Mason started reading it. When he tensed, she thought he’d hit the pertinent part, but he only said, “PR stunt. Just warning you. What a—” He stopped. Then his eyes moved faster. Too fast for his dyslexia, and she cursed herself for making him read. Speaking of thoughtless…
“Sorry,” she murmured. “I can read that for you.”
“No, I’ve got this.” His breath was coming quickly. “Denny. He’s saying Denny will be back for this game—No.” He nudged the screen away. “He’s lying, Gem. Being a jerk. If Denny was coming back, my coach would’ve…”
“Would have called you,” she murmured when he trailed off. “I am so sorry, Mason. I knew, and I… I kept it from you. I’d seen how upset you got over Denny, and there was nothing you could do—which is not an excuse. There is no excuse. I should have told you and let you decide. At the very least, I should have made sure we got off this island yesterday. I never thought of it. If I had—” She swallowed and rubbed her face. “No excuses. I screwed up. I screwed up so badly.”
“It’ll be okay,” he said, but his voice was hollow. “This isn’t your fault.”
“It is. I—”
“I blew off the call. Blew off messages from the team shrink, too. She wanted to talk to me about Denny, and I ignored her. I did what I always do. Brushed it off and—”
His breathing came in quick gasps, and his hand shot to his chest. “Fuck. I can’t breathe.”
She grabbed his hands. “Where does it hurt?”
He motioned to his chest as he struggled for air. She helped him sit down on the sand, and he didn’t resist, just kept gasping. She machine-gunned questions and got enough to know he wasn’t having a heart attack.
A panic attack.
She didn’t say that. She wasn’t risking him arguing, and it hardly mattered what label she stuck on it, as long as she knew what it was.
She had him close his eyes and focus on breathing deep, counting to five with each inhale and exhale.
Oh God, she’d screwed up so much.
No. She could not make this about her. She’d known the thing with Denny bothered him, but his panic suggested there was more to the story.
She’d already presumed there were nuances she was missing, nuances that couldn’t be understood by anyone who didn’t play professional team sports.
She hadn’t pushed, because it was none of her business, and Mason obviously hadn’t wanted to talk about it… which should have been a clue that heneededto talk about it. Mason said yesterday that he didn’t understand why he did things. From what he described, though, she didn’t see a lack of self-awareness. She saw avoidance.
I did what I always do. Brushed it off. Touching a hot stove hurts, so I won’t touch it.
He wasn’t avoiding feeling guilty. He was avoidingfeeling. Dodging strong negative emotions, particularly ones that he hadn’t developed the skills to handle.
Was that shocking? Pro sports had a culture of machismo, and hockey even more so. Add to that the fact that Mason grew up with a father who’d mocked Mason’s mother for her tears and unhappiness. As a boy, Mason learned not to dwell on things that upset him, and Gemma was sure part of that had been survival. His father would not have put up with a son who let himself feel any strong emotion except anger.
Internalizing those emotions could have made Mason hard. Could have made him callous. Could have transformed him into his father. Instead, in avoiding that, he’d avoided the hot stove. Something upsets you? Don’t think about it.
She couldn’t blame Mason for that. It was how Gemma got through the last few years of her marriage.
Once Mason’s panic attack subsided, Gemma held his hands in hers and sat on the sand and gave him a moment before saying softly, “I’ll fix this, Mason. I swear I will.”
“There’s no way. We’re trapped here, and it’s my fault.”
“I should have told—”
“No, please,” he said. “I don’t want to argue. I know why you didn’t tell me, and it wouldn’t have mattered if you did. I wouldn’t have left yesterday.”
“I’ll still fix this,” she said firmly. “We’ll head out on the boat. The guy who brought us here said we should be able to pick up a signal to the east, heading for the mainland. If we don’t, we keep going.”
“But the boat’s running rough.”
“Yes, but we took it out yesterday. While we’d need to leave it on the mainland for the owner to deal with, I presume that’s better than missing the game.”
He nodded silently.
