Now

The past month and a half had been rough, to say the least, but we’d finally made it back to the States. The tour was over, and Mace had successfully remained dry the entire time.

Not to say that had been easy. In all honesty, it was a wonder the two of us hadn’t killed each other in all those weeks we were practically joined at the hip. But I was determined to keep him on the wagon, and he seemed just as determined to stay there, despite his surly attitude. And when I say surly, I meant I wanted to bash him over the head with his beloved Gibson most days.

I honestly didn’t know what was to come now that the tour had ended. I needed to get back to my own life—not that it was much of one—but I wasn’t sure how to go about doing that. The thought of leaving Mace to his own devices now that he was home weighed heavily on me. Eventually he was going to have to take his sobriety into his own hands, but was it still too soon for that to happen? I just wasn’t sure, and Google had been no help whatsoever.

Stone was handling things at the garage perfectly, so it wasn’t like the guys needed me back there. He’d even hired a temp to handle office duties while I was away, and the place was running like a well-oiled machine.

If I was being honest with myself, the only time I’d felt useful since Will’s passing was when I was helping Mason, but I couldn’t make that my life… right?

But the thought of leaving him now felt like a white-hot brand pressing into my skin. I didn’t want to go, and not only because I was worried he’d relapse with me gone. Being with him filled a void that had been in my life for longer than I could remember. Even when we were fighting, I was more complete with him than I was without him. And that terrified the living hell out of me.

It had been a week and a half since our return, and I’d been taking up space in one of the gazillion guest rooms in Mace’s enormous house. We’d both been walking on eggshells around each other the whole time, and the tension was starting to drive me up the wall. No matter how breathtaking his place was—and it totally was, what with its panoramic views of the lakes and mountains—we hadn’t so much as spoken a word about what came next.

With how edgy he’d been lately, I assumed he wanted me to go, and while thinking that caused a pain in my chest, I chose to ignore it for the sake of my well being. I’d accept it. Even if that tiny voice in the back of my head was telling me to stay. But I wasn’t going to do that without some sort of backup plan.

And to put that backup plan in place, I’d have to finally suck it up and talk to him about it.

I took the back stairs that led into the kitchen—that’s right, Mace’s house was so damn big it had two sets of stairs—set on pouring myself a cup of coffee before I went in search of him. It was still relatively early in the morning, but without the booze and wild nightlife keeping him in bed until well after noon, Mace had been waking up each day around six. It was an ungodly hour as far as I was concerned, but not wanting to leave him to his own devices for too long, I’d been rising with the sun, just like him.

I skipped down the last few steps and rounded the corner at a fast clip, my hair, still damp from the shower, slapping me in the face as I came to a screeching halt at the vision before me.

“Mornin’,” Mace grunted from his place in front of the open fridge, however, I was too mesmerized by the sight of him to do anything other than stare.

Needless to say, Mace’s skin had gotten its color back, and at that very moment I was getting a huge eyeful of it. Dressed in a pair of black basketball shorts resting low on his waist, he stood at the fridge sucking back a bottle of water. Every inch of tantalizing flesh was covered with a thin sheen of sweat from his early morning workout. The tee he’d apparently been wearing earlier was tucked into the waistband of his shorts. In the past month and a half, Mace had replaced alcohol with exercise, and it showed. He spent hours every single day in his state-of-the-art home gym.

He’d always been big, in presence and in stature, but the exertion he’d been putting his body through lately had developed muscles I hadn’t even known existed. He looked like he belonged in the woods, his flannel-clad arms chopping down a tree with one mighty swing of his axe, not standing on a stage with a guitar strapped to him.

His corded throat worked as he chugged the last of the water and, with an underhanded toss, he threw the empty plastic bottle into the recycling bin at the edge of the island. I was so enthralled with watching the muscles in his arm bulge and tremble as he moved that I failed to notice his attention had landed firmly on me.

“Yo. Earth to Goldie.”

“Huh?”

His face puckered in a frown as he studied me closely. “You okay? Your cheeks are all red. You aren’t getting sick, are you?”

Shit. I needed to pull myself together. “Oh, uh… no. I’m fine. Just need coffee.” I moved on wooden legs across the kitchen, heading toward my intended destination before I let Mace’s physique sidetrack me.

“You know, I’ve told you there’s no need for you to wake up as early as me,” he said as I poured that sweet, sweet nectar into a coffee mug and doctored it up to my liking.

Turning to face him, I propped my hips against the counter and lifted the mug to my lips, blowing on it before taking a sip. “I know. I’m just an early riser.”

That was total crap. I hated waking up early. Always had. It drove my folks crazy. My mom used to always say I woke up hard, in a perpetual bad mood for at least an hour before I was finally able to shake the sleep off completely. It made getting me up for school a hassle every morning. I forced myself awake when I worked at the law firm, but I was never happy about it, and my co-workers knew not to talk to me until they’d seen I’d finished my first cup of coffee. When I started on at Will’s garage, he’d quickly adjusted my hours so I didn’t have to be in until nine-thirty, knowing any earlier would make me an unbearable pain in the ass to work with.

Mace saw through my lie with the ease of a man who’d known me more than half my life. “Bullshit,” he grunted, placing his palms on the granite counter of the island between us. I tried my best not to let those damn biceps and forearms suck me in again, but he was working the very definition of arm porn. “You haven’t been an early riser a day in your life. You don’t have to babysit me twenty-four fuckin’ seven, Ly. A few hours by myself isn’t gonna hurt anything.”

The defensiveness of his tone was like a bucket of ice water, effectively drowning any lustful feelings that had been swirling around inside of me. With a heavy sigh, I set my cup on the counter at my side. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just don’t really know what I’m doing here. I’m trying, but I feel like I’m not equipped to help you the way you need.”

The hardness in his expression slowly melted away, and I felt that soft look down to my bones. Which was very bad. “You’re helping me more than you know just by being here, baby.”

God, he was killing me with that gentle voice and warm look and calling me baby. It was all too much.

Choosing to push that into the box in the back of my mind where I’d been storing all his other sweet looks and words for the past several weeks, I used his comment as a segue.

“Speaking of that, I’ve been doing some research.” Ignoring the way his body tensed, I pushed on. “I know you said you can do this on your own, but I really think you’d benefit from AA.” My hand shot up when his mouth parted to object. “Just hear me out. Those meetings are anonymous, you know that, so it’s not like you’d need to worry about it getting out. But even if it did, so what? You’d be getting help, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. If you don’t want to go the whole route of finding a sponsor right now, that’s fine. But I really think it would help you to talk to other people dealing with the same struggles. That way, when I leave—”

A massive wall of anger shot through the air and slammed right into me. Mace’s jaw clenched, his teeth grinding together as he gritted out, “The fuck you mean, when you leave?”

My chin jerked back into my neck in shock. “I… you… what?”

Standing tall, Mace started around the island menacingly, and a sense of foreboding filled my veins. “What the fuck do you mean, you’re leaving,” he repeated much slower.

“Well….” This was so not going how I’d hoped. “I just mean, um, you know, when it’s time for me to go home—”

“Home?” he clipped loudly.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “To San Francisco.”

His eyes went wide in surprise before he hissed, “Fuck,” and raked a hand through his sweat-slicked hair.

That was when it hit me. “You never thought about me going home?”

“No,” he grunted in agitation as he started pacing the kitchen. “I guess I didn’t want to think about it, so I shoved it out of my mind.”

A warmth spread through my chest that I couldn’t ignore no matter how hard I tried. “You… I thought… well, I figured you’d be happy to have me gone.”

Mace’s face fell into a severe frown and his head cocked to the side in confusion. “Jesus, Lyla. How could you possibly think that?”

It was my turn to be confused. “You haven’t exactly been in the best mood lately, Mace. You’re constantly snappy and surly. I assumed it was because of my hovering.”

“Christ, baby.” He let loose a low, rumbly chuckle as he shook his head. “I’ve spent a month and a half kickin’ a two-plus-bottle-a-day habit. If anything’ll put a guy in a shitty mood, it’s that. Doesn’t mean I want you gone. The only goddamn reason I’ve made it this long is ’cause of you.”

While that was nice to hear and made that warmth in my chest grow and spread, the admission was a little unsettling. “See? That’s what I mean. I don’t want you to stay sober just because of me. You’ll never succeed that way, Mace. You need AA.”

His expression grew thoughtful, those crystal eyes aimed at me for several seconds of silence before he finally asked, “If I agree to AA, will you agree to stay?”

“Yes,” I answered instantly, not having to give my response a single moment of consideration. Not only because I wanted to stay, but because I’d have given him anything he asked for if it meant him agreeing to another avenue to ensure his sobriety.

“You answered like it was just that easy,” he said, lifting one dark eyebrow a notch.

“Because it is,” I replied softly. “If you want me here, I’m here. It’s that easy.”

“What about the garage?”

Again, it was another easy answer. “Stone has it covered. He was one of Will’s guys. I’m pretty sure the man lives and breathes motor oil and gasoline. It’s his passion.”

Mace’s mouth quirked up in a hint of a smile, something that came so rarely lately that seeing this one felt like finding the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. “And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“What’s your passion?”

You, my brain screamed. Luckily I was able to get a handle on my mouth before that word came popping out. “I haven’t really figured that out yet,” I whispered, the weight of my unsettled life coming to the forefront of my mind and eclipsing that earlier warmth I’d been feeling. “Things have been… complicated lately. I haven’t had much of a chance to figure out what I want.”

That blue gaze of his stayed locked on mine as he rounded the island, stopping less than a foot away. “Then how about we make a deal,” he said in that soft, gentle voice of his. I’d have to remember to lock it away in that box once this conversation was over. “I’ll work on fixing me, and in the meantime you work on figuring out what you want, Goldie. And we can help each other along the way.”

If only it were that easy.