Boarlander Beast Boar (Boarlander Bears #4)(14)

Are you okay? How long had it been since anyone asked her that? “How long have you been here?”

Mason looked uncomfortable and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I heard your phone conversation, both sides. I didn’t mean to. I knocked, but you didn’t answer, so I came in and waited for you to hang up.”

“I didn’t hear you knock, and is that how a trailer park works? People just barge in whether you want them to or not?”

“Pretty much.” Mason relaxed against the headboard and clasped his hands over his stomach, crossed his ankles. His boots were hanging off the bed, he was that tall. “What are you doing in ten-ten? I thought you didn’t want any of the magic on you.” Was that a spark of humor in his eyes?

“Yeah, well, have you seen the empty trailer? Clinton has been using it as a workout room slash woodshop slash karate studio. The place has been destroyed by Kung Fu Clinton. There was zero room for me to work there, much less live.”

Mason’s voice softened. “Why didn’t you move into my trailer?”

Beck rolled over on her side to face him and curled her knees up to her chest. She wiped her damp cheeks on the sleeve of her pale pink hoodie and sniffed. “It just didn’t feel right. That’s your place. I went inside, but it still looks like you never left.”

With a slight frown, Mason asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, there are even rinsed dishes still left in the sink, the bed is still unmade, and someone’s been feeding your mouse. It even smells like you. And Bash looked gutted when I was considering it. I don’t think they’ve given up on you coming back. Ten-ten is fine if…”

“If what?”

“If there is a chance that you’ll move back here someday.”

Mason inhaled deeply and stared at the window unit AC on the opposite wall. “Your ex sounds like a dick.”

Beck snorted, and the stretch of her smile felt good. “I like dicks. In my head I call Robbie ‘McFartFace.’”

Mason chuckled a deep, resonating, sexy sound, and she watched his smile spread up to reach his eyes. God, she bet he was beautiful under that thick beard.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked softly.

With a single nod of his chin, he tightened his arms over his chest and murmured, “Sure.”

“I was kind of scared I would never see you again. And I know that sounds stupid because we barely know each other, but you were the first one here to talk to me, and I feel weird around the others, butting in and ordering them about. Plus, eating lunch with you by the river the other day was kind of amazing. It was nice to just talk easy with someone. Talking with you was…comfortable.”

Mason was quiet for a long time before he said, “I like that you say what you mean. No lies or half-truths. You just lay it out there.”

“Most people don’t like that about me.”

“I think it’s brave. I couldn’t do that.”

She laughed and shook her head. “You have me pegged wrong. I’m the biggest coward in the world.” She hadn’t even told Robbie she was a shifter until Ryder Changed for the first time, and now she was hiding from Mason, too. Typical Beck. So scared of what people thought about her that she couldn’t own what, and who, she was. No, the shifters of Damon’s mountains were brave. Mason was brave. She would spend her whole life hiding from the world.

“Your car will be ready in a week, and they knocked down the price by half.”

Confused by the turn in conversation, she propped up on her elbow and asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, they really should be called Rip-Off’s Auto Repair because they were squeezing you big-time. That * mechanic would’ve dragged it on for another month, too.”

She sat up, stunned that someone had done something nice for her. Something that actually helped her. “You took care of it?”

“Yeah, I tracked down the shop yesterday. I didn’t know you lived in Douglas.”

“You’re surprised I’m small town?”

“Hell, yeah. From your fancy power pants, I pegged you as a big city girl, come down from your high rise to free the shifters.”

“Ha! No, but I did come down from my second floor apartment a few hours away to try and help. This is my first experience ever in a trailer park.”

“Exciting, isn’t it?”

“Very. Did you know there are two mice in here that prefer jalape?o potato chips to the healthy mouse food I’ve been trying to feed them? I think they are addicted, and it makes me like them more because jalape?o potato chips are friggin’ delicious.”

Mason’s grin grew bigger. “I did know about Nards and Nipple’s love of junk food.”

“And did you also know that Clinton might be a bona fide psychopath? I caught him ripping a rosebush out of my landscaping in the middle of the night, and he tried to convince me it was all a dream. And then he flipped me off and went back to his trailer. And this morning when I woke up to have my coffee on the porch, he climbed onto the roof of his trailer and pissed right off the front into his yard. And he smiled at me as he did it.”

Mason laughed and rested a hand behind his head, relaxing bit by bit beside her. “I definitely know he’s a psychopath. He’ll grow on you, though.”