by Brook Wilder
A fire was glowing in the fireplace and I caught myself staring into it, just thinking about Mason and what had happened over the past few days. I barely noticed that I was no longer alone.
A throat cleared. I looked up and found Khloe standing in the room.
I blushed, wondering how long she’d been standing there, watching me gawking at the fire.
“Hello!” I stood up and she smiled.
“Please, remain seated,” she said.
I slowly sunk back down in the chair, feeling a little awkward at just sitting there with someone I barely knew. Then Khloe spoke up.
“A penny for your thoughts,” she said.
I turned my head to look at her.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
When she smiled, her eyes lit up. It really wasn’t hard to see why Mason enjoyed being around this woman. She was pleasant and friendly, and I soon realized how easy she was to talk to.
“You looked like you were deep in thought. If you want to talk, then just know I’m here.”
I smiled. It was nice to hear her say that.
“Oh, well,” I said, chuckling softly. “My thoughts aren’t worth a whole penny.”
“Nonsense, my dear,” Khloe said. “Everyone’s thoughts are worth at least that.”
I shook my head and turned away from her wandering stare. At that moment, I wasn’t sure that revealing my thoughts would be the wisest decision. But, as it turned out, I didn’t really need to. Khloe was pretty perceptive and had worked them out for herself.
“You know, Mason believed in love once,” she began.
I frowned, unaware of why she was telling me this.
“This has nothing to do with Mason,” I replied.
She tilted her head and gave me the I’m not buying that look.
“He was deeply in love with Dana,” she continued
“Dana?” I asked. I thought back to the tattoo and listened intently as she went on.
“Dana was the love of his life and Mason was happy, crazy about her, until…”
Her voice fell away.
Khloe had hooked my curiosity. I was eager to learn more about Dana, but I didn’t want to seem too pushy.
“Until what?” I whispered.
“Dana was killed, and it seemed like Mason’s ability to love died right along with her.”
My mouth opened slightly, but no words would come out. That was so tragic. My heart was breaking for him. But, now that I knew this much, I wanted to know even more.
“How did she die?” I asked.
Khloe opened her mouth to reply, but before she could continue Mason’s voice rang out.
“Khloe? What are you doing?”
His voice boomed, causing me to shoot a glance towards the door. There he stood, his face red with fury.
“Get out of this room!” he said through gritted teeth, glaring in Khloe’s direction.
Khloe glanced at me before doing as she had been told.
I stood to face him. My feelings toward him had softened even more since learning that he’d lost the love of his life. I couldn’t imagine having to go through something like that. I thought it hard that Josh had been fucking my sister. But to have had him die when we were at our happiest… that would have been unbearable.
His eyes darkened, and I looked nervously around, everywhere except at him.
“What was going on in here?” he asked.
“Khloe was just talking. It was small talk. No big deal.”
I tried to brush it off, but he did not want to hear it. So, I took the sympathetic approach.
“I’m sorry, Mason. That had to have been hard.”
The lump in my throat grew as I looked at him, wanting to reach out and touch him, kiss him, and tell him everything would be alright.
He shot me a look that read quite the opposite.
I swallowed and slowly moved towards him, thinking that, if he would just let me, I could comfort him. That was all I really wanted to do.
His eyes followed me. I reached up and touched his shoulder and, for a moment, I thought we could get close again, perhaps share another burning kiss. But that thought was lost when he grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away from him.
“I’m warning you, Cassie. You shouldn’t get too close to me. I’m no good for anyone.”
He dropped my hand. I couldn’t read the look on his face, but my heart was beating fast as we stared at one another.
Then another feeling hit me. As much as I wanted to soften to him, he was pushing me away, and that royally pissed me off.
“Fine… I get it,” I said.
He was being an asshole and I was kicking myself for believing my situation could be any more than what it was.
“Are you here to fuck me again?” I sneered. “I know that’s all you want!”
His jaw dropped, but he didn’t deny it. He grabbed my hand, a little harder than I anticipated, and pulled me after him. He said nothing, and I didn’t know where he was taking me. But I had no choice other than to follow him.
He took me down a hallway. He opened a door and pulled me in after him. It was a room, not much bigger than the one I was staying in. He let me go and I turned to him. I assumed it was the room he wanted to use to make good on my question.
Instead, he backed away from me.
“This will be your room from now on.”
He nodded once and moved to the door.
“Goodnight, Cassie,” he said.
He scooted out into the hallway and shut the door behind him. I looked around the room and sunk down into the bed.
It was still early, and I didn’t want to go to sleep. I couldn’t get the story and Mason out of my mind.
He had a past, like we all do. But there was something missing from his story, and I needed to find out what it was.
Chapter 5
Mason
“Dammit,” I mumbled as I headed down the stairs.
I hated this feeling that I had towards Cassie, because I knew it could only bring trouble. When I warned her to stay away from me, it was my way of protecting her. Yet, I knew she saw it as a way for me to play the asshole card. That wasn’t it at all. I just needed to get my own emotions in check.
I needed some fresh air and stepped outside to take some in. I met Diesel on the porch. He was deep in thought and I didn’t want to bother him, But he looked up, caught my eye and smiled.
“Hey man!” he greeted.
“Hey,” I mumbled.
I needed someone to talk to. But I didn’t know how to get my feelings out there, without sounding like a complete loser and jerk.
“What’s going on?” he laughed. “You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
He had no idea.
“Nothing really,” I said. I leaned against the banister on the porch and turned to him. “Just thinking in general.”
Diesel nodded. “So… You have woman problems, do you?”
I snickered and didn’t deny it. Was I so transparent?
“I don’t know what to do, man,” I started. “I wanted to cut these feelings off before they started, but somehow they just seemed to creep up on me. And, yes, I do have feelings for Cassie, and I don’t know how to shake them.”
Diesel scrunched up his nose as his forehead creased. Then he finally gave his two cents.
“Why do you have to shake them?” he asked.
I arched an eyebrow.
“Well, there’s a couple reasons. First off, this wasn’t supposed to end this way. I wasn’t supposed to fall for this girl. Hell, I wasn’t supposed to fall for any girl.”
I felt a heaviness in my chest, and the thoughts that were causing it were of Dana. It had killed me to lose her like that, and I didn’t want to have to risk going through that again.
“I’m terrified of getting too close to another woman because of what I went through with Dana. I don’t want to run the risk of losing her like I did Dana. So, it’s really just best this way.”
>
“But sometimes love is worth the risk. Don’t you believe that?” he asked, surprising me, because Diesel was normally all about a quick fuck and asking no questions.
“Man, I don’t know what to believe. But I can tell you this. I didn’t anticipate feeling this way about her. She seems to have this way of making me survey every situation. She’s beautiful. She’s feisty. There’s something inside her that’s really special. I just don’t know that this love is really worth the risk.”
“How does she feel about you?” Diesel asked.
I had to admit that, at times, she seemed open to the idea. When we kissed, there was this raw tension between us that made everything better. In those little moments, I believed she was open to seeing what could happen between us. Then, all of a sudden, as if someone had thrown a switch, it would be over.
Diesel listened to me. He made no sign of judging me. He just heard me out and waited until I’d finished giving my spiel before he talked.
“Is it over, as you say, because you start pushing her away?” he asked.
I frowned. That really hadn’t occurred to me, but now it seemed like that was a possibility.
I shrugged. “Perhaps.”
Diesel chuckled.
“Then maybe you need to consider what it is you really want, and then just stop thinking about things so much. It would be easier on everyone.”
He got up from the bench and walked over to me. He raised an eyebrow as he spoke his words of wisdom.
“Don’t push her away just because you think you’re protecting yourself. It won’t end well.”
He stepped back with a sheepish grin.
“Now, I’m going to go in and fuck one of Khloe’s girls. So don’t bother wondering where I am.”
He winked and turned away, leaving me standing there alone.
Or, at least, I thought I was alone.
I had this feeling there was someone else watching. I turned and saw Cassie. She was staring at me, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that she had been listening.
How much had she heard? I wasn’t sure. But the only thing I could do was pretend it hadn’t happened and move on.
This was a foolish game I was playing, and I wasn’t sure how long I could continue playing it.
Chapter 6
Cassie
The rest of the night, into the next day, I kept thinking about what I had heard on the porch.
I had definitely heard him say he was falling for me. There was no doubt about it. Yet, when he had pushed past me without saying anything more than, You shouldn’t have heard that, and I thought you were asleep, I questioned whether I’d been hearing things. The look he had given me, though, told me I’d heard correctly, and his subsequently behavior had been all just blow.
I sat on my bed, my chest feeling like something was holding it down. I just wanted him to open up to me. If he truly believed what he’d said to Diesel, then I didn’t have to argue myself out of falling for him.
There was a knock and I leaped at the thought that it could be Mason. I got up from the bed and hurried to the door, throwing it open, ready to tell him that I felt the same way too. Only it wasn’t Mason at my door. It was Khloe.
“May I come in?” she asked.
I nodded and let her past, then half-shut the door before turning to her.
“I’m sorry about earlier. I hope Mason wasn’t too angry with you.”
She brushed off my words.
“It’s fine. He’ll get over it.” She looked around my new room. “Just wanted to see how everything is going in here. Do you need anything?”
I shook my head. “Everything’s fine. Thanks!”
I stood there for a while, wondering how I could possibly approach the subject of Dana again. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, But I wondered if she would willingly start talking about it again, especially after Mason had abruptly interrupted us.
“So, I don’t mean to pry, but you were saying that Dana had been killed, and I can’t help but wonder how?”
Khloe nodded. She didn’t seem all that concerned about continuing the conversation. In fact, I wondered if maybe that was why she had come to see me to begin with. Maybe she was using the room as an excuse.
“She was tortured to death.”
My mouth hung open as the words came out of her.
“Tortured?” I asked.
Too many thoughts ran through my mind for me to take in what she was actually saying.
“Mason was forced to watch,” she continued, “and that honestly took a huge toll on him, as a person and, most importantly, as a man. He felt helpless, like there was nothing he could do about it.”
“Wow!” I whispered. “How awful!”
Khloe nodded sadly. We stood in silence for a moment, each of us lost in her own thoughts.
“You have to swear that you won’t tell him I told you the rest of the story.”
I promised, but I was feeling all emotional and couldn’t think about anything else.
Khloe said goodbye and left the room, leaving me to ponder over the effects such an experience would have had on Mason. In that moment, I would have thrown caution to the wind and gone after what I wanted, but I still felt hesitant.
Throughout the rest of the day, I would occasionally catch Mason talking to one of the men. He would glance my way, but each time I turned away from him. If he wanted me like he’d told Diesel he did, then it was up to him to make the move. That was my opinion anyway. I went on with the rest of the day, feeling much the same way.
That night, as I lay in bed, I wound up tossing and turning. I wanted to be there for Mason and to show him I wasn’t going to be just another notch on the bedpost to him. But it wasn’t my place to tell him that. I didn’t know anything about his relationship with Dana. They had obviously been in love, but that was all I knew. I just needed to bide my time and see if something of that stature could come about for us.
I was tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, until I eventually passed out from sheer exhaustion. The minute the dream started, it felt so real.
I was bound to a chair, unable to move. My arms were shackled down. My mouth was gagged, and three men stood before me. As I looked around, I spotted Mason standing there, just watching. Worry was etched on his face. I opened my mouth to try to scream and tell him I would be fine, but the gag pulled tighter, choking me. I turned to the other men and watched in horror as they each reached for a long strap. They had evil in their eyes and I couldn’t bear to watch them. They lifted their straps and began hitting me repeatedly. Tears sprang my eyes as I felt the raw burning sensation of leather biting my flesh. Please don’t! I silently begged. But the beating continued. One man grabbed a hold of my hair and pulled my head back, while they continued to thrash me. I was sobbing and just wishing for it to stop.
When the whipping did stop, I opened my eyes and turned my head to Mason. He was looking helpless, but his gaze remained fixed on me. The men dropped their straps and one of them grabbed a steel spike. My eyes widened in horror as he moved closer to me. Without a second’s hesitation, he ran the spike along my leg. I jerked and bucked against my binding as a strong piercing sensation ran beneath my skin. He grazed the spike over my legs, one at a time, each time pressing down a little harder until it drew blood. My legs shook beneath the cold metal’s touch and I could only watch…
Then, in horror, I saw another man with a blow torch. He ignited it and its flame bloomed. He walked over to me, a grin on his face. I cried and pleaded with him not to do it, but he couldn’t hear me because of the gag and, even if he could, he wouldn’t have stopped. He ran the torch up and down my body, burning my flesh as I screamed and wept. I was destined to die and I released a scream so powerful that it ripped my throat.
I sat bolt upright in bed, my mind still racing with terror. Then I heard his voice out on the hallway.
“Cassie? Cassie?”
I had locked my door, but Mason kicked it in.
> I crumpled up in bed, tears streaming down my face. Mason flew to my side.
“What’s wrong?”
He sat down on my bed. I flung myself into his arms and buried my face in his broad chest. I felt safe there.
I gradually began to calm down, but the tears still flowed. It had been so real. I could still feel the spike as it tore through my flesh, and the fire sear my breasts and stomach.
