenn abandoning me at the altar. But I do get it in more ways than she could possibly know.
Unfortunately, I also understand her position better now.
Even respect her more as a rival.
One who maybe deserves to be here and have a fighting chance to keep this building, almost as much as I do?
I also feel some of my will to fight her slipping away, which is fucking bad.
So why am I doing this?
I don’t know. It just feels right as the words come out of my mouth. “Quite frankly, Sierra Daniels, I’m fucking shocked you’d let some asshole who doesn’t even respect you interfere with your life.”
She cocks her head. “But you’re so good at interfering with my life.”
“I meant your ex,” I growl.
She smiles. “I know, Mason.”
I’m not letting her brush this off as a joke. This part is for real.
“And I do respect you,” I tell her. “I respected you enough as a stranger to take care of you when you were drunk. And I respect you enough now to tell you that you should’ve stood up for yourself.
Your ex should’ve stood up for you, too.
If you gave that situation half the pushback you’ve given me over this building, your doubters would cower and scurry back into the shadows.
And maybe your ex’s parents still would’ve invested. ”
Her smile is gone. “You don’t know them, Mason. And really, it’s a blessing. I couldn’t have gone into business with people like that.”
“You’re right.”
We stare at each other, and my desire for her thrums through my veins, a constant tension that’s only growing stronger.
I still don’t know if I can trust her. How much of this I can trust. Her words. This feeling coursing between us.
Is she just telling me all these things, presenting this vulnerable front, to manipulate me into letting my guard down? Feeling sorry for her? Letting her have the building?
I don’t know.
All I fucking know for sure right now is how badly I want to kiss those soft, sweet lips.
So instead, I tell her, “You’re a formidable opponent, Sierra Daniels.”
“You know, I’m just gonna go ahead and take that as a compliment.”
“You should.” I get to my feet before I can say anything really fucked-up. This whole conversation has been risky enough. “I need to get back to the bar.”
She looks up at me. “Yeah. I need to lock up the shop.”
I hesitate, transfixed by the way the pier’s few lights skim the curves of her face. “Goodnight, then.”
As I start to walk away, she says, “So . . . what does this all mean, Mason? Are we friends now?”
I pause to look back at her. So fucking gorgeous, sitting at the edge of the pier with one knee pulled up under her chin, gazing at me.
“Fuck, no,” I say softly.
She smiles, just a little. And it is not good, how warm it makes me feel.
“You want me to let you have Pier Seven?” she says.
“Yes.”
“Fuck, no. You want to call a truce?” She cocks a sharp eyebrow at me. “Scared I’m gonna outsell you at the festival?”
“No chance, beautiful,” I tell her.
Then I walk away, before I can say anything I’ll really regret.