Chapter Eighteen
It was dark by the time Mason made it to Cuervo. He could see the old water tower in the distance, lit from below so the crop dusters could spot it when they circled the fields. A full moon hung in the star-filled sky. He took a deep breath. The air was so much cleaner out here. It smelled of hay and horses and the familiarity of home.
In the six weeks he’d been away, nothing had changed. Nothing probably ever would. When he was young, that sameness had driven him wild with impatience. Now, he recognized it as one of the things he loved most about Cuervo.
The last month and a half had been a blur of brutal on-the-road football games, eked out victories, a deep-season injury list and long nights spent in lonely hotel rooms pretending he didn’t miss her. No one had told him that yearning could damn near kill you. No one told him that once you’d found the woman you were looking for and she left, you felt like you were acting out the words to a country western song.
Other women didn’t even exist for him at this point. All he wanted was her.
Driving here had been the same kind of adrenaline rush he felt when the football sailed between the goal posts—a lightness in his chest, the fast pulse. He spied the Artie’s Burger Express sign lit up yellow and red against the night sky and remembered the first time he saw her there after all those years. How strange that even then, he’d had a hunch that she was the one. Maybe the human heart just knew things.
He took a deep breath, ready to do whatever it took to make her understand they needed to be together. That as long as they were a team, all things were possible. Lexie would go to a good school. There would no longer be any need to sling burgers and fries. And every day of the off-season they would spend right here in Cuervo with friends and family. He knew a ranch for sale next to Buckingham Farms that would be perfect for them. There was even a fishing pond for him and his dad to fish in while they continued patching up old wounds.
First, he had to get Cassidy to see that he loved Lexie, too, and would teach her everything she needed to know in order to handle life in the limelight.
But he wasn’t sure what his reception would be once he got there. He let the car idle for a minute across the street, heart pumping, hands a sweaty mess. After all the soul-searching he’d done, all the long talks he’d had with himself, it all came down to this moment, fourth down in the fourth quarter of the game.
He spotted her skating toward a red Ford pickup, tray in hand, hair in a sporty ponytail, and everything inside him suddenly came to life again. He could do this. They could do this.
Nerves jangling, he drove into Artie’s parking lot and found a stall. He turned the car off, got out, and then started toward Cassidy. She had her back to him and was delivering milkshakes to a family sitting on the patio.
The other two waitresses inside the restaurant saw him first and started jumping and waving to Cassidy, trying to get her attention. A man in a cook’s hat and white apron peered out at him. Everything seemed like it was happening in a movie, and Mason had trouble catching his breath.
Cassidy turned around and saw him.
Only on the football field had Mason seen color drain from a face before. It made her eyes look intensely blue. She uttered something he couldn’t hear because his heart was blasting apart. Then she dropped her empty tray.
“Mason,” she cried. “Oh, Mason!”
She made it into his arms in one glide and he could feel her body trembling with emotion. By some miracle, they were kissing, and his shy, sweet Cassidy didn’t even notice that everyone was watching them. She stood on the tips of her skates and clung to him, saying his name over and over, until it felt like he would explode from happiness.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said. “Oh, Mason, I was so stupid. When I finally figured it out, I thought it was too late.”
“You aren’t stupid,” he said. “I just didn’t understand. Cassidy, I don’t want to lose you again. Tell me you’ll stay this time, you and Lexie.”
“Yes, of course. We’ll find a way to make it work.” She gazed into his eyes. Her own were shiny with tears. “Oh, Mason, I never thought I’d ever see you again.”
“I should probably do this more formally, but I want to marry you,” he said, feeling the sureness of it. “I want us to be together—the right way.”
He could tell it was yes by the way her whole face lit up. No hesitation. No running for cover. She was ready—ready to face whatever hardships came their way. When she kissed him, her entire heart was in that kiss, her woman’s heart that had bound him to her forever.
Suddenly, the whole restaurant erupted in car horns, flashing headlights, and people pounding on tables. The guy in the cook’s hat and the two waitresses came out, fists pumping, leading the cheer. For probably two minutes the wild, joyful noise continued. Cassidy seemed to welcome it. Her face was wet with tears, but she kept smiling and laughing. Mason watched her with a rush of love and awe and a sense that at last his destiny and hers had come together.
Finally he’d come home.