Wasted (22 page)

“
Kevin said that?” she
asked, clearly appalled. “What an ass.”

“
Mason punched
him.”

“
Good.”

“
Not good,” I said,
disagreeing. “I didn’t want them to get in a fight on my
account.”

“
I’d kick Mason’s butt if
he stood by and let Kevin talk to you like that.”

“
I told Kevin I was in love
with Mason.”

“
Good thinking. Maybe
that’ll be enough to make him leave you alone.”

“
I wasn’t making it up,
Seren. I really am in love with Mason.”

Her jaw dropped open. “Did Mason know that
you meant it?”

I nodded. “Yeah, he knows, that’s why he’s
avoiding me.”

Obviously stunned, Seren didn’t respond.

I exhaled loudly. “I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know whether I should just follow his lead and steer clear
of him or whether I should try to talk to him again. He basically
told me that there was no future for us.”

“
Did he say
why?”

I shook my head.

“
I don’t know Mason as well
as you know him, but if you really like him, you should talk to him
again. What’s the worst thing that’ll happen?”

“
The worst thing? Remember
what happened when you told that new boy you liked him in sixth
grade?”

Seren laughed. “Yeah, I scared him so bad he
told everyone I had cooties.”

“
Exactly.”

“
So you’re afraid Mason
will tell everyone you have cooties?”

“
No. I’m afraid I’ll scare
him away.”

Seren leaned in and whispered, “I never told
you that he asked me to be his girlfriend on the playground the
next day.”

I smacked her lightly on the leg. “Why
didn’t you tell me?”

“
Because he told me that he
would break up with me if I told anyone.”

“
What’s your point?” I
asked, wondering how that fit in with my current predicament. “I
should tell Mason we can keep our relationship a
secret?”

She scoffed. “Of course not. My point is
that sometimes boys are afraid of girls, even when they want the
girls for themselves. You can’t figure out what’s scaring Mason if
you don’t talk to him.”

***

Two hours later, I went home, thoughts of
Mason eddying in my head. I knew that he was attracted to me,
although I had no idea if he felt as strongly about me as I did
about him.

When I pushed the front door open, I saw his
silhouette in the chair, a glass of whiskey in his hand.

“
Where have you been?” he
asked, his deep voice laced with melancholy.

“
At Seren’s.”

“
Damn, Lexi,” he said,
leaning forward and setting his glass on a coaster on the coffee
table. “You scared the hell out of me.” He rubbed his palms across
his face.

“
I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure
why I had scared him, but it hadn’t been my intention.

“
I was afraid you’d run
into Kevin again. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“
You called me?” I took my
phone out of my purse.

“
At least ten
times.”

“
I forgot to turn my ringer
back on after work.”

He downed the whiskey in one gulp and set
the empty glass on the coffee table. “I guess I’ll go to bed
now.”

“
You were waiting up for
me?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “I
couldn’t sleep until I knew you were okay.” He motioned toward me.
“Now I know.”

I set my purse down on the coffee table and
stopped in front of him. “Sorry if I worried you.”

Abruptly, he stood up and placed his palms
on my shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak, but then he shut it
and released me. As he turned and walked toward the hall, he called
over his shoulder, “Good night, Lex.”

“
Night.”

Watching him as he disappeared around the
corner, I stood motionless, fragments of things I wanted to say
flitting through my head. I thought of my conversation with Seren
earlier, and I wondered if Mason was afraid of something. Maybe it
had nothing to do with me. Maybe he was just one of those guys who
had some kind of commitment phobia.

Even though he’d been drinking, I could tell
from his movements he wasn’t drunk. Maybe now would be just as good
a time as any to talk to him.

I went after him, but as I turned the corner
toward the hall, I realized that he was already in his bedroom with
the door closed.

Unable to stop myself, I continued walking
until I stood outside his doorway, wondering if I should go through
with it.

Touched by his need to wait up for me, I
knocked on the door. “Mason?”

“
Come in.”

Turning the knob, I took a deep breath and
pushed the door open. “Could we talk for a minute?”

His back was to me as he stood near his bed
in his boxers. He reached up and ran his hands through his hair,
his soft exhalation barely audible. I knew he didn’t like to be
called pretty, but as I gazed at his body, bathed in the soft light
that spilled from the hallway, I couldn’t help but focus on how
beautiful he was to me. The lines of his physical beauty and his
inner beauty had overlapped, and my attraction to him was a
combination of his good looks and his sweet, protective nature, his
ability to make me smile, to make me happy.

In his current stance, his biceps bulged,
and as he lowered his arms to his sides, the muscles of his back
rippled into action. He turned, his eyes studying my face, although
I doubted he could see my expression with the light emanating from
behind me.

“
I don’t want to hurt
you.”

“
Then don’t send me away
for no reason.”

“
I have my
reasons.”

“
Like what?” I shifted my
feet. “Are you still in love with your ex-wife? Is that why you’re
still sending her money?”

He sank down onto the edge
of the bed, his forearms resting on his knees as he leaned forward.
“I
was
in love
with her, but life happened.”

“
What does that mean?” I
asked, holding my palms out in front of me in frustration. “Talk to
me, Mason.”

“
I don’t know what you want
me to say.”

“
What happened? Why did
y’all divorce?”

He buried his face in his hands.

Kneeling beside him, I pulled his hands
away. “If you really want me to walk away, I will, but you’re going
to have to tell me that you don’t want this, that you don’t want
me."

He took my hands in his and gave them a
reassuring squeeze. “When you didn’t come home, I thought I was
going to go crazy. I know I have no right to say this, but the
thought of Kevin touching you, even if it was something you wanted,
was driving me insane. Then I worried that he had stalked you, that
he might hurt you.

“
I just wanted to drown
myself in whiskey, but I couldn’t even drink it. I was afraid that
you might call, that you might need me, and I didn’t want to be
impaired. I stared at the glass for hours, but I couldn’t drink one
drop until I saw you come through that door.”

“
I didn’t realize that you
were worried, or I would’ve told you that I was with
Seren.”

He reached out and smoothed
a strand of hair from my face. He closed his eyes and gritted his
teeth. “You asked me if I was still in love with Rachel. She and
I’ve been through a lot together. While I do love her on some
level, I’m not
in
love with her.

“
I dated her my senior year
of high school, and it wasn’t long until our relationship grew
serious. She got pregnant.

“
Hell, even though I had no
idea what I was doing, I married her. We both wanted the baby, and
we told each other that we could make it work. And we did for a
while.”

“
You have a child?” I
asked, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned that important bit of
information before now.

“
Rachel had a rough
pregnancy, and our daughter was born prematurely.” The corners of
his mouth tilted up before he pressed his lips together and
frowned. He swallowed and took a deep breath. “Rachel insisted that
we name her Madison because the first two letters and the last
three letters spelled Mason. It was her way of naming our daughter
after me.

“
I could hold….” His voice
cracked, broken by a hurricane of emotions, and he cleared his
throat and started again. “She was so small, I could hold her in
the palm of my hand. I couldn’t believe that we had made this tiny,
precious baby. Her little fist wasn’t as big as the tip of my
finger.”

He struggled with his words, and his
overwhelming melancholy told me how this story ended. Unable to
hide his grief any longer, he squeezed the bridge of his nose as
his shoulders began to shake.

Rising up on my knees, I hugged him,
cradling him against my shoulder. He wrapped his arms around my
waist and squeezed me. Desperately wanting to ease his pain, I
hoped that he found a modicum of comfort in my presence. Having
never experienced anything that could compare to what he’d just
told me, I searched for the words that would diminish his anguish,
but in my heart, I knew there weren’t any. All I could do was let
him know that he wasn’t alone.

“
She was so beautiful,” he
whispered, his voice full of emotion. “I wanted to take her in my
arms and make everything okay.” A choked sob escaped him. “But I
couldn’t, Lexi. I couldn’t help her.”

The agony of his helplessness seeped to my
bones, and my heart ached for him. What could be worse than a
father unable to save his own child?

As I closed my eyes, tears slipped beneath
my lids. I could feel the hot trail they left in their wake as they
streamed along my cheeks.

He pulled back and looked at me, tears
dripping from his angular jawline. With the overpowering need to
ease his suffering, I lowered my lips to his. He tasted of whiskey,
and the slow, methodical way he moved his tongue made me feel like
he was drawing strength from me, like I was his refuge and he was
savoring the sanctuary of my embrace.

Mason had divulged another part of his
story, an excruciating chapter that made me feel privileged that he
had shared it with me.

I still didn’t know why he was sending his
ex-wife money, but I knew that the answer could wait.

Chapter
18

A Thief in the Night

Mason

I woke up with Lexi in my arms, her back
nestled against my chest, and it felt so damn good. She was wearing
one of my Tennessee Vols tees, her dark hair contrasting against
the deep orange.

Closing my eyes, I remembered how much she’d
scared the shit out of me last night. I’d had no idea whether Kevin
was obsessed enough to hurt her or whether he’d be able to coax her
into getting back with him. Either scenario pissed me off, and the
fact that she wasn’t answering her phone added to my anxiety.

Tightening my arm around her, I found myself
wanting to hold on to her. After my relationship with Rachel fell
apart, I’d intentionally kept my distance from women, not
physically but emotionally. I enjoyed a good romp with a woman as
much as the next guy, and I had no trouble finding women who were
looking for the same, nothing serious just a little fun.

But one touch from Lexi in a moment of
weakness was all it had taken for me to crave something more. She’d
pointed out early on that I was chasing meaningless relationships.
It wasn’t news to me, but it did make me examine my life. Was that
what I really wanted?

If it was, she wouldn’t have been able to
make me want to trade my empty life in for a chance at happiness
with her, to make me want things that I had given up on long ago,
things that she could give me, things that I wanted from her, not
anyone else.

Closing my eyes and
smelling the clean scent of her hair, I knew that this was one of
the things that I wanted, to be able to wake up with someone every
morning, someone who cared about me, who cared about what
I
needed, what
I
felt.

I hadn’t talked about my daughter with
anyone since Rachel and I had split. Madison had been a precious
gift, and her loss had made me doubt everything about myself.

Lexi stirred, turning over and burying her
face against my torso. “Good morning,” she whispered as she kissed
the center of my chest.

I ran my hand up her back and entwined my
fingers in her silky hair as I pressed my fingers against her scalp
and kissed the top of her head. “Morning.”

She tilted her head back, peering at me.
“Are you okay?”

“
Yes.” I thought about our
conversation in the wee hours of the early morning. “I didn’t mean
to burden you.”

She rose on her elbows, a look of disbelief
on her face. “Oh, no. It wasn’t a burden. I told you I wanted to
know everything about you. I’m just sorry that you had to go
through something so horrific.” She touched my face, her fingertips
rubbing against the stubble on my jaw. “I’m glad that you told me.”
Her voice was soft, caressing me like an angel beckoning me to walk
toward the light. I wanted the gentleness of her embrace, the
comfort of her soothing voice, the unrestricted love that I knew a
girl like her would offer. She would give all of herself to
someone, and whoever was on the receiving end would be damn lucky
to have her.