“Uh-huh.”Don’t say it. Just don’t—“You want to fix what happened to metoday. Only today.”
“Sure. Like I said, it was shitty.”
“What about what happened before we graduated high school, Mason. What you didthen.”
A slow flush crawled under his five-o’clock shadow. So he hadn’t forgotten. He just hoped she had.
“Yeah.” He leaned harder into the door frame. “About that…” He cleared his throat. “You got over it, right? You based a character—”
“No, Mason. I did not ‘get over it.’ Back then, you didn’t seem to understand what you’d done wrong. Dare I hope you get it now?”
“Uh…”
“You kissed me.Youinitiated it. Right?”
He ducked his head, looking sheepish, and maybe that was supposed to make her feel bad for him, but it threw a match on very old and dry tinder.
She continued, “But when someone snapped a photo, you let your friends tell everyone you kissed me on a dare.”
“I didn’tletthem, Gem. I told you that I denied it.”
“To who?”
“Uh…” He looked confused.
“To your friends. You told your friends it wasn’t a dare. And what about everyone else? Everyone your friends told? At what point did you publicly come out and say they’d gotten the story wrong? At what point did you stop them from continuing to spread the lie?”
“I…”
“You didn’t. Your buddies decided to save your reputation and make sure no one thought you’d actually—willingly—made out with Gemma Stanton. And you let them.”
She waited, just in case he had an excuse. He didn’t. She knew that.
“You let me be humiliated, Mason,” she said. “You made out with me and then said you’d see me the next day, and when the shit hit the fan, all I got was a sixty-second conversation in which you made sure I knew it wasn’t a dare. Otherwise, you never said another word to me. Ever.”
He straightened again. “I made a mistake, and I want to make up for it.”
“After nearly twenty—” She bit that off, shook her head, and smoothed her tone. “I’m not going to slam this door in your face.I’m just going to close it. Then you are going to go away and lose my number.”
She backed inside. He made no move to stop her. Just stood there as she shut the door. Then she leaned against it, feeling the old shame and humiliation surge before giving herself a shake and trudging back to stare at her blank screen.
CHAPTER FIVE
MASON
Mason was spending the evening with Jesse Parnell, his best friend and former Growlers teammate. They were at their favorite pub while Mason drowned his discomfort in very expensive whiskey.
Okay, maybe he should be drowning hissorrowsor drowning hispain. “Discomfort” didn’t seem like the right word. But it really was. He couldn’t stop thinking of what Gemma said and it made him feel…
Uncomfortable. Which felt worse than sorrow or pain. Mason was never uncomfortable. He knew where he belonged and where he didn’t. He knew what he was and what he wasn’t. He knew what he could accomplish and what he could not. The trick in life was to live within your boundaries. Find that sweet spot, where you can be fully confident and certain of your abilities and your right to be exactly where you are.
Knowing your place kept life smooth. It kept you from feeling stuff like pain or sadness or anger. Yeah, he knew the irony of that. He was an NHL enforcer who hated real-life conflict. Jesse teased him about it all the time. But to Mason, it made sense. Compartmentalization, Dr. Colbourne would say. If Mason had to fight onthe rink, when he wasn’t really an angry guy, then it made sense that he wouldn’t like to fight off it.
Okay, so the doc didn’t say it made sense.Shealways wanted to talk about it, but she respected that Mason didn’t see the point. Or, at least, she respected it when pushing made him decide he was too busy for their monthly check-ins. Same thing, really.
What happened with Gemma twenty years ago had not been smooth and easy. It’d been… His gut twisted.
Don’t think about that. Focus on what happened with Gemma today.
