Page 155 of Grand Love

“He loved the sun.” He shakes his head. “Would be out here for hours every day, and long after we went to bed.”

We stand looking over the estate, the view soothing something in the both of us. My eyes drift to the garden, still lit up with the lanterns. Scar must have forgotten about them, or she didn’t want to turn them off. Mason’s strong hand grips mine, warm but calloused.

I lick my lips, trying to decipher his thoughts and find the right thing to say. He seems lost in his own head again.

“I think in life, especially when it isn’t all that fair to us, we have a habit of clinging to the good. We feed off it, making it seem better than it actually was.”

Do we have a habit of making the good memories seem better than they had been, and the bad worse than it was? Because the bad always seems terrible looking back, but in the moment we always get through it, right?

“I don’t feel like I cling on to anything from being here,” he says. “Bad or good.”

“It was always sunny,” I state with a smile, squeezing his hand in mine.

When he finally turns and looks down at me, giving me a bright smile despite his saddened eyes, I know everything is going to be okay. “What now, my beautiful Pixie?”

I loved my Pixie then, Nina, and I love my Pixie now.

Feeling the need to lighten the mood, I look down at his shirt that I have on, then to the lake, letting my dimple pop as I bite my lip.

“It’s fucking freezing, baby.” He grins.

I take off down the hill, letting the wind whip through my hair as I run for the water’s edge. Lifting the hem, I pull the shirt over my head and chuck it to the ground, then turn, finding Mason watching me as I slide off his boxers.

“You’re fucking beautiful.”

“Come with me.” I turn and wade into the water, my eyes widening when I realise how cold it is.

“Shit,” I mutter under my breath.

“Nina, you can’t go in there,” he chuckles as he calls out to me. “It’s too cold this time of year.”

“Don’t be a wuss.”

I turn to face him, daring him with my eyes to come to me. “Come make new memories under the moon with me, Mase!”

He eventually wades in, grabbing me the second he can reach me and tugging me to him. I search his eyes, needing to know he’s okay. His nose rubs with mine as our foreheads touch.

I get the sense that tonight will be a night I’ll never forget. A night that I look back on with the fondest memories, knowing without a doubt that they are as special in my memory as they were when we lived them.

“The suns gonna shine again, Bossman. I promise.”

* * *

“It’s freezing!”My teeth chatter as Mason crosses the path back to the house, with me held tight on his back.

“I did tell you.” He chuckles. “You shouldn’t have gone in.”

The sun is just coming up, and as we pass his parents garden his grip tightens on my legs. I want to tell him to go in, but I know he won’t, or he will and will resent me for pushing him into it. I tell myself that if he wanted to go in, he would. And he will, one day.

“I need a hot shower and sleep. God, I need so much sleep!” I moan against his bare neck as he climbs the steps to the house. He smells delicious; he smells like home.

“Shower, sex, sleep,” he lists off.

“How about sex in the shower by yourself while I sleep.”

He drops me, chuckling. “Shower sex by ourselves is never happening again.”

His words ground me to a halt, my feet rooting to the terrace. What happens from here? He called me Pixie, but he didn’t say he loved me before.

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