Chapter Thirteen

~ FREYA ~

Mason’s thumping the pads of his fingertips on the marred table of Marigold’s diner as the sun peers in through the window.

“We need to talk.”

His tone has some finality to it and I’m assuming we’re finally about to have the About Last Night discussion. My stomach does a little lurch. I don’t know how I feel about it yet, haven’t even begun to filter through the onslaught of emotions that well up inside me when I recall how it felt to be with him.

Mason is my best friend.

He’s also the best sex I’ve had in my life.

I love him.

But do I love him that way?

And most importantly, how is it going to make me feel when he tells me it was all a terrible mistake, that he wants things to return to the way they were before we screamed each other’s names in a cloud of hedonistic bliss?

As she looked at Zander, soaking in the warmth of his gaze and finally knowing how it felt to be joined completely with him, her heart expanded, as though until that very moment she’d been incapable of loving a man to this disastrous capacity.

Disastrous capacity.

I like that, and am just about to reach for my phone to tap in the note when he slaps a newspaper article in front of me. My brow furrows. Mason is the only twenty-something I know who still reads newspapers—the real paper kind rather than online like everyone else.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Another independent publishing success story.”

My shoulders droop a couple inches. “You know how I feel about that.”

“I know how you should feel about it. Excited. Fewer and fewer people are buying their books from traditional publishers.”

“Says the guy who still reads old-fashioned newspapers,” I quip.

“That’s different.”

“It’s not different. You read this kind of newspaper—” I flap the article in front of his face. “—because it feels good in your hands, right? Like it’s substantial. Real. That’s the same way I feel about getting my book published the old-fashioned way.”

“You can still self-publish traditional paperback books. And you can do e-books. Hell, you can do audio books if you want. All on your own. No agent. And no more turning your characters into something you don’t want.”

“But I want—” My mouth hangs open for a moment. What do I want? How can I express to him my love affair with the printed word? “When I go to work at the bookstore—I don’t know—it’s like I’m surrounded by a history that I want to be a part of. All these ancient books that have been loved and passed down for generations and are now searching for their next owner in an antique bookstore—they’re precious to me. I want to go through the same process all my favorite authors went though. I want some agent to show real interest in me. I want to get that ‘call’ that authors always talk about—that moment when someone finally believes in their book other than themselves.”

“I believe in your book. Isn’t that enough?”

My heart fills at his words. Fills to disastrous capacity. Somehow, for one moment, it is enough as I look at him, his sincerity positively radiating from those baby blues. “It is, and yet it—”

“—isn’t. I know. I get it. But morphing your romance into a shapeshifter SEAL billionaire with a BDSM fetish? Seriously? When’s it going to stop, Freya? When an agent asks you to throw in a threesome?”

I sink a little lower in my seat. He does have a point.

“Look, Freya, you wrote a great book. You can hold your head up high about it. Publish that one. The one you believed in.”

A frown pinches at the corners of my mouth. “Do you know how many people try to self-publish their own books and fail?”

“Do you know how many people try the traditional route and fail?” he counters.

The waitress drops the check in front of us, and Mason snatches it before I can take a peek. He does that most of the time, even when I was dating someone else. I don’t know if it’s that he’s older than me, or that he makes more money, or that he’s got some old-fashioned machismo thing going on. (But I won’t deny that I like it.)

“Come on, Freya, you didn’t write a book so that it can sit on your laptop.”

His words grate against me without missing a beat. As annoying as they are to hear, I’m thankful to hear them today. Thankful, and sad. I don’t know if it’s the lack of sleep, the fact that I just fucked my best friend, or that I’m getting a lecture from him about my book, but tears threaten behind my eyes.

And, just like he notices everything, he doesn’t miss it. “Oh, shit, Freya. I didn’t mean to twist your arm about it.”

He reaches out his hand and takes mine. I swear the feel of his skin against me feels differently since last night, almost teasing me, making me wish for more contact.

“It’s not that. It’s just—you’re the only one who believes in—my book,” I finish with a sniffle, reaching for a napkin. You’re the only one who believes in me, I add in my head. “And you’re leaving.”

“Stop with the drama. I told you I’m only going to be a few hours away.”

“No, you’re not. A few is three. You’ll be four hours away. And there are at least a few bridges between us. You can’t expect me to actually drive across the damn things, do you?” I say it jokingly, because I’m pretty sure I can find some way of getting to Little Creek without driving across a too-big bridge. I can handle the little ones. It’s just the ones that are so huge they almost feel like they’re swaying in high winds that I can’t tackle.

Otherwise, there’s always Uber.

His smile peeks up one side of his mouth. “Good point. Which is one of the reasons I brought you here.”

“What’s that?”

He reaches into his pocket and hands me his keys.

My brow furrows. “What?” My voice has dropped a half octave because I suddenly know exactly what.

“You’re driving us home.”

Shaking my head, I push myself a few inches away from the table, distancing myself from the keys. “Oh, no, I’m not.”

“Oh, yes, you are. If you want to get home, you’re driving.”

“You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Wouldn’t I? Freya, I’m leaving tomorrow. If I’m going to piss you off, now’s the time for me to do it.”