She seemed to search his eyes. Then she nodded and let him lead her back to the villa.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
MASON
They settled into the living room, him on the sofa, her on the recliner. The air-conditioning was on, but sweat still trickled down his cheek.
“I told you I read,” he said. “A lot, actually, and in books, characters always know why they do things. Even if they act on impulse, they can look back and know why they did it. That’s not me.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “You never liked me saying I’m not very smart. It isn’t only the dyslexia. No one expected me to be good at school. The dumb jock and all that. They definitely didn’t want me to waste time studying when I could be practicing. So I won’t say I’m stupid. I don’t think I am. But whatever lets people understand why they do things? I don’t have that.”
She nodded, watching him, wary but patient.
“Sometimes,” he said, “when I try to think about things, something in my head shoves back. My stomach hurts, and my brain screams to just let it go. Don’t think about it. Don’t analyze it. I won’t be able to figure it out, so just stop.”
“When you think about what sort of things?”
“Things that make me feel bad.”
She didn’t answer. She was waiting for more. For an example.
Was he doing this? Fuck. Fine, yes, he was doing it.
He took a deep breath, steeling himself, and then said, “Like when I was little, and my parents would fight, and my mom would cry. I hated my dad. Hated him for how he made her feel. Hated him for how he made me…”
“How he made you feel.”
Mason shifted and waved that aside. “I’d be mad at him for making her cry, and then I’d get mad at her for not leaving him, and that made me feel bad, too. I just… I didn’t know what…”
“What to do with how you were feeling?”
“Maybe? When I was a kid, it was easier just to ignore that. Don’t think about it. Let my parents handle it. Not my problem, right?”
“Itshouldn’thave been your problem,” she murmured. “You were a child.”
“Then I got older, and it wasn’t about my father hurting my mother’s feelings. I was the one…” Mason swallowed hard, feeling his throat constrict. “I was the one hurting people’s feelings, and most times, I didn’t know why I did. I didn’t mean to. Maybe my dad never meant to either. I don’t know.”
That was a lie. His dad liked hurting people. Mason had seen that malicious gleam in his eye. For his father, landing an insult was like hitting a slap shot, satisfying in a way Mason never understood.
“So you have no idea why you let your friends say it was a dare?” she said.
He squirmed. Could he say yes? Would she accept that? It’d be a lie, and hadn’t he already said he wouldn’t do that?
“I don’t know exactly why I did it,” he said. “I only know what I was feeling at the time.”
“Okay.”
He waited for her to tell him to go on. When she didn’t, he realized Gemma wasn’t going to demand he vomit out his feelings for her to dissect. Continuing had to be his decision.
“I know how I felt after the kiss,” he said. “Good. Really good. Like I’d scored a championship goal, and I was flying.”
She waited, still not prodding. But it wasn’t enough. He had to keep going.
“That night, after I got home from the game, all these thoughts came rushing at me. What was I doing? I didn’t have time for a girlfriend. You were going off to university. You wouldn’t have time for me either. And how was that supposed to work, me in the juniors while you were in university? I needed…”
He bent forward, hands running through his hair. “I was seeing a sports psychologist to help me deal with the pressure. He always said that if I wanted a girlfriend, it had to be someone who supported me completely. Someone who understood that the game came first, and that if they were going to be in my life, any time they took from that, they had to give back by helping me. Making sure I ate right. Keeping my schedule. Answering my emails.”
“Acting as your personal assistant.”
