Relentless (Mason Family 4)

I try not to look at her. It gets tricky when she salivates over me with my mother sitting inches away.

“Mrs. Mason?” Lola asks, brushing my bicep as she turns.

“Bring me a Cobb salad and an iced tea, please,” Mom says. “Thank you, Lola.”

“My pleasure. I’ll be back with your drinks,” she says.

Lola leaves us quickly, for which I’m both grateful and disappointed. I’m glad she’s gone; I have zero interest in humoring her advances today. On the other hand, the prospect of being at my mother’s behest isn’t exactly settling.

Mom takes her linen napkin and folds it. She places it on her lap, watching me with a knowing look.

Shit.

I sigh, resting my elbows on the table.

“Oliver?” She lifts a brow.

I pull my hands back to my lap.

“I thought I’d taken Boone out to lunch for a moment,” she teases.

My jaw drops in faux shock. “Are you telling me that I’ve taken you to lunch every week for the last four, five years and you take that little shit out and pay for it?”

She laughs, her eyes twinkling with mirth. “Like you would let me pay.”

“You’re damn right I wouldn’t.”

She reaches out and pats me on the arm. “That’s why you’re my favorite. Don’t tell the others.”

I roll my eyes as I lean back so Lola can set my drink in front of me.

“Thank you, honey,” Mom tells her.

Lola looks at me, but I only give her a small nod. No need to give her an opening for polite mindless chatter. Even that is more than I can give her today.

My head hurts. I slept like shit. Rolling out of bed a solid hour before usual—giving up on the prospect of getting any reasonable rest—I got to the office well before anyone else. But instead of being productive, I kept one eye on Shaye’s door.

I’m not sure what I’m more fucked up about—that I did something I should regret or the fact that I don’t.

The taste of her lips sits on my tongue even now. Her soft curves are fresh in my mind. But it’s more than that. It’s the weight of her smile, the vulnerability of the tears in her eyes, the truth of her words.

People don’t share things like she shared with me—intimate, personal details—with just anyone. I know that. I don’t share my fears and failures, not even with my brothers. But she chose to share them with me, chose to open her heart and give me a glimpse inside her wounds.

And now I don’t know what to do.

My instincts are all over the place. The calm, rational part of my brain that I rely on to guide me through complicated situations abandoned me on this one.

I want to put distance between us. I can see how many ways this can go wrong, and I don’t want to deal with the fallout of any of those circumstances. However, I have another urge just as strong in the opposite direction.

I want to care for her.

Imagining the pain she’s in after the loss of her husband, the loss of her living mother—something I can’t begin to wrap my brain around—and the loneliness she must face hurts my heart in a way that I can’t fully rationalize. It’s not just that she’s alone that upsets me. I’d have that sympathy for anyone in this situation. It’s more than that.

She understands betrayal from a parent. Is that what this is? What I feel?

There’s an understanding between us. No pretenses. An instant, irresistible connection that I felt from the moment I laid eyes on her. And now that she’s in my life, albeit not in the role that I contemplated that very first day, it doesn’t feel like she got here by happenstance. It feels like she was placed here. For me. Perhaps in more ways than I first imagined.

And that’s fucking crazy.

Shit like that doesn’t happen in the real world. Even if I play devil’s advocate—which I did hourly last night—and pretend Shaye is in my life for a reason, it doesn’t solve the problem. It causes more problems.

What am I supposed to do? Date her? Be her friend?

“I think we’re going to be good friends.”

Right.

Through the fogginess of the situation, all I know for sure—the one thing that I feel deep in my bones—is that I now have a responsibility. I need to protect her from more harm.

But what if I am the harm?

“Oliver?” Mom’s tone is stern.

I look up to see her watching me.

“What’s going on, honey?” she asks more sweetly since she has my attention.

“What do you mean?”

She gives me a no-nonsense look. “We can pretend that I’m suspicious because you were here early, or we can chalk it up to Boone being your brother and tipping me off that there was something brewing. We could also just call it mother’s intuition and leave it at that. Whatever makes you feel better.”