Relentless (Mason Family 4)

“What’s that, my lady?”

“Do I still have a job? Or do I have to work for Wade?”

Oliver doesn’t answer me. Instead, he sweeps me off my feet and carries me out the door.

Thirty-Five

Shaye

“What is this going to look like?” I ask.

The sun warms my skin. I stretch out on the chaise beside Oliver’s pool and watch him sort through a toolbox.

Steam rolls off the grill in the little kitchenette that I just learned existed. The steaks Oliver prepared after our getting-to-know-you-again romp sizzle, perfuming the air, and I sip a glass of wine and sigh.

“Hopefully,” Oliver says, plucking a screwdriver from the red metal box, “it’ll look like a hinged cabinet door again.” He looks at me like I’m nuts. “What do you expect it to look like?”

I laugh. “Not the door. This. Us.”

His pace slows as he walks back to the door he just discovered was broken. His forehead furrows.

“It’ll look like this, I guess,” he says. “What do you want it to look like?”

His voice is confident yet laced with a slight hesitation. I know why. He’s trying to be him but also let me be me.

He’s afraid to assume anything for fear that I’ll feel walked on. And he’s right. That fear is legitimate. I’ve carried that wound for a long time.

And I still have it, festering in a deep part of my soul. Maybe it’ll always be there. Maybe I’ll never one-hundred-percent be able to let my guard down. I’m not sure.

But what I do know is this: being with Oliver is a safe space to learn. To grow. To set aside my grievances with the past and become a new, whole person again.

“I don’t know.” I take a sip of my wine. “Maybe like this.”

He quirks a brow and bends down behind the cabinet. I can only see the top of his head.

I lean my head back against the chair and think. I think about the reasons that I’m willing to try this with Oliver, the reasons I love him. There are so many—too many things to list, and I’m still getting to know him. I’m still learning what makes him tick, what motivates him, what things are printed on his heart.

What things are printed on his heart beside my name.

The thought makes me smile—it fills me with a wonderful warmth, a comfort, that I can’t deny. Nor would I want to.

There may have been people let me down in my life. People have done me wrong. People have treated me badly and put me in terrible situations. I’m just realizing that all of that—all of those transgressions—had nothing to do with me.

I know that because of Oliver.

It scares me to think about what my life would be like now had I given up or given in to my fears and the dark days of before. There were so many of them. But I kept going, pushed forward—sometimes with the smallest shred of hope that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Thank God, I was right.

My light was Oliver.

He rises from behind the counter and wipes a bead of sweat off his forehead. “Fixed it.”

I grin.

He walks to my chair. Sitting on the edge, he picks up one of my feet and rubs it in his hands.

“I just want to be clear,” he says, working my foot back and forth in his hands.

“About what?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you live here. You don’t have to,” he says hurriedly. “If you want to keep your place for a while, I get it. There’s no rush.”

I bite my lip and lift my other foot, wiggling my toes. He laughs and starts to rub it instead.

“Our lives are intertwined. It’s you and me,” he says. “I’ll take that at whatever speed makes you feel good about it. Just don’t get confused—I want you living here having babies with my last name as soon as you realize it’s our destiny. Not yours—ours.”

Oh. My. Gosh.

I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just get naked. Every part of me says something different. In lieu of an answer, I sit up and motion for him to bend down. Then I kiss him slowly, methodically, with all of my heart and soul.

He leans back with his eyes full of mischief. “Hold that thought.”

“What thought? You don’t even know what I was thinking.”

He winks as he takes his screwdriver back to the toolbox. He fiddles around again until he stands with something behind his back.

Curious, I make a face. “What’s that?”

His smile is slow. Seductive. Sexy as hell. He brings his right hand to the front. A handful of zip ties dangle from his palm.

I sit up, my mouth dry. My heart pounds like a drum.

Blood pours through my veins with such an urgency that I nearly leap off the chair and into his arms.