Page 50 of When Kings Fall

I eyed Lev almost beside me. “Your reflexes were a little off there, huh?”

“Busy thinking.”

“You’re supposed to be taking a breather.”

“I did. For twenty minutes.”

Actually, that was a major amount of time for him to just be and shut his mind off. “All right,” I said, backing off when I recognized that.

“Brianna?” he called behind him. “Speaking of taking a breather, you done yet?”

I looked back to see she was still talking into her earpiece that Lev had hooked her up with when she’d gotten a call from Vixen that she’d needed to take, so she could still come snowmobiling with us.

“Nah, she’s still at it,” I told Lev.

“Now worries, it’s for the good of our boy up there.”

“Seems it’s already doing him some major good,” I said, watching as Mason laughed wildly as he sped along on his snowmobile ahead of us, living it up, getting lost in the moment and the liberation of it in a way I hadn’t seen from him in so long.

Just as I was trying to wrap my head around that, he took it further.

I signaled for Lev and Bree to slow alongside me as I realized what Mason was getting ready to do. It had just been a long time since I’d seen him go for it like this.

But there he was in the next moment, working the throttle as he approached a jump ahead.

He hit it right on and went sailing over.

“Whoop!” I cried.

“Fucking, yeah!” Lev yelled.

“Wow!” I heard Bree exclaim as she finished talking into her earpiece and caught up with me and Lev.

“Yeah, he used to stunt all the time,” I told her. “When we used to come up here a lot in the old days. And when we weren’t, he had a Triumph and spent a lot of time stunting with Lev on their bikes.”

She looked over at Lev. “He did? Seriously?”

He grinned. “Sure did.”

Things got wilder from Mason then and we watched him shift his weight.

And then his right foot was on the saddle.

His left joined it.

And then he rose up and outstretched his arms as he surfed the snowmobile like a champ.

Holy shit!

I wolf-whistled as he jumped out of it and landed smoothly back in a sitting position.

“Whoo!” he shouted into the mountains, the sound echoing around amazingly.

This was one of the best times we’d had in ages.

I couldn’t believe it.

He actually seemed happy.

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