Page 100 of Off Plan

“And this explains why you don’t plan for the future at all, huh?”

I sighed wearily. “Yes, Mason! Every time I put an appointment on the calendar, my deep, psychological man pain overwhelms me. Every time the dentist sends an appointment reminder, I take to my bed for a week—” I broke off with a laugh as Mason jabbed his fingers in my ribs.

“I’m being serious, Fenn!”

“I know. But it’snotthat serious or that… conscious. I just don’t see the benefit of planning wheneverythingin life gets fucked around anyway. What’s that expression? ‘Man plans, God laughs?’ All good things end? Why put your energy into something that might never be?”

Outside, thunderboomedand Mason’s eyes went unfocused for a second before he refocused on me.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You wanna tell me why you’re so scared of storms?”

“Uh,no. We’ve already coveredmypast psychological trauma, Fenn. Today’s aboutyourman pain, m’kay?”

“Have we, though?” I demanded. I sat up, taking him with me, forcing him to straddle my lap. “I think it’s your turn. I shared a truth…”

“Oh, we’re playing truth or dare again?”

“No, baby. On the first day we met, you told me this is how friendship works, remember?Ishare something,youshare something…”

Mason laughed.

“Besides, haven’t we gotten past the point where we have to dare each other?”

Chapter Sixteen

Mason

Yeah.Yeah, we were definitely past that point.

For all that I’d studied the human body for years, the way the human brain worked was still a total mystery to me. Sometimes I couldn’t stop myself from overthinking the dumbest shit, and other times, like right that minute, Iknewsomething with 100 percent certainty, and no way of explaining how I knew, since I’d never experienced it before.

I was in love with Fenn Reardon.

It was a hot coal in the center of my chest that I could hold without burning, a light that radiated outward and made me look at everything and everyone around me with a little more joy and a little more empathy… except for a bunch of assholes in Texas I would happily maim on sight.

This wasnotan emotion I’d ever felt for Victoria, nor for anyone else. It was nothing like the way I felt for my family or for Toby. And I didn’t believe for a second that it meant I was guaranteed a happy ending or anything like that, because this was not one of those cheesy TV movies Constantine liked to watch, and because, from what I’d seen, love wasn’t like a life preserver that kept you from drowning, anyway. It was more like a reason you kept swimming long after any sane person would have given up.

“Mason?” His fingers ghosted up my back. “You gonna tell me?”

“Nah. It’s a really dumb story,” I croaked.

He frowned in concern, and I knew it was because I was all choked up over my fuckinglurverevelations whilehethought I was suffering through some horrible memory.Figured.

“No, seriously. It’s a stupid story,” I repeated. “In a whole line of stupid stories about my childhood. Not any worse than any others, I swear.”

When his jaw set like he wasn’t going to be appeased, I sighed and relented. “My grandmother had a root cellar on her property where she stored vegetables. Sorta like Rafe’s office bunker, except the floor was dirt, not cement, and the door was wood, and there was nothing climate-controlled. It was cold in there and full of spiders, so we all sort of avoided it, but once when I was seven, I played hide-and-seek with my sisters and some of the kids staying with us, and I hid there.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “I thought it would be fine, since the door wasn’t really fitted well, and there was plenty of light coming through. But then someone—I never figured out who—thought it would be really funny to lock me in, and it took flipping forever for them to find me, so I ended up spending the night there.”

“No one noticed you were gone?”

“Ah, nope. Everyone figured I was with someone else. And it wasn’t like we had mealtimes or bedtimes, people just did what they did. No rules at all. And then itrained, just to make the story sadder, and the floor got all muddy. Oh, and I was forced to eat jars of peaches for dinner. Like, five jars all to myself.” I grinned. “I was scared to death at the time, but now it just pisses me off that I have this reaction I can’t figure out how to get rid of.”

“Why does this not surprise me?”

“I feel like it’s getting better recently, though!” I defended. “Accidental exposure therapy.”And also possibly because I’d spent many nights sleeping next to Fenn.