“I didn’tchoosea beach vacation.”
He caught her expression, and something in him chilled. “Where did you tell them you wanted to go?”
“Nowhere. They never got in touch with me.”
“What?”
Okay, that came out a little loud, given the way she jumped.
“So they never reached out?” he said. “Ever? They just…” He looked out again as his hands fisted. “Picked this. Themselves. Without consulting you. What the fuck?”
“You were away and busy, and I didn’t want to bother you. I figured they just didn’t need that much lead time.”
Away and busy.
He’d spent the last three days squashing the urge to text ten times a day, to call and chat for an hour… Hell, he’d even had to stifle the impulse to send last-minute plane tickets inviting her to join him.
Gemma had work to do, and he needed to stop being a selfish ass and give her space.
“Soyoudidn’t pick this either?” she said.
“What? No.” He stared at her. “You thought I chose the destination?”
Shit. Of course she did. She figured he’d steamrolled over his promise, like he had before.
“I did not pick this,” he said firmly. “I didn’t know where we were headed. I was waiting for the surprise.”
“Apparently, we both were.” She tried for a smile, but it was strained. “Surprise!”
“I definitely told them to call you. I said you were in charge.” He fumbled with his phone. “I can show you—”
“That’s fine.”
“No,” he said, sharper than he intended. “Please. Just look.” He reached out his phone for her to see the texts and held his breath until she read them and nodded her understanding.
What an absolute fuckup.
But for once, it wasn’thisfuckup, which meant he got to redirect his panic into well-deserved fury aimed at the people responsible.
“I’ll handle this,” he said, reaching for the door handle.
“I’d like to get out of the car, too,” she said. “If it’s safe.”
“Perfectly safe,” he said, “as long as you’re not the person on the other end of my call.”
GEMMA
Gemma thought he was joking about the person at the other end of his call. She should have known better. Mason could be chill and easygoing. He could also wield his power like, well, like a mace. One swing for a TKO. He’d made a professional career of being a very scary guy. It just wasn’t the whole of him.
Because Mason Moretti, as her mother said, was complicated. He wasn’t one thing or another. No one really was. But wasn’t that what she wanted in high school? Just the one side of him? As if the private parts she saw were real and the public parts—Mason Moretti, hockey star—were fake.
But it wasn’t fake, was it? Just other parts of the whole, and she’d known that and rejected it. Rejected part of him.
Like Alan, who’d seen things in Gemma he wanted—the intellectual Gemma, the articulate Gemma, the Gemma who “cleaned up well”—and tried to excise the rest. Was that what she’d wanted from Mason as a teen? To claim the parts she was comfortable with and shave off the parts she wasn’t?
Her gut wanted to reject the comparison. If they’d gotten together, she would never have tried to get him to give up hockey, to be someone different. But shewouldhave chosen what parts of his life she wanted and stayed out of the rest, and that was nearly as bad, wasn’t it?
Also, a little voice whispered, it would have been a damn tragedy. Because shedidlike the other parts of Mason. She found his braggadocio charming. She admired his confidence. She’d loved watching him on the ice, loved seeing his passion for the game and hisfans’ passion for him. And she liked this, too. Watching him wield his power on that phone call to get what she wanted, what she had been denied. That was…
