Page 45 of Mason
It’d been close to midnight when Bear and I finally got Duke down the stairs and settled in his room. Now, he’s propped up in his mammoth-size bed among the pillows because he said he had the spins when he laid flat. I told him that if he planted one foot on the floor, or even flat on the mattress, that it’d stop that bizarre effect, but he won’t listen to me.
I should know. I have experience with this. I wouldn’t ever say that my mother is an alcoholic, but there’d been a good number of times in my youth where she’d tie one on and leave me to deal with the aftermath. So. I’m well versed in drunk people, even if that drunk person isn’t usually me.
A one liner comes in from Bear, making my phone vibrate in my lap.
Do you?
Should I?
Do I hate him? I haven’t ever understood why Duke chose to lash out at me from the moment we officially met. If there’s any hate going on around here, I’m not the culprit. He’s proven that he’s perfectly capable of all sorts of asshole-ish behavior, though, that’s for damn sure. I sigh, holding a bag of ice in a towel to the right half of his face. Mason either has a very heavy hand or was fueled by so much anger, his hits were ridiculously brutal. Duke’s face is swollen badly, bruises already beginning to form. Finally, I murmur, “I don’t hate you, but I’d like you more if you quit calling me Stella. Now, please drink more of this water before you pass out.”
He eyes me through his drunken haze and takes the water bottle from me. He tips it up, gulping down almost the entire bottle in one go before handing it back to me. It’s as I’m setting it on the nightstand that he lifts his arm again, closing his hand around my wrist—the one that’s holding the ice to his face. “Why’d you let him do that?”
Even though it’s obvious he’s referring to tonight’s earlier events, it feels like a lifetime has passed since then, and his question, seemingly coming out of nowhere, catches me off guard. My hand jerks, and my gut instinct is to pull away, but he’s got me in a vice grip. Somehow, I doubt he’s holding on this tight to keep the ice on his face. I’d purposely not brought up anything that went on upstairs for just this reason. I draw in a breath, finding his blue eyes pinned on mine in a way that belies the fact that he’s drunk. I wet my lips, my gaze sliding over his features. He could easily grace the pages of a magazine. Too bad he’s never been anything but cruel to me. The prettiest faces hide some of the ugliest souls.
“Stella… talk to me,” he grunts out. His tone carries a mild note of exasperation and something else I can’t quite put my finger on.
“I don’t have an answer for you. Nor do I believe I owe you one. Why’d you pull him off me like that? You could have skipped over this entire mess. Minded your own business. Don’t pretend like you care about me.”
Several seconds tick by, and I figure that’s it. I’ve hit the nail on the head, and he doesn’t feel the need to respond. He exhales audibly. “Because I was worried he would hurt you,” he mumbles, his gaze fixating on my lips. “Because he has what I—” His eyes drift shut as the remainder of his words go unspoken.
I stare at him for several minutes after he falls asleep, torn as to whether I want him to finish what he was going to say or if it should remain buried.
Taking care not to wake him, I ease from the edge of the bed. After fetching another bottle of water to leave with him, I go back to my room, determined to get some sleep before I have to be up to get ready for class.
As I climb into bed, I hook my phone up to a charger, but realize there are a few texts from Bear that I’d missed.
Mason is out cold.
I’ll see you in the morning.
Text if anything comes up.
Oh, and Lennon—
I read you pretty well.
I have no regrets.
TWENTY-FIVE
LENNON
Waking up the next morning,I scramble from my bed after having hit snooze twice. I needed a few more minutes, but now I’m running late. My head is blissfully quiet for all of three seconds before it begins to fill with reminders of the craziness from last night. Usually, I’m a huge proponent of the idea that things look better in the light of day. This time around, though, I’m not so sure, and I definitely have some anxiety surrounding how I’m going to handle looking any of the guys in the eye this morning.
I blow out a breath, step into the bathroom, and look into the mirror over the sink. How do I even lookmyselfin the eye?
I hadn’t given a second thought to what the aftermath would be. I’d felt things in the moment and went with it. It might be a flaw in my personality. A glitch in my brain. There’s no taking any of it back, either.
I’d needed to be there for Mason in a way that I still don’t quite understand. I’d reached for Bear to calm my body and my mind. And I even set aside all the bullshit between Duke and me to stay with him when it was asked of me.
Now I’ll have to own up to everything I allowed to happen last night and figure out what it all means, and where we go from here. Not that it’s all on me, but I’m the only person I can control in this shitstorm.
With a sigh, I open my closet and step inside, thumbing through the few garments I’d hung in there. I pull a sundress off the hanger and take it with me into my bedroom, laying it on the bed before crossing to the dresser. I rummage around until I find a decent pair of underwear and a strapless bra that should provide me with enough support under the bodice of the sundress. My eyes flick to the box of expensive clothing I’ve yet to look through. Duke would probably fall over if I showed up in something he purchased. I draw in a breath. Funny, though, Mason now has a second pair of my underwear because all my clothing was left in the attic last night. If this keeps up, I’ll have to bust out that La Perla bag and see what Duke picked out. But no. That’d only add to the pile of crap I’m going to be dealing with today.Nope.Not today, Satan.
I slip into the undergarments, then pull the sundress over my head, and after a quick glance in the mirror to slick some gloss over my lips and add a touch of mascara, I’m ready to go. Grabbing my backpack, I head downstairs toward the pandemonium.
As I’ve discovered is normal for this hour, there are a lot of voices coming from the direction of the kitchen and dining room, the clatter of silverware, and—oh, hell yes—the scent of bacon. My stomach rumbles.
