Betting on You by Jessie Evans Page A

embarrassing moments than live without you in my life.”
    “I love you,” Mason said, not caring if this wasn’t the perfect, romantic moment. It was the truth, and right now he didn’t think he could love her more.
    “I…I love you, too,” Lark said, with a nervous rush of breath.
    “Scary?” Mason asked.
    She nodded. “Yeah, but good. And true. No sense pretending it’s not.”
    “I don’t want you to pretend it’s not,” he said, finding a path through the waffle plate and grits bowl to take her hand again. “And as soon as I can afford it, I will get you that blinding engagement ring.”
    Lark’s eyes went wide.
    “Too soon?” Mason asked, cursing himself. “Too scary?”
    “Maybe. A little,” Lark said, pulling her hand gently away. “Let’s take things slow for a while, okay? Just being with you, being happy together…it’s enough to process right now, you know?”
    Mason nodded. “Sorry.”
    “You don’t have to be sorry,” Lark said.
    “No, I do. I don’t want to mess this up, and—”
    “Relax, Mason,” Lark said with a laugh. “There’s only one way you can mess this up and we both know you’re not going to do anything like that again. Now hurry up and grab some eggs before they get cold.”
    “Nothing worse than cold eggs,” he said with a grin.
    “Unless it’s cold grits. Better grab some of them, too, before they turn to concrete.”
    And just like that, their perfect morning was perfect once more. Because they were Lark and Mason again, and Lark and Mason didn’t let the little things get them down. Never had, never would.
    They tucked into their breakfast with their usual abandon, then took a long walk around downtown to help their food digest, window-shopping and discussing how they wanted to spend the day. They decided to take the boat out again and head over to the state park with the island in the middle of the lake. It had hiking trails and picnic tables and they could spend the entire afternoon outside enjoying the perfect weather. They stopped inside the bookstore to pick out something for Lark to read on the boat ride, and the sub shop to grab sandwiches, before getting back in Mason’s car and heading over to his friend, Nash’s, house to fetch the boat.
    On the way to Nash’s, Mason found a plan beginning to take shape.
    “Do you think I could invite Nash over for flank steak tonight?” Mason asked. “I got the feeling he was kind of lonely the other day when I dropped off the boat. His girlfriend moved out not too long ago.”
    “Nash…” Lark chewed on her lip for a minute. “Why is that name familiar? He wasn’t one of your old basketball friends.”
    “No, Nash and I worked construction together. I might have mentioned him.”
    “Maybe,” Lark said in a noncommittal tone.
    “He left Summerville to go to police academy in Atlanta and worked in a precinct there for awhile, but he’s been back here for a few years,” Mason said, turning onto Nash’s street before adding casually. “I think he’s around Aria’s age. Maybe a year of two older?”
    Lark hummed beneath her breath. “Ahhh. I see.”
    “See what?” Mason asked.
    “Don’t play innocent,” Lark said, with a soft laugh. “I think it’s a great idea. Give her something to distract her from trying to prove that our second chance is made of fail.”
    “She thinks our second chance is made of fail?” Mason asked, disappointed though he knew Aria wasn’t a fan. “Complete fail?”
    Lark rested a hand on his shoulder. “Right now, she thinks all relationships are made of fail. She hasn’t looked sideways at a man in five months, and that’s got to be some kind of record for Aria. When we were younger, she was always the social butterfly out of the three of us. She had a different boyfriend every semester.” Lark laughed again. “It got to the point that there were so many I couldn’t keep their names straight. I just started calling every guy who called