That’s what I’ve been telling myself all day ever since I left Mr. Walker’s office. I don’t have time for fooling around and I’m not ready for anything serious. And that’s what this has become; it’s staring me right in the eyes.
This is serious. It’s too serious. I’m suffocating and what’s worse is that the minute I’m with Mason, the very second that he looks at me just right, says all the right things, the moment his lips press against mine and his skin touches mine, I’m done for.
I’m head over heels for Mason. I didn’t even hesitate when he told me to bend over my dining room table for him. I didn’t hesitate in the parking garage either. He’s had me from the very night we met.
There’s something about him that makes me weak, and I’m so very tired of being weak.
I can’t do this. I need to end it. Just the very thought ... it hurts.
“I—” I start to give him the honest truth, my whole truth. I don’t know how to be okay on my own and that’s my priority right now. That’s the bottom line. Pressing my back against the smooth leather and glancing at him in the driver’s seat, the words are right there on the tip of my tongue. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know what’s real and where I stand with anything, and I need space to figure it all out, but my phone goes off in my purse, the ringtone loud and obnoxious.
I let out a frustrated sigh, pulling it out and just missing a call from my mother. I almost call her back, but then I see the text messages. Dozens of them.
I hit the first one from Kat.
The last message makes me sick to my stomach. It’s going to be okay.
What’s going to be okay? What now? I scroll up to read the messages starting from the top.
OMG I just saw, are you okay?
Minutes later:
I can’t believe he did that to you!
Everything is all right, we’re going to get it taken down.
A chill slips like ice down my skin.
I don’t have to ask her what she’s talking about. Maddie sent me a link to the online article. It’s already been taken down, but she screenshotted it.
My heart sinks as I skim it, but my eyes keep flickering to the picture. It shows me and Jace, and right next to it, Jace and some beautiful woman. It’s obvious what the article was about and it makes me sick. My throat goes dry and tears prick my eyes.
Really? They posted this now? I think back to who I told and who would have heard about the apartment. It’s up for sale as of 4:00 p.m. today, so that was only five hours for someone to dig up the dirt. I can barely breathe.
“Jules?” Mason’s voice doesn’t stop me from reading. It’s not the worst thing that’s been said about me but it’s not kind, and it’s not true. I wasn’t turning a blind eye. There’s a difference. I truly didn’t know.
My anger only increases when I see what they’re saying about me now. I’m not running around town. I’m not spreading my legs … I can’t even finish this article. The last paragraph I read is:
Now that her husband is gone, she’s letting loose but choosing the same kind of man. The socialite doesn’t seem to care about her reputation anymore.
Whoever gave the details to the Daily Word knows that I’m seeing Mason but they don’t know how often, since they claim he cheated on me two nights ago. I’ve been with him every single night for weeks now.
Every insecurity in me is replaced by raw rage.
Heat dances along my skin. I’m not this person that they’re painting me to be. I’m on the edge of breaking into a million pieces. I told Mason this is why I didn’t want us to be public. I knew something like this would happen. I knew it!
Is that a stage of grief? Wanting to murder everyone?
I just want to be left alone.
I bite the inside of my cheek and place the phone in my lap as Mason’s hand lands on my thigh.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his eyes darting from me to the road.
“Take me home,” I say. I don’t bother to answer his question and and I lick my dry lips. My heart hurts too much.
“What’s wrong?” This time his voice is harder. The one he uses right before he turns me into a damn rag doll for his will and then magically fixes everything.
I’m done listening to men and I’m done rolling over for them.
“What’s wrong is that this isn’t working for me anymore,” I finally tell him, although I don’t know how, in an even tone that splits my heart right down the center. Guilt consumes the anger immediately. It slices through every emotion with the sharpest knife, the cut clean and quick, but the blood is pouring out and I know it’s not going to stop anytime soon.
I lean my head back against the headrest. “I want to go home.”
Mason’s quiet although his pissed-off expression reads loud and clear as he pushes down his turn signal.
The silence stretches between us and this awkward, horrific dread makes me squirm. I find myself going back to the screenshots. What’s really and truly messed up is that I feel safe and happy with Mason. If it were a different time, I could easily fall for him. I am easily falling for him. It’s as if I’m tumbling down a well in slow motion, giving me enough time as I fall to look up and admire the stonework before crashing to the black bottom of the abyss.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I say, reaffirming myself and him. “I need to be on my own.”
He doesn’t look at me and a long moment passes before he says anything at all. Mason’s voice is low when he asks, “Because of an article?” He grips the leather steering wheel until his knuckles are white. “I’ll take care of it,” he says. I’m sure he could fix all my problems. He’s so good at that.
But I need to fix myself. I need to be whole before I can give myself so completely to someone.
“It’s not the article.” The words drop one by one and my eyes burn.
“Is it your prick of a former husband?” he asks with disgust so apparent, I hate him in this moment. I confided in him about my deceased husband and yes, he may have hurt me, cheated on me and lied to me, but that’s not for Mason to judge. I still don’t even know how to feel about it all. How dare he speak about him like that?
“That’s exactly why this needs to stop.” My heart rages in my chest, hating me for being so raw, but I can’t stop.
“I’m not okay,” I say, feeling a burn in my eyes dampened from tears, but I don’t care, let them fall. Let everyone see and call me whatever they want. “I haven’t been okay and I’ve been running from it. You can’t just fix me. I can’t fall into another man’s arms and forget about everything I’m going through.”
With shaking hands, I almost throw my phone when it pings again. The absurdity of my entire world crashing down around me feels too overwhelming. I’m too hot, too angry, too miserable.
“I just want to go home.” There’s a finality in the statement and it feels like razors at the back of my throat.
“Stop,” Mason commands me as he slows down at a crosswalk. “Just take it easy.” His entire demeanor changes to something placating, as if he’s talking to a wounded animal. It only makes me angrier.
“No, I won’t stop. What do you want from me, Mason?”
A part of me is hoping he really is my knight in shining armor. Part of me wants to be weak. I want him to solve all my problems and just crawl into his bed every night, moving on to a new life and leaving the old one in shattered pieces behind me.
I know it’s wrong. It’s giving in and denying my responsibilities. But God, I want it. My heart is suffocating, hoping for him to say just the right things to convince me to be his, to forget everything else. Just like he has from the first night I met him. “What is it that you want from me?” My voice shakes.
“Jules.” He says my name and looks at me with a gaze I don’t understand.
“Just tell me right now, what do you want?” I swallow the spikes growing in my throat, but they don’t move. They only grow larger and sharper and make the words scrape as th
ey leave me. “I can’t give myself to you right now unless—”
“Unless what?” Mason asks so quickly he cuts me off. His reaction makes the pain that much deeper because I don’t have an answer.
I can’t give myself to him unless this is forever. Unless I can trust him but right now I can’t trust anyone. The harsh reality is what truly does me in. I don’t trust anyone anymore. I don’t want to love anyone anymore.
I can’t breathe as I take off my seat belt. My townhome is only a few blocks away. My shelter. My sanctuary and my grave. My hands shake as the seat belt pulls back, hissing and hating me just as much as I hate myself.
“I can’t,” I say. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
I unlock the door and push it open. A car drives by close, but I shut the door quickly, avoiding Mason’s reach for me. His fingers brush against my back as I get out.
“Jules!” Mason calls after me. I cross the lane, the other driver beeping and holding down his horn. Go ahead, hate me too.
The sound of a door opening alerts me to the fact that Mason is out of his car, leaving it parked in the middle of the road and already holding up traffic. “Jules!” he screams but I keep running. The horns don’t stop and it’s not lost on me that what I did was wrong.
I rush past the onlookers and ignore the dirty looks and stares. My shoulders rise with a heavy breath. I need to go home. Tears stream down my face. I need to take care of myself and figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life.
Tires screech and make my head throb as Mason drives alongside me now, slow and causing more traffic to build up.
I ignore Mason as I whip open the iron gate. I don’t stop until I’m safe inside my house, my back to the hard door, my body shaking and my heart hammering.
I hate myself for running from Mason.
But this is reckless distraction.
I cover my mouth as another sob leaves me, slowly falling to my knees on the floor.
He’s a good man and he deserves someone better than me.
Someone who doesn’t have all these problems.
Someone who can fall for him freely and be with him openly.
I sag against the door, letting it all out, still hoping he’ll come bang on the door and plead with me to explain. I can’t be this person, though. It’s better that he doesn’t.
It’s the way we both knew it would end. I envisioned it would be him leaving me though, not the other way around. I take a shuddering breath, feeling exactly how I should, like shit. Not that any of it matters.
It was never meant to be. That’s all there is to it.
Mason
Seventeen. I called her seventeen fucking times. It hurts worse knowing she left me for something other than the one reason she should. Knowing that I couldn’t keep her on my own. I held on too tight. It’s my own fucking mistake.
But I saw what I could do for her.
What I could do to her.
And that made me feel … something other than this. This fucking hate that I have brewing inside of me.
What the hell did I expect? I expected to keep her. For her to learn to love me. For that to cancel out what I’d done.
The ice clinks in my glass as I grab a bottle of Macallan single malt.
No reasoning or any amount of logic justifies why I feel betrayed and alone. Not a damn explanation can leave me feeling as though this is something that doesn’t need to be mended. The liquor sloshes in the bottle as I read the label, my fingers playing with the seal.
My father gave me this bottle as a gift when I started the company with Liam. When I told him I was going into business for myself, but still doing what I loved. I felt so much pride that day. My breathing quickens and my grip on the bottle tightens.
Relax. I grit my teeth, feeling an uneasy tightness settle through my body.
Jules was a sweet distraction; how fucking ironic. She pulled me away from reality. She made me feel like I had time. Like I had a choice.
I toss the seal onto my sideboard buffet, opening the bottle and not bothering to appreciate the rich scent before pouring it into the glass.
If my father were here, he’d give me hell for drinking it over ice.
“But that bastard’s not here,” I sneer under my breath. “No one is.” The last thought leaves my chest feeling hollow. I take a long drink of the whisky that flows so easily. Burning and traveling through my chest, down deeper and stirring in the pit of my stomach. My head still tipped back I take another and finish the damn thing, the ice frigid against my lips. I slam the glass down a little harder than I should and let the liquor hit me.
It takes too long and I find myself gazing straight ahead to the family portrait sitting on top of the buffet. This room, the dining room, is the only room in the whole place where there’s a picture of anyone.
The rest of the house is devoid of anything truly personal. But what do I really have that’s personal anyway? My lacrosse stick and all those fucking uniforms stayed at my parents’ where they belonged. I’m sure they were thrown away long ago.
I pour more of the whisky into the glass, feeling my breathing slow as my body sways and I remember the first day I walked in here.
I’d just gotten all new clothes, all new furniture, all new everything. This home was the start of the professional version of me. All that was in the cardboard box I was holding were a handful of old tee shirts and a few postcards from a friend of mine in Germany I’d met after I graduated high school and got my first job in construction. We’ve lost touch since then.
I take a sip, listening to the ice rattle against the glass. The whisky sits on my tongue and I press it against my teeth before swallowing. All the awards I’ve won are in my office. Framed and arranged just so on the wall.
My gaze drifts back to the portrait of the three of us. I’m standing between the two of them in it. I don’t look a damn thing like her, like my mother. I’m the spitting image of my father. Mom’s smile is soft, but her eyes are what sparkle. She was so expressive. Soft spoken, but she made what she said count.
She could make an entire room laugh by only speaking once the whole night. I let out a breath, looking at the firm hand my father has on my shoulder in the photograph.
He liked that about her. He told me once she was the perfect example of what a wife should be. That was before he caught her cheating.
I wonder if that man, the one she risked her marriage to sleep with, loved to hear her talk. I wonder if that’s why she did it. Because she had more to say than just a single sentence.
I down the whisky, dragging out the chair at the head of the table and taking a seat. I sag and let my head lean back against the crest rail of the antique chair.
This room is so dark. With black textured wallpaper on the longest wall and the other three painted a soft gray, I wanted it to feel masculine. I remember telling the designer that. I told her I wanted it to feel like me.
On the right, centered in the room and next to the dark mahogany buffet, is a long gas fireplace. It’s surrounded by a sleek marble hearth. More black. Even the light fixture in the room, a circular pendulum that holds the light inside, is black.
I huff a breath into the short glass and suck an ice cube into my mouth.
This is me.
A heart of fire that’s never lit. A dark past that only holds a single moment of time in significance.
I wonder if that bitch designer knew what she was doing.
I kick the leg of the antique chair next to me. It’s carved wood that’s been stained. The deep brown leather of the chairs has a worn look to it.
What’s ironic is how much I loved this room. I loved everything about it when I first laid eyes on it. The only addition I made was that fucking silver picture frame and then I filled that buffet with liquor.
Thank fuck I did that. I raise my glass even though it’s empty, save for ice. “To you, you fucking prick,” I toast the picture and take another ice cube into my mouth.
I crunch do
wn, wondering if the last three words were for my father or for me.
Pushing the glass across the slick table that I’ve never sat at for more than a drink or two, I pull out my cell phone from my back pocket.
I fucking want Jules.
She’s pure and sweet. Even if she overthinks every last detail, there’s so much about her that I want to keep. I really shouldn’t have her. I’ve already been given more than I deserve.
I can’t do this anymore.
The screen lights up as I hear her words in my head. She shouldn’t get to decide when it’s over. Not by herself and not like that. Not because of something so fucking unimportant.
We work together. We make each other happy. I’m tired of living this life with nothing to fight for. I want her back.
My phone rings in my hand, startling me and I drop it on the table. It vibrates, moving slightly as the ringtone goes off again.
Groaning and rubbing my eyes, I feel the heat of the drunken night start to take me in before answering the call.
“Hello?” I think my voice is even. I’m fairly certain it comes out strong.
“Mason, we need to talk.” I recognize Liam’s voice immediately.
I brace my elbow on the table and rest my head in my hand before pinching the bridge of my nose. We do need to talk; we need to have a long talk about how I can’t go through with this.
All the money is spent.
But I can’t keep pushing forward.
I need to return it all to my father and cut ties. I need to turn him in.
Every bit of breath in my lungs leaves me, making my body feel light and my stomach sick. We’re going to go fucking bankrupt, but I can’t be under his thumb any longer.
“We need that investment from your father’s firm.” A sad, pathetic laugh leaves me as I register what Liam’s said.
“We already have it.” I stagger to the buffet, placing the phone on speaker, leaving it on the dining room table as I pour another glass. The bottle’s already halfway gone. “We’ve already spent it,” I say loud and clear as I bring the amber liquor to my lips.
You Are My Reason (You Are Mine Book 1) Page 13
