AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My stubbornness falls by the wayside. All while Mason answers me without answering me.
“That good enough?” he asks, pulling back.
I smile like a dope. “For now.”
He grunts his laugh and settles beside me again. “I’ll say one thing, Syd. You’ve got my attention. More than any woman in Pulsboro.”
“Don’t I feel special?”
“You should. The women here are all the same.”
“Funny, I could say the same thing about the men in your club.” I’m teasing, though I sense he’stryingto be genuine. I twist my body onto my side and raise myself up on my elbow, letting a hand skim across his bare, muscled chest. “Tell me about your tats. You have more than I’m willing to count.”
He grabs hold of my hand and uses it to gesture to the cross and scripture sprawled across his chest. “This is for my mother. See her name on the edge?”
“I do. That’s… very touching. I had no idea that’s what that is.”
“It’s a tribute to her. She was a god-fearing woman. She was a very good woman. She was… too good for Tom.” His voice thickens, growing huskier with an emotion I can’t place. Not anger, not even bitterness.
It’s deep-rooted grief.
In this moment, I relate to him more than I can possibly articulate.
“I’m sure she was amazing to have raised you.”
“You fucking with me, or you being serious right now?”
I smooth my palm over his heart, feeling its beats. “Serious. I wouldn’t mess around about that. I’ve lost my parents too. I get it.”
More than you know…
“It’s crazy when you think about it. How long it stays with you. It never goes away. It just… it becomes a part of you that you learn to live with over time.”
I ache, understanding exactly what he means without even naming specifics. I’ve missed my birth parents all my life, despite being too young to remember much about them. The pain has existed inside me, so unbelievably real it hurts to breathe when I think about it too long.
“Yeah,” I whisper, my throat suddenly sore. “It does. It’s a hole in your heart. Your heart still works—it still beats. But, there’s a hole there that you’re always aware of.”
“That’ll never be filled,” he finishes for me, and in this moment, I’ve never felt closer to another human being. He pierces me with a look. “You were orphaned, right? At a young age?”
I nod. “I can’t remember my birth parents. I was that little. Luckily, a gentle-hearted man and his wife adopted me only a couple years into the foster system. But… but they’re dead now too.”
Understanding grows in Mason’s eyes that makes me ache even more. That makes me certain I might’ve found a kindred spirit. As silly and ridiculous as it sounds, I can say with certainty that he hears and understands every word I speak—he gets the feelings I’ve had.
“Mom and Logan were everything to me,” he says. “Losing Mom hurt bad enough. It fucked me up real good for years. I was a kid and went from a B to an F student. But then losing Logan? It was like I was gone.”
My hand remains on his heart, picking up on how it beats faster as he speaks. He clasps his larger hand back over mine, giving it a squeeze of solidarity, before he seems to come to his senses. He realizes we’ve gotten a little too vulnerable. A little too real.
Dragging my hand to his bicep, he changes the subject by pointing out his next tattoo.
“This one’s self-explanatory. The club crest.”
I play along with him, understanding we need to lighten the mood again. “What about this brotherhood tat on your neck?”
“It signifies rank. Different guys have different insignias. I’m road captain.”
“Third in line,” I murmur.
He nods. “Behind Tom and Silver.”
