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“Thanks.”
“For what, love?”
“For being here for me.”
He scoffed. “The day I’m not here for you, Piper, you can look for my body in the morgue.”
“That’s rather morbid,” I chuckled.
I felt him shrug again. “What can I say, Barlow? Only death will part me from you.”
“That’s straying into romantic territory there, Lombardi,” I warned.
“Well, I guess you can call me a romantic, then.”
I snorted. “I don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to call you that.”
“I might be,” he answered, completely seriously for a second.
But, then he tickled me and that totally distracted me from his words.
It was starting to feel like for every step closer I got to Roman, Mason was there taking a step closer as well.
And I mean that was the goal, wasn’t it? Sweet, kind, good, friend-and-family-approved, actually-wanted-a-relationship Mason was the goal, wasn’t it?
It just always seemed weirdly coincidental and made things with Roman feel a little bit weird. After the closeness of that night on the lakeshore, Mason was waiting for me at my locker first thing on Wednesday morning. I was tired and grumpy from a lack of sleep, I had bruises on my arm and leg, and the parents had given me a talking to for leaving and not coming back the night before.
In their defence, it was a half-hearted talking to; they’d expected I’d not gone far and they’d expected I’d been safe. When they’d heard I’d been with Roman at the lake, they didn’t bat an eyelid, just told me to let them know next time and asked if I needed a ride to school. But, Roman had been waiting at his ute for me and I told them I’d be fine. Mum had turned the slowcooker on, kissed my head, and swanned out of the house cooing a goodbye to Roman.
So, I was in a mood. It wasn’t a particularly foul mood, I was just irritable and stressed. So Roman walked me to my locker, pausing when we saw Mason.
“What does he want?” I hissed to Roman, sub-consciously leaning against him as though he needed to keep me safe from something.
I felt Roman’s hand against my back lightly. “I don’t know, Barlow,” he answered sarcastically. “I imagine the same thing he’s wanted for the last couple of months. Maybe now he’s finally sacked up.”
“I am so not in the mood for this today,” I muttered and Roman nudged me forward.
“Barlow, you’ve been waiting for him to ask you out for months. You want to tell him now is inconvenient and ask if he can call back later?”
I wanted to say that yes I did want to tell Mason all that. I wanted to say that, if it had been Roman, I could have done that easily and it would have made no difference to him; Roman would have understood and given me the space I needed. But, Mason wasn’t Roman. I wanted to say a damned lot of things, but we were too close to my locker now and Mason might have heard.
Mason eyed Roman warily. “Morning,” he said slowly.
Roman nudged me in the back.
“Morning,” I said quickly, trying to smile.
“I’ll see you back at the car, Barlow,” Roman said softly.
For some reason, I really didn’t want him to go. But, I had to be a big girl and face my problems. A nice Roman-shaped safety blanket would have made it all better, but we don’t always get what we want now do we?
So, I nodded and started unlocking the padlock on my locker. “Yep, I’ll see you later.”
“Carter.”
“Lombardi.”
It felt like all the air around me chilled when Roman stepped away. But, that was completely ridiculous and I told myself it was completely ridiculous. I was so busy telling myself that it was completely ridiculous that I almost missed Mason’s next words.
