Page 43 of Making It Burn

This was what love looked like when you stopped being afraid of it.

By the time I left, it was nearly ten.Caroline hugged me at the door—a genuine hug, warm and tight—and made me promise to come back soon.

“And bring someone next time,” she said with a wink.“Your father tells me you’ve been single too long.That can’t be good for you.”

“Caroline,” my father said, exasperated, but he was smiling.

“What?I’m just saying, a handsome young lawyer like Mason?He should be beating them off with a stick.”

I managed a laugh and escaped to my car before she could press further.

The drive home should have been quick—Salisbury to my apartment in the Fan was maybe twenty minutes.But I took the long way, winding through quiet residential streets, not ready to go back to my empty apartment yet.

My father was getting married.

My careful, controlled father had met someone who made him laugh, who challenged him to take risks, who made him want to be less careful.And he was happy.Really, genuinely happy in a way I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen before.

When’s the last time you did something that scared you?

I thought about Beau’s mouth on mine, his hands pulling me closer, the way he’d looked at me like I was the only person in the room.The way my body had come alive in his arms, like I’d been sleepwalking through my life and suddenly, finally woken up.

I thought about the way he’d said come home with me, and how badly I’d wanted to say yes.

Maybe Caroline was right.Maybe safe wasn’t the same as happy.Perhaps I’d spent so long controlling every aspect of my life that I’d forgotten what it felt like to just...feel.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled into a closed grocery store parking lot and grabbed my phone.

I opened my messages with Beau and started typing.

I’m sorry about last night.Running away was cowardly, and you deserved better than that.

I paused, my heart pounding.Then kept going.

Kissing you scared the hell out of me.Not because I didn’t want to—I did, more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.But because I don’t know how to do this.

My finger hovered over the send button.

But I can’t stop thinking about you.Can we talk?

I read it over three times, my chest tight, my hands shaking.

This was it.The moment.The scary choice that Caroline had talked about, the leap my father had taken when he’d met her.

I could see where this thing with Beau might go, consequences be damned.Or I could play it safe.I could delete this message, show up to work tomorrow and pretend last night never happened, focus on the case and my career and all the things I’d spent years building.

I thought about my father’s face when he looked at Caroline.The way he’d said she makes me want to be less careful, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I thought about Beau’s smile.The way kissing him had felt like coming home.

My thumb moved toward the send button.

And then I thought about the MediCorp case.

Carter and Patsy trusted us with their biggest merger.I was on a partnership track.What would happen if this thing with Beau imploded—and it would, wouldn’t it?We were too different, too combustible.It would be incredible for a while, and then it would burn out, and we’d still have to work together, still have to face each other across conference tables, still have to pretend we hadn’t destroyed something that mattered.

I deleted the message.

ChapterNine