Chapter Forty-Four

Mason

Before this moment, I really had no idea what they meant when they talked about having the air “knocked out of you.” But I do now. And it hurts. Like a lot. I’m frozen in place, splayed with my arms and legs out to the sides. But I seem to be alive, and that’s a good thing. I can breathe in and out, though it feels like I’m trying to pull a pebble through a straw. My chest is tight, and it’s hard to get in a full breath of oxygen.

Did I break my back? My spine? I wiggle my fingers and toes. Okay, so, not paralyzed. I can see. I can hear. I can—

“Mason! Oh my God! Mason!”

It’s Walker. Crap. Maybe I am dead. Or unconscious and dreaming, at least.

“Mason! Can you hear me? Mason!”

But then she’s there, above me, peering down from what seems to be a great distance.

“W-Walker?” I scratch out.

“Oh, thank God! You’re alive! Don’t move. I’ve called the ambulance. Do. Not. Move. Okay? Please?”

“Where am I?”

“You’re outside the pub. You fell…”

It starts to come back to me. Stupid freaking Richard Gere. He never gives you a backup plan in case the building you’re trying to scale doesn’t happen to have a fire escape. I don’t think even he could have maneuvered the stupid drainpipe outside of O’Halloran’s Pub.

“Ugh, I hate you!”

“What? Oh no…please…I’m so sorry, Mason,” Walker is sobbing above me. I actually feel a few of her tears fall and splash on my face.

“No, Walker, not you. I don’t hate you. I hate Richard Gere.”

She stops sobbing long enough to look at me, perplexed.

“Richard…Gere? Jeez, did you hit your head? Maybe you have a concussion…”

“No, I just… He doesn’t tell you…” I stop and sigh, which turns out to be an incredibly painful experience.

Before I can stumble through an explanation, she’s climbing over the ledge and dropping down next to me with nothing more than a puff of air. How’d she do that? She must have been at least five feet above me… Maybe I am concussed. But I’m not about to complain, because she’s brushing the hair off my forehead and holding my hand, all the while crying.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers over and over again.

“Walker…”

“You could have died! And it would’ve been my fault. I should have just let you come up…”

I muster every last bit of energy I can in my attempt to amass some volume.

“Walker, stop it! Please!”

She nods and starts to wipe her damp face with the back of her hand.

“I’m just…you scared me…”

I can hear the ambulance siren now. I don’t have much time to pull this off. If I haven’t mucked it all up already.

“Walker, I love you. Please don’t leave me. Please…”

She’s crying again, harder this time. Crap, this is so not going down the way I’d planned. Not that I really had a plan… Suddenly I realize she’s smiling through the tears.

She’s smiling.

That’s good, right?

“Walker, do you love me?” I ask so softly that I’m not sure she can hear me above the wailing sirens that are drawing closer and louder every second.

She’s nodding.

That’s really good, right?

“Can you… would you please say it? Like out loud?”

She takes my hand and presses it to her wet cheek.

“I do. I love you, Mason. I’ve missed you so much. I’m sorry, I was so stupid. And so stubborn…”

I can feel the big, goofy smile that fills my face.

“That’s good,” I murmur. “That’s really good, Walker…”

“Anyone here?” someone yells from somewhere close by.

“In here!” Walker yells upward. “In the dumpster!”

The dumpster? I fell into the…dumpster? Well, that explains why I didn’t get my eggs scrambled on the way down. Still, I didn’t exactly land in a pillow factory, either. A head pops over the edge of the dumpster and a guy not much older than me peers down at us curiously.

“Walker? What happened?”

“Oh, Dale! My…my boyfriend was…”

I don’t know exactly what she tells him, because I can’t hear anything else after the words “my boyfriend.” I see her lips moving and I feel her hand wrapped around mine. But it’s as if the rest of the world has ceased to exist.

It’s only the two of us in this dumpster, in this town, in this world.

I’ve already started to draft our HEA in my mind.

And it’s going to be spectacular.