It took a few minutes for his vision to clear. By then, the humiliation of his poor health had forced him into staring down at the floor, straining to keep his tight eyes open and his breath in steady regulation. It seemed like age was finally trying to stop him.
“Here, drink this.”
Kylie drove a tall glass of fizzy water into his hand. He grabbed it, stared at it, and for the briefest moment wondered if he should trust her. That was the very first moment he knew he was becoming too cynical for his own good. If he couldn’t trust young Kylie Stanford, who could he trust?
Mason drank it down in large gulps, as if challenging those trust issues. It felt stale and rancid as it hit the back of his throat, but if it helped, then he had no worries. He passed back the empty glass and shivered.
“You should see a doctor,” she told him, plonking next to him on the couch.
“I’ll be fine. It’s just a lot of stress hitting me all at once.”
“Has it happened before?”
Mason shook his head, but in truth, he was still thinking back to his last couple of cases. Sure, they had taken their toll on his muscles and exposed his fragility, but he still considered himself to be in top shape. It was his mind he worried about more than anything.
“Whatever,” Kylie said with a sigh. “If you won’t do it for you, just take care of yourself so you can take care of me. You want to see me safe, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then stop being a man and just call a doctor.”
Mason waved it off. “Like I said before, I need you to get out of town. Forget about your studies, take your mom on a nice trip somewhere.” He stood and dug into his pocket, quickly producing the handful of bills he kept in there for emergencies. He licked his finger with a sandpaper tongue, then counted through it and handed it over. “It’s not much, but it should get you a couple of days in a motel.”
“But—”
“Actually, make that a hotel,” he said, remembering that morning with worry.
“I can’t take this.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want to stick around. I want to help you.”
Mason shook his head. The last time he had let a strong-willed girl follow him into danger, he’d lost one of the people he loved the most. He wasn’t prepared to let that happen all over again. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, but this isn’t the time to start repaying favors. Anyway, if you really want to help, you can do so by taking the money.”
Kylie rolled her eyes, then looked down at it. She made a show of her heavy exhalation, using it to express her displeasure. After a few seconds of letting him see how fed up she was, she gently pushed his hand back toward him. “I’ll think about it, okay? But if we go anywhere, we’ll do it with our own money.”
“Why are you so stubborn?”
“Why are you?”
Before he got the chance to answer, something else came out of nowhere to make his day even worse. At first, he only scrunched up his face as he felt the violent buzz of the cell phone in his pocket. Then he stared at the name on the screen, mild concern wriggling through to his already unstable heart. When he heard the mortified urgency in Evie’s voice, his whole body turned into an ice-cold lump of stone, leaving him unable to move.
“Mason?” she said. “Drop what you’re doing and come home. Right now.”