Chapter Eleven
Mason snuck into the kitchen and swiped a beer out of the refrigerator. When he closed the door, Ruth was standing on the other side of it, glaring at him.
“Funny how I was going over next week’s schedule with you when I realized you weren’t there,” she said. “And I hate talking to myself.”
Mason turned up the wattage on his smile before grabbing his cell phone off the counter and holding it up in front of her. “Sorry. Got a date.” He felt hot and sweaty just thinking about it, about Cassidy. It happened pretty regularly these days.
“Oh, okay then. Let’s just forget the CBS interview and the photo shoot for GQ and the charity dinner you’re supposed to go to next week. Not to mention…” Ruth darted a glance at him and then lapsed into a pained silence.
Right. His dad. Mason popped the beer and took a swig, waiting for the now-familiar guilt to twist inside his gut. The guilt didn’t disappoint. For two days straight, every minute he wasn’t at practice, he’d spent making phone calls. He called all of his dad’s army buddies. He called everyone who’d ever worked at the bar. No one had seen Mickey, knew he was missing, or had any idea where he might have gone.
The word suicide oozed through Mason’s brain, but he washed it down with more suds. It was stupid to think shit like that. It kept you from being able to do anything useful or productive. Or sane.
“I’m waiting to hear back from Tib,” he told Ruth. Tib Langston was his father’s oldest friend. If anybody knew what had happened to Mickey, he did. But Tib had gone fishing, according to his wife. And when Tib went fishing, God himself couldn’t reach him.
“Let’s just hope the police detectives come up with a lead,” she replied.
“The cops aren’t going to find him,” Mason said. “I am.”
When Ruth looked at him, there was a gleam of respect in her eyes. “Big talk. But you are kind of a pit bull.”
“A what?”
She gathered her tablet, keys and purse. “Once you latch onto something, nothing can shake you off.”
Mason followed her to the door and then held it for her, watching as she marched out to her car. So far, Ruth’s car was the most telling contradiction to her knife-pleat, hospital-corners personality. Ruth drove a baby pink VW bug convertible with a fuzzy lavender flower hanging from the rearview mirror. It freaked him out every time he saw her in it.
Now he was free to call Cassidy, and for the first time all day he felt a buzz of real excitement. He needed to see her, to hear the soft country drawl of her voice, that cute habit she had of saying, “Bless her heart” or the way she put an extra syllable in the word “beer.” He needed the feeling of calm he had when he was around her. He needed to know that somebody cared, somebody who didn’t give a damn whether he was pushing a defensive tackle or pushing a broom.
He took another swallow and climbed the stairs two at a time, wondering how often Parker Fucking Nolen came to see her. What kind of fool dumped a woman like Cassidy or a kid like Lex? Did Parker actually think he was going to do better somewhere else? “What a dick,” Mason muttered before flopping down on the bed, but worry continued to pull at him, along with a strange kind of possessiveness that he didn’t remember ever feeling before.
If he had to admit the truth, he actually wanted things from this relationship, things that went beyond just the physical. But that would mean Cassidy considering the possibility of giving up part of what made her Cassidy: her home, her sisters, her parents. Not only would she have to come to Dallas, she’d have to talk Lexie into it, too. What if Lexie didn’t want to go? What if she didn’t want to go? Who could blame them? Doak and Priscilla were great parents. Unlike his own father, Doak would never take off like this.
And how could he, Mason, be one hundred percent sure this was what he wanted himself, especially since there were a million other beautiful women who didn’t come with Parker built into the equation?
But the phone was in his hand and a flare of anticipation fired through his veins. It came surging out of the place where he’d kept it in check so he could play football and make phone calls. Cassidy was for him. Just him. He didn’t have to share her with his fans or his sports agent or even Ruth.
And he sure as hell wasn’t going to share her with Parker Fucking Nolen.
“Wow,” he said when Cassidy appeared on his screen. His heart did a backward dive. “You look really beautiful.”
He stared, speechless. His throat went dry. She was seated in what appeared to be her kitchen. He could see a faucet in the background and a fruit jar filled with tiny yellow flowers. Her hair was down the way he liked it, and the sleeveless sky blue top she wore matched her eyes. Looking at her made him forget things like his name. Or how to talk. All he could do was look at her and wish she were sitting on his lap right now.
“Lexie had to show me how to install this button thing,” she said, fumbling to prop up the phone so he could see her. He caught a tantalizing glimpse of naked thighs and denim cutoffs and felt himself rising up like a drawbridge.
“Wait,” he said, confused. “You mean the video app? Didn’t the tech I sent over show you how to do that?”
“He showed me a whole bunch of stuff, but I don’t remember all of it. Hey, you’re talking to a girl who still uses a rip cord lawnmower.”
“You mow?” He had a good time picturing that. Those shorts with maybe a crop top or a bikini, sweat glistening on her skin. Now he was hard enough to hang a wet towel on. Thank God she couldn’t see.
“Dad taught me a lot of things,” she said. “I can change the oil in a car or a motorcycle, fix flat tires and shingle a roof.” She smiled with all those white teeth, which made him dizzy. “Aren’t you impressed?”
“Impressed doesn’t begin to cover it. I miss you,” he said, and the missing wasn’t just wistful. It had teeth.
“I miss you, too.” She went quiet for a moment. “Hey, Lexie and I watched your game. You kept us in suspense right until the last minute, didn’t you?”
“Not one of my better efforts.” Mason knocked back the last of his beer and set the bottle on his night stand. “Where is Lexie? She with her dad?”
“She’s going to a Halloween sleepover thing with her friends tomorrow night, so she and my mom are out looking for costumes.”
It took him half a second to process this information. His pulse ratcheted up a few beats. A slumber party meant Cassidy would be alone. Alone, as in no one else in the house. The possibilities flashing through his brain would have made a porn actor blush.
“By the way, Darlene told me if we talked on this video thing, we’d end up taking our clothes off,” she said.
Oh, baby. “Do you want to take your clothes off?” He tried to keep his voice steady.
“No, I want to touch you.” She turned bright red and averted her eyes. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
His cock throbbed inside his gym shorts. “You’re killing me.”
She bit her lip, and with something like agony, he watched her teeth sink into that soft pink flesh. “Look, I should probably tell you something,” she said. “It’s not an easy thing to talk about.”
“What is it?” he asked, equal parts curious and dazed.
“I haven’t been with anyone since… well, since Parker.”
He blinked. “Anyone?”
She straightened up in her chair. “Are you freaked out? Oh, God, you’re freaked out. I had a lot of good reasons, you know. I didn’t want to be one of those mothers who had a revolving door on her bedroom. Not in a town like Cuervo.”
Ten years, he marveled. Ten years of denying herself the most fundamental human pleasure. He let himself feel the gravity of that and his blood heated at the thought of the honor being done to him. No wonder she was such a one-woman tornado. It all made sense now. And there she was looking gorgeous and edible, having no idea what was on his mind.
While Cassidy rattled on explaining herself, Mason found himself having a tough time keeping up. Maybe the blood in his brain had drained south. He said the right things, but he just couldn’t move past the shock of knowing what it was she might be offering him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the sexy way her mouth moved or the how gracefully she pushed back the heavy curtain of her hair.
Again, he had to kick himself for having decided to take Kayla to senior prom instead of Doak Roby’s smoking hot freshman daughter. But Kayla had been a sure thing. At eighteen, all he could think about was sex.
The idea of having sex with Cassidy may have kept him busy in the shower most mornings, but even at that age he’d known she wasn’t the kind of girl you just slept with and then moved on.
Cassidy didn’t play at love. She played for keeps.
“You got awfully quiet,” she said. “Are you sorry you called?”
“No,” he said, trying not to breathe heavily. “I need to see you. Soon. Now.”
She gazed directly at him then, her eyes pensive. “I’m right here, Mason. I’ve always been here.”
Lust wound up for the gut punch. He tried to stabilize, to find his brain again. There were ten long years to make up for, after all, and… He loved how the color of her hair reminded him of summer and how irresistibly sweet her tone was when she said his name. He loved that she’d waited, but also that she didn’t use sex as a bargaining chip. He loved knowing that he could bring her all the sexual happiness she deserved, again and again, until she was too delirious to say any name but his.
But he couldn’t fuck things up this time. He couldn’t lose sight of the fact that Cassidy wasn’t a celebrity girlfriend, she was a real girlfriend, and he needed to treat her like one. So he set his own reluctance aside and told her everything—about his dad, his “pep talk” with Coach Lemery, even his promise to host a swim party for Terrence and his friends. By the time they finished, it was two hours later and Mason had the strangest feeling they’d just gotten started.
“I should be there with you,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t have to go through this alone.”
“I’m not alone. You’re here.”
“You know what I mean.”
He did, and the thought of it left him awash with a strange kind of yearning. It made his stomach tighten and his heart unclench all at the same time. He needed the love that only she could give him, a love that lasted. And the shock of knowing that gave way to awe.
The answer was simple. He had to find his father and make it to Cuervo before practice on Wednesday. He had a game to win, only this time it was with a past he couldn’t erase and a woman he’d never been able to forget.
* * * *
Mason woke up with his heart hammering in his chest. He scrubbed his face with one hand and sat blinking in the dim light, fumbling after the ghost-trails of a dream. The sheets lay lonely and untouched beside him. Through panoramic windows that overlooked the lagoon-like pool, pink glowed on the horizon.
Seeing the sunrise reflected on the pool reminded him of early mornings spent fishing on the lake. Tib’s lake.
Suddenly, Mason knew where his father was.
Pushing the sheets aside, he half-ran, half-staggered to the shower. Jets of hot water pulsed against his tight muscles, bringing him back from the dead. But his mind never let go of the thought that had jolted him awake. Mickey Hannigan had gone fishing with Tib.
It was so obvious, he felt stupid for not having figured it out before. Mickey had taken refuge in Tib’s cabin. He’d gone to the one place he figured nobody would find him. How many times had he and his dad gone there when Mason was a kid, fishing tackle rattling around in the back of his dad’s pickup, fresh bait stinking up the cab? His dad had been a young man then, close to Mason’s age now, full of energy and optimism, a staunch defender of the American dream. But if Mason was right and Mickey was there…
I’m going to fucking kill him, he thought, plunging his head under the spray. How dare he do this to us? To Mom. He almost cost me the goddamn game last week.
Mason power-showered, toweled off, and then hurried downstairs to the kitchen. Too early for Keiko, his cook and housekeeper, and too early even for Ruth. Tib’s cabin was in the piney woods of east Texas, more than 200 miles away. He’d just have to call Ruth from the road.
While the coffee brewed, Mason made a hasty assembly line of ham-and-cheese sandwiches. He shoved a few bottles of cold water in his rucksack, wishing he didn’t have to do this. Wishing that he didn’t have the kind of dad who just took off without telling anybody. He had no idea where Keiko kept the sandwich bags, so he tore off a few paper towels and used them to wrap his lunch. His movements were stiff and jerky. He kept dropping things and swearing.
By the time he strode through the courtyard to the garage, the sun had risen. His footsteps sounded exactly how he felt right now—pissed off. He had games to win, a girl to woo. A girl who happened to be home alone tonight.
He flung the rucksack in the backseat of his black Ford F-250 and slammed the door harder than he meant to. No, he couldn’t afford to think about Cassidy. Thinking about Cassidy torched his brain cells, and he needed all of them if he was going to make it through this fucking day.
By the time he got on the highway, it took every ounce of self-control to keep from flooring it. While trying to navigate around an overloaded car transport, he missed a call from Ruth. Then she tried texting, probably to bitch about the charity dinner he was supposed to go to tomorrow night. After swerving to avoid a head-on collision, he gave up and chucked the phone in the backseat.
He got all the way to the truck stop in Athens before pulling over to refuel. The same country song he’d heard at Artie’s the night he ran into Cassidy again sounded through the gas station’s tinny speakers. He stood waiting for the gauge on the gas dispenser to pop, and all he could think about was how Lexie wasn’t going to be home tonight. Cassidy, barefoot on the porch, on his lap, radiating waves of sexual heat. The softness of her breasts in his hands.
The gauge snapped and the gas stopped pumping, but he didn’t let go of the handle. He felt as though he were floating, and the only thing pinning him to the ground was this duty to his father, his family, this anger that wouldn’t let go.
By noon, he finally hit the rutted dirt road that led to Tib’s cabin. The road ended in a clearing. He parked under a giant swamp oak, listening to the ticking sound of his overheated engine. No other cars around, but that didn’t mean much. Tib could have parked down by the lake.
Mason got out, looked around, and then stepped up on the porch. A barn owl took off, flapping toward the trees. Every muscle in his body tensed, quivering like a guitar string, as he searched for signs of his father. He knew he was there. And once he found him, he was really going to let him have it.
Casting their lines from the shore were two figures, indistinguishable from this distance. Mason’s heart slammed against his ribs. He started toward them, tramping the rust-colored pine needles underfoot. Was it possible? Could that really be his dad? Anger rose up again, swifter this time.
One of the men turned to re-cast his line. When Mason saw his dad’s blunt Irish features, his jaw dropped.
Mickey was fine. He was alive.
He just didn’t give a fuck.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Mason shouted.
Mickey spun around. His mouth opened, then shut.
Mason closed the distance between them, fists clenched, and then Tib opened his arms for a hug that already seemed like frightened diplomacy.
“What the hell, Tib?” Mason growled. “You, too?”
Tib tried to clasp Mason’s shoulders, but Mason shook him off. All he could see was his father’s face. There was no apology there, no contrition. Just the same me me me bullshit that had shaped his entire childhood.
“Answer me,” Mason said. “Why did you take off without telling anyone?”
Mickey grimaced before plunging one hand through his white hair. “It’s none of your damn business,” he said. “Go home.”
“The hell it isn’t. The police are looking for you. Mom has been worried sick.”
“Bah!” Mickey made a dismissive gesture and started toward the cabin. “I’ve got nothing to say to that woman.”
“You’ve got something to say to me,” Mason said hotly, keeping pace with his father. “It’s called sorry. But you’re not sorry, are you?”
Mickey growled, “What do you know about it? You got no problems. You got football. Don’t pretend there’s any sympathy left for your old man. I looked and believe me, it ain’t there.”
Mason squeezed his hands into fists and remembered you could always depend on that asshole to put his own needs first. “It’s always about you. You could stab somebody in the fucking neck and still find a way to make it about you.”
Tib caught up to them, panting a little. “C’mon now. You don’t wanna say those things about your pops, do you? He ain’t perfect. Nobody is. But he’s still your pops.”
“Stay out of this, Tib,” Mason snapped. “You didn’t even call me.”
“He’s hurtin’,” Tib said, his sunburnt face creased with worry. “He don’t want nothing to do with those papers your ma tried to give him. Ain’t fair, is it? Your ma taking up with that yoga fella, and Mick left with nobody.”
Mason hadn’t known his mom was dating anyone… much less a yoga buff. He grabbed his father by the arm and swung him around. Mick’s face looked like a crumbled birthday cake, but his blue eyes were glittering and defiant.
So that was it then. All this crap he’d put them through. The whole disappearing act. In the end, it was nothing more than a man, no longer young, no longer hopeful, refusing to accept that his wife was finished with him.
“No way I’m signing those papers,” Mick said. “Why does she get to be happy?”
A lump rose in Mason’s throat. A rush of grief came roaring up inside of him. He put his arms around his dad, and after a moment, Mickey returned the hug. He seemed a little surprised by it. Like maybe anger was the only emotion Mickey knew how to deal with.
“Look at you boys,” Tib said, beaming. “That’s what I like to see. Sons should stick with their dads. Hey, that was some game you played last week, huh, Mason? You barely squeaked by.”
And just like that, Mason recognized the redirect to safe territory—cars, sports, barbecue. Within minutes, they were sitting on Tib’s porch, beers in hand, while Tib fired up the smoker. There was joking. Lots of joking. If it didn’t exactly feel as though old wounds had been healed, maybe spending a little time with Mickey would build something new, something less charred, out of the ashes.
When Tib went around back to get the chicken and sausage out of the deep freezer, Mason took a swig of beer and said, “So what’s the plan, Dad? You just going to stay here and fish ’til the lake dries up?”
Mickey popped the top off the second of what Mason knew would be many beers. “Don’t know yet. You got any better ideas?”
Mason shrugged. “Talk to Mom, maybe? Start a new business?”
Mickey didn’t answer. He kept staring out at the lake as though the answer to all his problems lay on the far distant shore. But maybe he’d found what he was looking for here—purpose, contentment, peace. The same things Mason realized he’d also been looking for, but never found. Not until Cassidy.
Tib came back with two bags of meat, and Mason sat and watched as he gingerly fed each piece into the smoker’s big metal jaws. The chirping of songbirds and the lapping of water against the shore rose like a melody heard above the drone of the cicadas. He smelled wood smoke and the danker odor of algae and lake weed. A family of ducks formed V-shaped wakes as they glided across the water, two big and seven small, and between the leafless trees, the sky was serenely blue.
Mason shared a glance with his father and saw that they were both feeling the same deep contentment. He thought about Cassidy in her kitchen with the jar of yellow wildflowers. The longer he sat listening to Tib and Mickey exchange insults, the deeper the yearning for Cassidy moved through him. She was there, in her house, alone. He hadn’t seen her in damn near two weeks. The harder he resisted thinking about her, the more desire dug its teeth in.
“You’re playing the Giants next week, right?” Tib said to him. “What do you think of their quarterback? He’s been piling up some impressive stats.”
“Say, Tib,” Mason asked. “How many hours from here to Cuervo?”
* * * *
Cassidy stared at her phone. She checked the call log again. Did Mason expect her to call him or was she supposed to wait until he was free? Why didn’t dating and cell phones come with a set of instructions? Ever since she’d gotten the thing, she’d barely had a moment’s peace.
A now-familiar restlessness drove her to her feet. She stood in the middle of her kitchen and searched feverishly for more things to clean. With Lexie at a slumber party and Mason in the wind, it felt as though there was nothing for her to do, nothing to hold on to. Her thoughts kept ping-ponging between the two of them, over and over, until it was everything she could do to keep from screaming.
And beneath it all, whipping her, was this crazy urgency that never left her alone. She could be doing anything—skating over to a car full of noisy kids, helping Lexie with her homework, watering the fall zinnias—and out of nowhere, need for Mason would ambush her. It hijacked all systems, burning through her body with a dark unstoppable hunger she both feared and craved.
It made her distracted and short-tempered and lonely.
Maybe it wasn’t right to feel this way. But the harder she pushed against the feeling, the harder it pushed back. And now that desperate yearning pulsed and throbbed beneath her skin and there wasn’t anything she could do to make it stop.
But she could clean her kitchen again. Looking around, even she had to admit the vent hood above her stove was spotless, the sink gleamed, the coffee decanter sparkled. She put one hand on her stomach, trying to quiet the butterflies that lived there now, a whole infestation of butterflies. They reminded her that her body wasn’t her own anymore. It belonged to Mason.
She went outside, down the back steps, and spotted her bike leaning against the shed. The air was full of dinner smells and the cloying sweetness of late summer roses. Above her, the sky was the lilac of sunset, dotted with puffy cream-colored clouds whose bottoms were scalloped in gold.
Mason could be looking at this sky, she thought, nosing her bike toward the street. Wherever he is, he might be looking up and thinking about me just like I’m thinking about him. But some part of her still doubted. Mason belonged to a different world, a world she had no way of understanding. He might like her now, but for how long?
Pushing against her disquiet, she pedaled out of her neighborhood, heading toward the open fields. Stalks of golden wheat lay broken and stubbled, felled by a farmer’s combine. Crows pecked between the rows, squawking at one another, while a flock of wrens swooped overhead. She rode harder, welcoming the burn in her muscles, hoping it would help. Within minutes, Cuervo had disappeared and the shapes of cypress and swamp stood dark against the pastel sky.
She dismounted and then walked her bike inside the clearing she and her sisters had played in as kids. Moss Creek ran clear in this spot, surging around a trail of smooth granite rocks. It was darker here inside the trees, and fireflies looked like fairy lights against the deepening gloom.
Cassidy parked her bike by a tree and realized she was burning up. Her forehead was wet. Sweat trickled down her back. And the water looked so inviting.
She glanced around to make sure no one saw her and then shed her clothes. There were no houses here, no deer blinds. The water was much colder than she remembered. Shivering, she waded deeper, and the water swirled around her knees, her thighs, her waist. Deeper, and now it was nearly to her breasts. Her nipples were taut with cold. When the water bit into them, she stifled a moan. Strange how her skin could be pimply with cold, but her insides raged hotter.
Cassidy tipped her head back and let her long hair float on the water. All that felt real was the pale flash of her legs in the water, the mermaid silkiness of her hair, the persisting ache between her thighs.
For the first time in years, she felt free. She felt as though she’d left her old reliable self still standing in the kitchen of her house.
She swam until the crickets started chirping, and then she crawled onto the bank and put her clothes on. The ride home felt as though she were still moving through water. The moon glowed starkly. When she looked up, it seemed as though it ran after her through the branches of the trees.
At home, she took a long hot shower and then lay on the bed. Dinner just seemed like too much trouble without Lexie to cook for. Her ground floor bedroom looked like it did in her dreams—just the ghostly suggestion of furniture instead of the furniture itself. She could dimly make out the antique footboard with its carved roses. The faint gleam of mirrors on Grams’ chifforobe. A few details from the framed sepia print of Cuervo in the 1890s.
She turned on her side, letting the waves of sexual yearning wash over her. What if Mason was somewhere out there burning up for her? Why couldn’t he be in the bed beside her, running his strong hands over her skin? The thought flooded her insides with warmth. She listened to a dog barking in the distance. Car headlights swung across her lace curtains and then disappeared.
If Mason didn’t make love to her soon, this yearning would kill her.
She heard rustling outside her window and then someone tapping on the glass. Her heart nearly bolted out of her chest. Through the curtain she could see moonlight illuminating the top of a man’s head, but the man’s face remained in shadow.
Then she heard the intruder softly calling to her. She loosened her panicked grip on the towel. Her mouth fell open.
Lifting the curtain, she said, “Mason?”