Page 111 of Writing Mr. Wrong

“Then at best, whoever came up with that was just inconsiderate. At worst, it was deliberately provocative. Either way, you should have been warned. It must have stung.”

He rolled his shoulders. “It did, and then I felt foolish for letting it sting, except that didn’t stop it from stinging, and it was just this vicious circle in my head. Between the animation and the interview and the shit with my dad, I was off my game. I couldn’t focus. That’s not an excuse. I’m embarrassed about it because I can always focus. I’m not a good enforcer because I can fight. I’m a good enforcer because of my instincts. I canfeeltrouble brewing, and I head it off before it becomes a fight. But that night, I was off. I knew the opposition would target Denny. I even knew who’d go after him and how. But I was zoned out, and when it happened, I was caught off guard. I swung around to help Denny… and my damn knee gave out. Not completely. It never does that. It just gave a hitch, and usually I’d power through, but it’s like…”

His breathing picked up, and he forced himself to press on. “It’s like it all came tumbling down. The interview. The animation. My knee. I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t even know what I was feeling. I hesitated, and then Denny was getting slammed into the boards, and I was too late, and it looked like I never even tried to get to him. As if I saw it happening… and watched.”

Gemma crawled onto his lap and hugged him, and he buriedhis face in her shoulder, breathing her in until his heart rate slowed.

“Maybe Iwasjealous,” he said. “If I don’t know why I did it, then maybe the fans are right. I don’t care if they hate me, but I do care…” His chest tightened. “I care whether I did it on purpose, and I care whether Denny thinks I did.”

“Have you talked to him?” she said, her voice low.

He shook his head. “The coach didn’t think I should, and I… didn’t push.”

“Denny didn’t want to see you?”

Mason hesitated, and then said, “No, the coach just thought it’d add to the problem, and I… jumped on the excuse. I should have reached out, gone to see him or texted or even sent a get-well card. If I’d done that, missing tonight’s game wouldn’t be such a big deal. Yeah, people might say I skipped it on purpose, but Denny would know better. The team would know better. But I never reached out, and if I miss the game, it’ll seem like proof that I intentionally let him get hurt.”

She leaned against him, the two of them sitting there, wrapped in each other.

“We’ll make this right,” Gemma said. “If we can’t get you to the game, we’ll find a way to fix it later. But getting you to the game is—”

Her head jerked up. “Did you hear that?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

GEMMA

There was a boat, a small fishing vessel coming from the east. Gemma and Mason did everything to get the crew’s attention. Waved their arms. Shouted. Shouted some more. It was too far off to hear them. Gemma kept waiting for it to be in line with their boat, as close as it would get. Surely the crew would hear them then.

And then it stopped. They waved and shouted, but the boat was at least five hundred feet away, with no sign it would get closer. Gemma didn’t pause to think. She had no idea how long the boat would stay there, whether it would get any closer once it restarted. Their chance was evaporating, and she knew how important it was to Mason to make the game. And how desperately she wanted to make up for her mistake. So she told Mason to stay where he was, jumped into the ocean, and started to swim.

It was only after jumping in that she realized this was not a pool. It was not the shallow water around their island. It was the open sea. With sharks.

Gemma knew the popularity of shark TV shows. She’d never seen one, which seemed a serious oversight at this moment. Or maybe it was better, leaving her mind unclouded by deadly shark facts.

Oh yes, it was definitely better to only have horror movies about sharks to fall back on.

Gemma reminded herself that the ocean was a very big place. The chance of a shark being nearby was… Okay, it was probably higher than she liked. But the chance of it being nearbyandhungryandchoosing her above all the other delicious fish in the sea seemed low.

It had to be low. More people died from lightning strikes than shark attacks, right?

Keep swimming. That was all that mattered.

Swim and think about things that were not sharks.

Her mind went back to Mason’s confession. Whether or not there’d been a hint of jealousy in what happened with Denny, Mason wasn’t the kind of guy to intentionally allow a young player to get hurt. Just like he wasn’t the kind of guy to kiss a girl on a dare. He’d handled things poorly, and the important part was that he knew it.

She suspected there was another layer to the Denny issue, because she also suspected that Mason did not have a retirement plan. Hockey was his life. It had always been his life.

The unfairness of it enraged her. Did she feel “old” at thirty-six? Hell, no. She was starting a new phase of life, and while she wasn’t a precociously young debut author, she was at exactly the right age to start this career. At the same age Mason was nearing the end of his.

He’d need to deal with that, and she’d help him deal with that. But not today. Today was about getting him to that game.

So she ignored thoughts of sharks and stingrays and whatever else might be swimming beneath her. She ignored the growing burn in her lungs. She ignored the stitch in her arm. She ignored the fact that she hadn’t swum more than a few laps in a decade.

She could do this. Shewoulddo it. How did she feel about Mason Moretti? She was ready to brave shark-infested waters for him, to foolishly swim so far that if she failed, she might not be able to get back. The depth of that emotion scared her more than the sharks or the risk of drowning. But she was going to get past that fear, and this was how she’d do it. She’d been hurt—by Alan, and by Mason himself—but she wouldn’t let that be an excuse for not trying again. She wouldn’t use it as an excuse for hiding how she felt, as she had all those years ago with Mason.

In her books, it was always the guy who made the grand gesture. Well, she was doing this differently. She’d get to the damned boat, one way or another and…

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