Page 73 of Boundaries

I chewed the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. Don’t let him know how upset you are.

“OK, fine. I get it.” My throat was closing like a vice had been attached to my neck and the cog was slowly being twisted.

There was a three-beat silence as he watched me with penetrative eyes. He could probably see beneath the façade. My poker face was severely pathetic.

“We were never enemies, Amy. Even when we were children. You annoyed the hell out of me, but there has always been a place inside of me that cared about you.”

Snorting, I arched an eyebrow, “Really?” I said disbelievingly.

“Yes, and you felt the same way. We didn’t really hate each other. We got caught up in a family row that was caused by our great-grandparents and had, sorry, has, nothing to do with us.”

Sniffing, I nodded, as he was right. We had always been fighting someone else’s battle. My brother and sisters didn’t really care about the meadow or the pond, we had been brainwashed by our parents and our parents by theirs and then some. A never-ending cycle.

Mason cleared his throat, “What’s ironic is that, yes the dispute started off as a disagreement about the meadow, but it became more personal when one of my ancestors started banging one of yours, apparently.”

His words were new to me and it forced me to push aside the hurt I was feeling from his rejection.

“What do you mean? That our grandparents were at it or something?”

“Great-grandparents,” he corrected with raised eyebrows. He was so good-looking.

Mason shuffled his large body further toward me and told me the story about the fallout between our ancestors, as it had been told to him.

So, in a nutshell, my great-grandmother on my father’s side had an affair with Mason’s great-grandfather. They had both been married at the time, my great-grandmother Dorothy had already been living at Orchard View for years and the farm which became the McKenna farm had been empty and for sale for six months. The fact that the property was in-between ownership, allowed my family use of the pool area which was supposedly (I took that bit with a pinch of salt) part of the McKenna land at that time.

When Derek McKenna, Mason’s great-grandfather purchased the land and moved his family onto the property, all rights for my family to access the meadow and pool were lost. After a couple of years, Derek and Dorothy started an affair and things got ugly. David Taylor, my grandfather then started to investigate the legalities about the boundary which separated the two estates. It was revealed that it wasn’t on either of the land deeds. After this, the battle focused on the boundary issue alone. As a smokescreen to what the real issue was in the first place; Derek McKenna stealing my great-grandmother from my great-grandfather.

Mason said that rumour had it that when things ended badly between Derek and Dorothy that Derek signed over the meadow and pond to Dorothy. To appease the situation. It hadn’t of course.

I listened as Mason explained that nothing could ever be registered as the deed didn’t exist to sign over the land in the first place and therefore, the offer was an empty gesture.

As we lay there under the darkening sky, it all sounded much too familiar. Almost like history was trying to repeat itself. When Mason first started to explain that our ancestors had been involved, I felt a twinge of worry about there being that chance that we were related in some way, but Derek and Dorothy met when they were older and already had families of their own.

“So, the meadow and pond do belong to us then,” I pointed out with a slight smile. His story had given me time to shelve my hurt, but I still felt like shit.

“Don’t push it,” Mason replied with a smile of his own before shoving into a sitting position. I followed the motion.

We both stared across the river, we were on Mason’s side. That thought of ‘sides’ twisted painfully in my gut and I suddenly wanted to fill the bloody river in. It was like a divide between us that represented our relationship. Those fence posts were still there half finished.

The river was reckless, and fast, swooshing this way and that, a mirror of what I currently had with Mason. The relationship with the sell-by date. A river that ran who knew where.

I pushed to my feet and dusted my hands off. Mason helped me into my dress and it should have felt nice but it didn’t; bittersweet almost.

Once we were dressed, I stood before him, staring up into that perfect face I now loved so much.

LOVED… what? Where did that come from? I batted the thought to one side.

Mason looked down into my eyes with such a searing tenderness that I almost started to cry.

“OK, so. The clock is ticking, so let’s have fun whilst we still can…” I allowed my voice to trail off, not sure of what to say.

Mason wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me up against him gently. His expression was dark like he didn’t appreciate my comment.

“Fun, is that all this is?” he shot down into my face. Talk about mixed messages.

I pushed my arms around his neck, slightly confused by his words, “Yes, lots of fun,” I replied with a smile.

Mason’s face darkened further and his hands slipped to my buttocks before yanking me against him, his mouth crashing down on mine.

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