by Sarra Cannon
But as I get closer to the shirt, I see that there are two shirts sitting there in a pile. Mason’s red one. And a blue one I don’t recognize. I pick it up from the sand and a knot forms deep in my stomach. It’s a size small and has a picture of a Care Bear on the front.
I drop it to the sand, the rain pouring down my face. I don’t want to rush into any kind of judgment. It could be anyone’s shirt. Well, any girl’s shirt. But Mason and I have become way too close for him to do something like that to me. He wouldn’t. He promised me. Maybe this is just some kind of coincidence.
I rationalize it out, but inside, my heart is racing.
I need to find him. And if he’s with someone else, I need to know.
I take off at a run, heading for the pier. There’s a tiny bait and tackle shop just at the entrance to the pier and I collect myself before walking inside. I expect to see him standing there, maybe chatting with a group of tourists or maybe some of the fishermen. It doesn’t take me long to walk through the whole place.
He’s not here.
Panic fights its way up through my throat, but I push it back down and force a smile as I walk to the front counter.
“Hey Walt,” I say.
“Heya, Pretty Penny,” he says. Walt owns this shop. He stays open until midnight every night, so Mason and I have made more than one late-night run here for water or a snack here and there. He always calls me Pretty Penny, and it always makes me smile, but right now all I want to do is cry. “Looks like the ceiling fell out.”
“Yeah, it’s really pouring,” I say. Then, casually, I ask, “Have you seen Mason?”
He looks up toward the ceiling. “Not today,” he says. “Did you lose him? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the two of you apart.”
I try to smile, but I think it comes out more of a lopsided grimace. “Just misplaced him for a few minutes,” I say. “If you see him, let him know I’m looking for him, please?”
“Not a problem,” he says. “You’re welcome to wait here until the rain lets up a bit. Or I could let you borrow my umbrella.”
“Oh, no thanks,” I say. I’m already half-way out the door. I raise my hand in a wave, then head back out into the rain.
I look both ways down the beach, but don’t see any sign of Mason. Maybe he went back to the diner looking for me? That’s the only thing I can think of unless he already walked back to the campsite.
Still, I can’t imagine he would have just left his shirt behind. It’s not like we have an infinite supply of clothing with us.
I start to head back to the diner, and I’m not sure why, but something leads me to look back toward the pier one last time.
That’s when I see him. Standing underneath the wooden slats of the pier.
Holding a girl in his arms.
Chapter Forty-Two
I stop dead in the sand. The sky grows darker as the storm clouds roll across the gulf, but there’s enough light for me to see the two of them huddled close under the pier, a towel wrapped around their shoulders.
I choke back a cry.
Thunder rumbles in the distance, but I can’t move. I’m paralyzed with fear.
Despite all my talk about letting him walk away at the end of this, I know it isn’t possible for me to ever let him go without a fight.
I thought I loved him before we left Fairhope, but I realize now that what I felt was nothing compared to what has grown between us in the past ten days. Spending every moment of every day laughing and getting to know him, breaking down the walls he’s guarded so tightly around his heart, has sent me to a place I can never come back from. I’m way past the point of no return.
And if he’s not in love with me, I don’t know how I’ll survive it.
I force myself to move forward, and every step feels like a death march.
When I’m close enough for him to notice me, his face turns ghost-white. He takes his arm from around the girl’s shoulders and when she turns her face toward me, my world shatters.
It’s the same girl he’d been talking to that first day at our campsite.
I don’t even know her name. She was only camping there for a few nights before she and her friends moved on. I hoped to never see her again in my life. But here she is, squeezed so tight to Mason in her tiny little bikini.
She smiles at me, and I just want to run forward and rip her hair out. To tell her she’s killed me.
But I force a smile as I step under the pier.
Mason scoots to the side, leaving his towel over the girl’s shoulders. I want to laugh. Or scream. He’s already been caught, what is he trying to do? Pretend I didn’t see him?
I stare into his eyes, searching for an answer about what he’s doing, but all I see there is fear.
“I’ve been looking for you.” My voice stumbles over the words, but I hope he can’t tell over the sound of the rain against the wood above.
“I was out on the beach swimming when the storm came on,” he says. “Harley and I ran under here, thinking maybe it would pass quickly.”
“Harley?”
She holds her hand out toward me, but all I can do is stare at it dumbly. “You must be Penny,” she says, awkwardly pulling her hand back under the towel. Her voice is extremely bubbly for a girl whose been snuggling with someone else’s man. “Mason was just telling me you guys have been here the whole time.”
A nod is all I can manage. I want him to say something. Anything. To apologize or at least try to convince me there’s nothing going on here.
But he doesn’t. He just sits there, speechless.
I’m surprised I can manage to keep standing. With every second that goes by, I’m losing more and more hope about what was really going on between them. Have they been out here all day together while I was inside working on the diner’s papers?
“When did you get back to town?” I ask. “I thought you guys left.”
She wraps the towel tighter around her shoulders. “Oh, yeah, my friends all ended up going home to start back at school, but I already graduated earlier this summer, so I thought I’d just set out on my own for a while.”
“Oh,” I say. “What made you come back here?”
Mason clears his throat. “Did you just get finished up inside with Delores?”
I wonder why he’s changing the subject.
My heartbreak is mercifully turning into rage. Rage I can handle much better than pain and devastation. I harness it.
“Yes I did,” I say. “I wish you had just come in there when the rain started. I’m sure it would have been a lot more comfortable in there. We could have warmed you up with some coffee. Of course, you two looked like you were getting warm just fine on your own.”
He brings his knees up and rests his arms against them. He’s fidgeting with his hands, and I know there’s more going on here than just an innocent chance meeting. I want to ask him and just have it out right here, but it’s just too much. I don’t want this stranger to see me crying.
I just want to get the hell out of here.
“Well, you two have fun,” I say. I’m on the verge of a major shit-fest, and if I don’t leave now, I’m going to say something I’ll regret.
I turn fast and start walking as fast as I can back down the beach. The rain is coming hard now and it stings my skin, but I keep walking.
I feel like a fool. How could I have believed he felt the same way about me? Has this just all been about sex to him? Did I just convince myself things were changing between us?
The floodgates open and tears stream down my face. A sob shakes my body and I lift my hand to my mouth to muffle the sound. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to hear me.
I think I hear my name on the wind, but I don’t turn around. I can’t. I just keep walking. I’m almost running now, my boots caked in wet sand and my clothes and hair completely drenched to the core.
Then I feel a hand on my shoulder. He spins me around and takes both of my arms in his strong hands.
“Penn
y, please, don’t go,” he says. “Let me explain.”
I hope the rain hides my tears. When I open my mouth to respond, my breath does this double-hitch that gives me away. I close my eyes and try again, summoning whatever strength I have left to get through this moment.
“Don’t bother,” I say. “Just let me go.”
“No,” he says. “It isn’t what it looks like.”
I pull away and wrap my arms around my body. I’m shivering in the rain and wind.
“Isn’t that the line every guys gives when it’s exactly what it looks like?” I say. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
He closes his eyes and rubs his forehead. “Shit,” he says. He looks up at me and I’m surprised to see his eyes are filled with tears too. “Penny, I swear to God, I would never do something like that to you. Not after I made a promise to you. Not after—”
“Please don’t lie to me, Mason,” I say. “I am on the edge here, and I just need to know the truth. If something happened between the two of you or if you’re attracted to her, then you better tell me right fucking now. If you want to sleep with her, you need to tell me the truth.”
“Sleep with her? Are you crazy?” He’s shouting over the sound of the storm and the waves crashing against the shore. “I was just sitting on the beach watching the waves come in and thinking about some shit when she just came up and threw her arms around me. I thought it was you at first, so I hugged her back. But when I turned around, I see this girl I barely know and she’s smiling like crazy. She kissed me on the cheek like we were old friends.”
I’m listening but my body is shivering both from cold and fear, not sure where this conversation is going. Not sure where we’ll be at the end of it. Or if my entire world is about to come crashing down.
“I talked to her for a few minutes, just to be nice and before I know it, she’s stripping down to her bikini and saying she wants to get in the water,” he says. “I told her I was heading back up to see you in the diner and that she was welcome to tag along if she wanted, but that’s when the rain came. The clouds had already been gathering, but it was like it all just came out of nowhere. Before I know it, she grabs me and starts shivering like crazy, saying she’s deathly terrified of storms. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like an idiot.
“She pointed to the pier and begged me to walk her over there and make sure she was safe,” he says. “I didn’t know what to say. She railroaded me. I felt like a puppet, just doing whatever she told me to do.”
“I saw you,” I shout. “I saw you under the pier with your arm wrapped around her. Her face was inches from yours.”
“Dammit, I know,” he says. He runs a frantic hand through his hair. “She gave me some line about being so cold. It just sort of happened. I didn’t do anything other than exactly what you saw.”
“Why did she come back here, Mason? Why this place? And why did she seek you out?” I’m crying again. I can’t help it. I want to believe him, but I don’t know if I should. If he’s lying to me, I’ll be the biggest fool to ever for live if I don’t walk away from him right now. After all the times he left my bed only to show up at a party the next night with some dumb whore, I’m stupid if I give in to this story.
But his hands are trembling. He’s never done this before. He’s never denied what he’s done. He’s always just put it out there, right in my face. He’s always made sure I understood that he didn’t care about me the way I cared about him.
For once, he seems to give a shit, but I’m too scared to think straight.
“The second I saw you standing there in the rain, I knew what you would think,” he says. “Penny, I was wrong. I should have come straight to the diner to find you. She had my mind all twisted up. She told me she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about me since the day we met and that she came back to find me. I was trying to explain to her that I’m with you, but she kept pushing me. I didn’t know what to do.”
I turn toward the ocean, watching the violent waves of the tide as it rolls in on the storm. I feel sick.
Mason comes to stand behind me. He wraps his arms around me and pulls my body close to his. His skin is cold at first, but our body heat quickly warms us. I’m tense in his embrace.
I’m in too deep to let this go. I need more from him, but I have no idea how much he’s willing to give.
He dips his head and I can feel his breath close to my ear.
“I don’t ever want to hurt you again, Penny,” he says. “But I’m not good at this. I’ve never gotten close enough to a girl to want to make any kind of commitment. I don’t know how this works or how to be what you need me to be. Please don’t let this ruin what we have.”
“What do we have?” I ask. I don’t turn around, because I’m scared to look into his eyes. I’m scared I’ll break open and melt into the sea if he tells me we’re just friends.
He turns me around, his arms still tight around me. “Do you really have to ask me that?”
“Yes,” I say. I struggle against him, but he’s not letting me go. “I have loved you for most of my life, and I think you know that. I think you’ve always known. But you never wanted me. Not the same way I wanted you. Maybe I was a fool for thinking this trip could change that. And I know you told me to trust you, but you’re the one who has taught me not to trust you, Mason. All this time, do you know how much it has hurt me to have you in my bed one night and in another woman’s bed the next? It’s been torture. I can’t go back to that. Not anymore.”
He pulls away and places his hands on my cheeks, lifting my eyes to his. “Penny, I’m not attracted to her. You’re the one I want. You’re the only one. What can I do to prove that to you?”
I close my eyes and let my head fall back against his arm. I want him to tell me he loves me, but it can’t happen like this. Not if I have to force it. I don’t want him to say it because he felt he had to to keep me here.
But more than ever, I wish he would say it on his own. From his heart.
I’m beginning to wonder if those are the three words I’ll never hear him say.
“Let’s leave, then,” he says. “Would that show you I don’t want to be with her? We’ve been in this town for almost two weeks. There’s so much more we could see and do. Let’s just pack up and go. Start again somewhere else. We can make this work.”
I pull away and look up at him. The rain is dying down, but the wind is blowing his hair all around. There’s hope and fear in his eyes, and I want to trust him. I want to believe him.
“Where would we go?” I ask.
His lips curl into a small smile and he wraps his arms around me. “Anywhere you want,” he says. “I just want to be with you. Please say I didn’t fuck this up.”
I can’t help but smile. Out of all the times he’s hurt me, he’s never offered to make it up to me or given me any hope that there was something between us worth not fucking up. I slide my arms around his waist and press my head against his chest.
“Is that a yes?” he asks. “And can we go inside to get a cup of coffee and talk the rest of this out? I’m freezing.”
My teeth are chattering, so the thought of a hot cup of coffee sounds amazing right now. Maybe I could convince Delores to make a pot of decaf for me.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go by the store and grab a new map first, though. Maybe while we’re there, we can figure out where we’re heading next.”
His face breaks out in a huge smile and he lifts me up off my feet.
I laugh and the sound carries in the wind.
I can’t help but hope it carries all the way to the space under the wooden pier.
Chapter Forty-Three
Mason and I sit in the diner drinking coffee and trying to dry out.
Delores comes over to fill our cups and eyes the map spread out on the table. “Don’t tell me you guys are getting the itch and are thinking of leaving us already?”
Guilt tugs at my insides. I promised to help her keep the diner, and I don’t want to leave
her hanging. But I don’t want to have to stay here when Harley the Harlot is in town, either.
“We’re considering it,” I say. “But don’t worry, I’m not abandoning you.”
A few tourists walk in and Delores steps away from our table to grab a few menus for them.
“Did you figure something out that might help?” Mason asks. “I forgot to ask.”
“The diner is really in trouble,” I tell him. “They’ve only got sixty days to make a balloon payment and they just don’t have the income. With the end of the season coming up, they’re terrified.”
“That sucks,” he says. “This place is a real treasure.”
“Exactly,” I say. “I’m so used to being able to just write a check and help someone out. I’ve never helped a business like this, but I’ve written more checks than I could count.”
“For who?” he asks, an eyebrow raised.
I shrug and take a sip of the coffee. I forgot she just refilled it and it burns my tongue. “The homeless shelter. A couple of families around town. The elementary school a couple of times. I give a lot of money to families of sick babies at the hospital when they don’t have insurance to pay for treatments.”
He draws in a loud breath and his mouth drops open.
I look up and see that his eyes are wide and filled with tears. I put my hand on his. “What’s wrong?”
“Are you serious?” he asks, his eyes wide. “You do all those things?”
“I don’t really advertise it,” I say. “I don’t want my parents to find out. Dad says our family business isn’t a charity and if we started giving away money to everyone who needed it, we’d be broke by morning. I know he has a point, but at the same time, why do we need so much? My parents are so set on giving to these big national charities. They completely ignore the fact that there’s a real need for help in our own community.”
I look up and see that Mason is really affected by this. He’s in shock or something.
“What?” I ask, my cheeks flushing. “I’m not the world’s most shallow person after all, huh?”
