Page 57 of Gin and Lava

“Are you telling people I’m your boyfriend?” he asks, and I slump back against him, exhausted.

“No,” I say, defeated.

Mason holds up my phone. “Your friend seems to think differently.”

“That’s a mistake,” I grumble.

“I’m a mistake?” he asks, squeezing me tighter.

“That’s not what I said, Mason.” My head falls back in defeat. “Can you please let me go.”

“Who’s Sam?” Mason needles.

“Nobody.”

“He’s your ex,” Mason points out.

“Clearly you already know everything,” I growl, shaking my head in frustration.

“You’ll be seeing your ex at this wedding?”

“Unfortunately.” I pout.

“And this is the ex who thinks you have herpes, right?” Mason asks, referencing the night we hooked up when he asked why I was single, and I avoided the question.

“Maybe,” I admit. “And obviously I don’t have—”

“That’s why I wear a condom,” Mason points out. “Just in case the most beautiful girl in Hawaii has mad herpes.”

I laugh. I shouldn’t. But I do.

“I don’t have herpes, Mason,”

“I’d still fuck you if you did,” he says, nuzzling his face into my neck in a gesture that makes my skin trill with excitement.

“Will you please let me go,” I ask again, and this time he does, handing me back my phone as I turn to him. The flirty, yet questioning, look on his face makes me want to curl up into a ball. “I didn’t tell anyone we were—” I motion between us.

“Dating? Fucking? Playing the slap happy?” Mason replies in rapid succession as if this were a game of charades.

“Right,” I concede. “All of that. I mean, Esme and Desmond know we slept together once, but …”

“Connor and Ned might know too,” Mason admits, and I nod, taking that in. “Connor might know about both.”

“Geez. Fuck and tell much, Mason?” I snap, with more anger than he deserves.

“You know I talk shit all the time,” Mason defends.

“Us together is shit?” I ask.

“No.” Mason grins. “Us together is aTemple of Doominferno.” He nods to my phone. “And I’m not the one lying to my friends about my secret girlfriend.”

“That just—” I look back and gesture at Elise “—was a whole misunderstanding.”

“I told her we were fuck buddies,” Mason defends. “I don’t lie. I tell it how it is.”

I take a deep breath. I don’t know why that’s refreshing to hear from him, but weirdly it calms my nerves. I snag Mason’s hand and move him further down the hall so Elise can’t see us.

“Look,” I start, “this is probably a completely bad idea, especially with you being all truth-sayer and honorable over here, but—”

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