Page 84 of Pucking Billionaire

Mason seems too preoccupied with his telepathic connection to Flop, so he doesn’t answer for a minute or so. Then he snarls, “No, Flop, you can’t eat my cat.”

Flop chirps something excitedly.

Mason’s hand makes a fist, which makes my nether regions flutter. “If you so much as mention my cat again,” the owner of the fist growls, “I'll wipe that smug smile off your face with your gills. And yes, I know you don’t have gills.”

“And that is our cue to get going.” I grab a hold of Mason’s flotation device and drag him to the pool steps—before proper authorities get involved.

When we get into the cab, Mason looks around with a worried expression. “How come everyone knows I did drugs?”

Should I tell him that talking to dolphins could be a tiny clue? “You’re just being paranoid,” I say instead.

“No,” he says. “They know.”

The way he says they makes me think of conspiracy theorists.

All right. I’ve got to help Mason. Somehow.

I frantically look around before settling on a possible solution.

“Sir,” I say to the driver. “Can I borrow those?” I point at the headphones lying on the dashboard.

“Five dollars, and they’re yours,” the driver says.

I pay the enterprising cabby his fee before putting the headphones over Mason’s ears. Connecting them to his phone, I unleash Pink Floyd on said ears.

As expected, Mason’s features relax, settling into a blissed-out expression.

Midway into the ride, without opening his eyes, he says, “I’m having such a great time with you.”

Me? Pink Floyd? Or did he reestablish his telepathic connection to Flop?

Either way, the words make a loveliness of ladybugs flap their wings in my belly. “I’m also having a great time with you,” I confess.

“Good,” he says, eyes still closed. “There’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

“What?” And again, I hope he is talking to me.

“I love you,” Mason says with a smile.

The shock is such that the ladybugs in my belly choke on their tongues. “What did you just say?”

And to whom?

Mason doesn’t answer.

He’s fallen into a drug-induced sleep.

Chapter 29

Mason

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I’m never doing drugs again.

How could I have told Sophia that I love her before I’m even sure of that?

What’s worse, I know she isn’t on the same page. Or the same book. Or the same library.

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