Chapter 4
Mason
I saw it. The flash of hurt in her eyes before the smile went up. The practiced, bulletproof smile that covers everything, and underneath it, for one half-second, the face of a woman who expected to be chosen and wasn’t.
I did that. I stood on a riverbank after five hours of watching her laugh and paddle and light up every conversation she touched and I said “I’ll probably see you around” like she was a neighbor I didn’t need to follow up with.
I watched the hurt land and I watched the smile cover it and I walked to my truck and didn’t look back.
I’m driving home. The river road, the canyon, the long stretch of two-lane that leads to the ranch.
The truck smells like river water and sunscreen and somewhere underneath that, her.
The vanilla warmth that was on my jacket for two days.
I’ve been driving for ten minutes and I’ve been thinking about her for all ten of them.
Her laugh. Not the one she gives to the group, the one that’s loud and warm and designed to make everyone comfortable.
The other one. The one that came out during the calm stretch when Leo was telling a story and she said something quick and sharp and funny and then laughed at her own joke before anyone else could.
That laugh was smaller and realer and it lit her face up from the inside.
Her eyes. Brown and wide and honest in a way she doesn’t seem to know. She thinks the smile is what people see. It’s not. It’s the eyes. The eyes that looked at me over the water like I was a song she recognized but couldn’t name.
The way she looked at me. That’s the part I keep coming back to.
I spent ten years in real estate. I sat across tables from people who wanted my money or my connections or my name on their deal.
I learned to read intent the way ranchers read weather: by the pressure, by the direction, by what’s coming before it arrives.
Women I’ve dated looked at me and saw the portfolio.
The holdings. They saw a man who could fund a lifestyle and they calibrated accordingly.
Paige looked at me like I was a man on a horse. That’s it. A man on a horse who changed her tire and gave her his jacket. She doesn’t know about the real estate. She doesn’t know what the ranch is worth or what I walked away from when I sold. She looked at me and saw me. Not the number. Me.
And I said “I’ll probably see you around.”
Because she’s twenty-six. Turning twenty-seven.
And I’m thirty-nine. Twelve years. Twelve years is a foundation that some people would say is cracked before you pour it.
She’s freshly out of an engagement. She’s healing.
She came to this mountain to breathe, not to be pursued by a man who’s old enough to remember a world before smartphones.
I’m protecting her. That’s what I’m telling myself. I’m being responsible. I’m being the adult in the equation. I’m giving her space to heal without the complication of a man who can’t stop thinking about the way her waist felt under his hand.
Her waist. The strip of bare skin between her swimsuit and her shorts.
My hand landed there when she slipped and the contact went through me like a current through a wire.
Hot. Direct. My whole palm on her skin and she gasped and it wasn’t fear.
It was the same thing I felt. The same frequency.
The same hum that started on the gravel shoulder and hasn’t stopped.
I pull into the ranch. I sit in the truck. The sun is going down behind the mountains and the light is amber and gold and the ranch is quiet and beautiful and it has been enough for three years and tonight it’s not.
I close my eyes. I see her. Not the smile she shows everyone.
The face underneath. The face that looked up at me from a gravel shoulder, puffy-eyed and tired and beautiful, before she knew to put the shield up.
I want that face. I want the woman under the brightness.
I want to know what Paige looks like when she stops being the happy one and just is.
I also want her in my bed. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
I’m a grown man and I’ve been thinking about her body since the road.
The curve of her hips in that swimsuit. Her breasts, full and round and pressing against the black fabric.
The way her legs looked. I’ve been thinking about what she’d look like underneath me, her dark hair spread on my pillow, those brown eyes looking up at me.
I’ve been thinking about her thighs around my waist and her back arching and the sounds she’d make if I took my time with her.
If I praised her the way she deserves to be praised.
If I told her she was beautiful with my mouth against her skin until she believed it.
I kick the dashboard. Not hard. Just enough to feel the sting. Because I’m sitting in a truck fantasizing about a twenty-six-year-old woman I refused to ask out and the only person I’m protecting is myself.
The next day I go to town for supplies. Feed order at the co-op, a part for the tractor at the hardware store.
Normal errands. The kind of morning I’ve had a hundred times since moving here.
I know the route, the stops, the people behind the counters.
This is my town. I’ve made it mine by showing up and being steady and not asking for anything and the town has accepted me the way small towns accept quiet men with good credit and no drama.
I’m coming out of the hardware store when I see her.
She’s across the street. Coming out of the bookstore with a paper bag in her hand and a smile on her face, the real one, the one that’s just for herself, and the morning sun is on her hair and she’s wearing a yellow sundress and I stop on the sidewalk and forget why I came to town.
Then I see the two men.
They’re big. Not ranch-big, gym-big. The kind of big that’s for show.
They step in front of her on the sidewalk, blocking her path.
One of them says something. I can’t hear what from across the street but I can see the effect.
Her smile drops. Her shoulders pull in. She makes herself smaller.
She takes a step back and the other one says something and she frowns and shakes her head and tries to step around them and one of them shifts to block her again.
I’m across the street before I make the decision to move.
My boots hit the pavement and I’m moving fast, not running, walking with the kind of purpose that men recognize before women do. My hand goes to her back. My arm goes around her shoulder. I pull her against my side and I look at the two men and I say, “Is there a problem here?”
I’m six-two. I’ve got forty pounds of ranch-earned muscle on both of them. My face is doing something I can feel in my jaw, something hard and flat and clear. The two men look at me. They look at my arm around Paige. They look at my face. They leave without a word.
Paige shrugs my arm off. Quick. Firm. The motion of a woman who does not want to be rescued.
“Thanks,” she says. Curt. Not warm. “I had it handled.”
She starts to walk. I reach for her arm. Not a grab. A touch. My fingers on her forearm, just enough to stop her.
“Paige.”
She stops. She looks at my hand on her arm.
She looks at my face. Her jaw is set and her eyes are guarded and she’s not giving me the smile.
For the first time since I’ve known her, Paige is not making this easier for me.
She’s standing on a sidewalk with her bookstore bag and her yellow dress and she’s making me work for it.
Good. She should make me work for it. I earned this.
“I owe you an apology,” I say.
“For which part?”
“Yesterday. The way I left.”
“You said you’d see me around. That’s not something that requires an apology.”
“It is when I didn’t mean it.”
Her eyes change. The guard drops an inch. She’s listening.
“I didn’t know how old you were until your friend mentioned your birthday.
Twenty-seven. I’m thirty-nine. When your friend said the number, I did the math and it made me pull back.
” I let go of her arm. I put my hands at my sides because I want her to see that I’m not holding her here.
She can walk. She can leave. I’m standing on a sidewalk telling her the truth and she can do whatever she wants with it.
“I thought I was being responsible. You obviously just got out of a serious relationship. You’re younger than me by twelve years. I told myself I was giving you space.”
“That’s very noble.”
“It’s not noble. It’s stupid. I’ve been kicking myself since I drove away.”
“You should. That was a terrible exit.”
“I know.”
“‘I’ll probably see you around.’ That’s what you say to someone at a grocery store. Not to a woman who invited you on a raft trip and spent five hours next to you.”
“I know.”
She’s looking at me. The sun is behind me and her face is lit and her eyes are brown and direct and she’s not smiling and she’s not putting on the brightness and this is the Paige I want. The real one. The one who tells you what she thinks when she stops worrying about making it easy for you.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” I say.
“I’ve been trying. I drove home yesterday and thought about your laugh the whole way.
I sat on my porch and thought about the way you looked at me on the raft.
I went to bed and thought about your hand in mine on the road.
I’m thirty-nine years old and I’ve been alone for three years and I was fine with it.
I was fine with the ranch and the horses and the quiet.
And then you shook my hand on a gravel shoulder and I haven’t been fine since.
“I spent last night asking myself whether the age difference would hurt you—or whether I was using it as an excuse because wanting you this much scared me. It was the second one.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. She’s holding the bookstore bag against her chest like a shield and her eyes are wide and the guard is gone now. All the way gone.
“I don’t care about twelve years,” I say. “If you don’t.”
“I don’t care about twelve years.”
“Then let me make you dinner. Tonight. I’ll pick you up at five.”
She looks at me. The morning is bright around us and the sidewalk is empty and the bookstore is behind her and the hardware store is behind me and we’re standing in the middle of Main Street having the conversation I should have had on the riverbank yesterday.
“Five o’clock,” she says.
“Five o’clock.”
“Don’t be late.”
“I’m never late.”
The smile comes. The real one. The one that starts slow and warm and lights up her whole face and makes her look like a woman who just got handed something she was afraid to want.
“I’ll see you at five, Paige.”
I say her name. I like saying her name. I’m going to keep saying her name until she understands that every time I say it, I mean something by it.
She walks away. Down the sidewalk, bookstore bag swinging, yellow dress in the sun. She looks back once. Over her shoulder. The smile is still there.
I stand on the sidewalk and watch her go and I think: I am going to spend every day I have left making sure that woman never questions whether she’s too much. She’s not. She’s exactly right. She just hasn’t met a man big enough to hold all of her.
I’m big enough. I’ve been building for this my whole life. I just didn’t know what I was building for until she shook my hand on a mountain road and the whole foundation shifted.