by Callie Rose
“Did you do it? Huh? Did you, you motherfucker?” His voice was a ragged shout, and his eyes were full of fury as he lunged toward the bank of lockers where Preston was cowering. “If I find out you tried to hurt her, I will fucking end you, do you understand?”
Cole managed to maneuver himself in front of Mason and used his larger form to shove his friend back as Elijah kept a firm grip on his arm. They wrestled him down the hall and out the door just as two teachers stepped out of their classrooms, with me trailing in their wake.
As soon as we were outside, Cole shoved Mason up against the side of the building, pinning him there and getting in his face. “Mace! Enough. You’re done.”
Mason stared at him, his chest rising and falling fast. There wasn’t a mark on the brown-haired boy. Whatever punches had landed between him and Preston, they all seemed to have gone one way.
“Shit.” Cole shook his head. “We need to get him out of here. He’s gonna lose it in front of a fucking teacher.”
“I’ll take him,” I blurted, stepping forward before the words were even all the way out of my mouth.
The raven-haired boy turned to me with an almost disbelieving gaze, as if I’d just volunteered to step into a cage with a wild bear or try to tame a charging bull.
Mason’s eyes flickered as he turned his head slightly toward me, and Elijah nodded, jerking his chin at Cole. “It should be her. We can go clean up inside, make sure nobody rats him out—if it’s not too late for that.”
Cole’s ice-blue gaze lingered on me for a moment before it fell on Mason again, and finally, he nodded.
“Okay.” He tightened his grip on Mason, pressing him into the wall again. “Be fucking cool.”
Then he released him and stepped back. I grabbed the still-seething boy, dragging him down the stairs before he had a chance to protest or offer up any real resistance—because if he decided to truly resist, I knew there was no way I’d get him to go anywhere.
Elijah and Cole headed back toward the entrance doors, and as soon as they disappeared into Craydon, I pulled Mason along harder.
He didn’t resist coming with me, but his gait was almost as jerky as mine, and his entire body seemed stiff, as if he were a robot fueled by rage.
I wasn’t sure where to take him, but I wanted him somewhere far away from all the school buildings on campus, so I tugged him toward the Wastelands, flipping my backpack around and yanking out my key card when we reached it. I’d started carrying my own bag again—something the guys only allowed because I’d told them it was good strength building for my recovery.
Walking had become a lot easier, but I still got twinges of pain in my ankle, and I wasn’t used to walking this fast. A sharp pain shot up my leg as we headed toward the stairs, making my steps falter, and Mason finally dug his heels in, stopping our forward progress.
“Elevator,” he muttered.
It wasn’t worth arguing with him, so I diverted our course to the elevator. By the time we reached my floor, I wasn’t pulling him along anymore, he was walking beside me—but the heaviness of his footsteps hadn’t eased up.
I opened the door to my little apartment, and as soon as we were both inside, he stalked into the living room, throwing down his bag and glaring out the window with his hands in his pockets like he wished he could teleport back to Craydon and punch Preston a dozen more times.
For a moment, silence filled the small space as I dropped my backpack and leaned against the door, staring at him with my arms crossed.
What the hell was that about?
It wasn’t like he didn’t have reasons to want to hit Preston. All the Princes did, and if it came down to it, I’d be fifth in line behind them. Same with Adena.
But they’d all held back for weeks as we tried to find some connection between Adena and her posse and my car crash—and some better weapon to use against them than brute force or violence. Because as satisfying as those might feel, they wouldn’t actually accomplish much.
I had thought Mason understood that.
But clearly not.
“So.” I didn’t move away from the door, and I pitched my voice just loud enough to be heard across the room. “You wanna tell me what happened?”
He ran a hand through his brown hair, still staring out the window. “It doesn’t fucking matter.”
“Obviously it does, because you went after Preston West on school grounds, during school hours. I don’t get how everything works in this place, but I know there are some things even you guys can’t just get away with. That’s why you do your fight club off campus on the weekends. So what made you do it?”
Mason spun to face me, the movement so sudden it made me jerk in surprise. If I’d thought the walk back to my place had calmed him down, I’d been dead wrong. He seemed more angry now than he had back at Craydon, and I could almost see the bolts of electric energy zapping from his body.
“Ten. Weeks.” He moved toward me, bearing down on me like a boulder rolling down a hill. “That’s how fucking long it’s been since your wreck, Princess. Ten goddamn weeks. And what? What have we done about it? What do we know? Nothing!”
“Are you talking about Adena?” I pressed away from the door, straightening to meet him as he reached me. “You’re right. We don’t know. So maybe it wasn’t her. She hasn’t tried anything else since—”
“It fucking was her! I know it!”
He spun, pounding both fists against the breakfast bar that separated the open kitchen from the living room. Everything on the counter jumped from the force of his blow, and I winced. He was so pissed off he was liable to hurt himself.
“Mason!” I grabbed his arm, spinning him back around, trying to get him to focus back on me. “What the fuck happened? What did Preston do to piss you off? Did he say something? Did he admit they did it?”
His eyes narrowed, and for a second, he hardly looked like himself. Maybe he would’ve said the same thing about me, because he was looking at me like he didn’t even know me. He shook his head, his lip curling slightly as he stalked slowly toward me.
“Jesus, Tal. You don’t get it, do you? Sometimes you don’t get proof. Sometimes the bad guys don’t fucking confess and ask for penance. Sometimes you just. Fucking. Know!”
The way he was looking at me turned my stomach.
It reminded me too much of the way he’d looked at me during my first semester at this school. As if he’d known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I had wronged him somehow. As if I’d deserved whatever was coming to me.
“Yeah?” I pushed against his chest as he neared me, not wanting him in my space, in my bubble. “And who elected you judge, jury, and executioner? Who gave you the right to decide who’s innocent and who’s guilty? Who gave you that fucking power?”
“I gave it to myself, Princess.” His hand reached up to grip my chin, his touch shockingly gentle despite the tension thrumming through his limbs. “Because I take care of the people I love. I don’t let them get hurt while I’m waiting to see if the people who want to hurt them are guilty or innocent. I don’t wait.”
I smacked his hand away, yanking my head back. I’d meant to bring him back here to calm him down, but my own anger was churning beneath my skin now.
Everything Mason was saying reminded me of the person he’d been when I’d first met him, and I hated it.
“Yeah. I’m well fucking aware of how you mete out your own particular brand of vigilante justice. Jesus! Have you not realized by now how fucked up that is? And I don’t even mean toward the other person! I mean, toward yourself. You’re killing your own goddamn soul, Mason, and one of these days, you’re gonna do something you can’t come back from! And for what? Why? Just because you believe? That’s not how justice works!”
“Sometimes it doesn’t work any other way!”
He was in my face now, whatever peace had existed between us for the past weeks forgotten as he glared me down. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might crack my ribs as a mixture of re
membered fear and dormant anger swept through me.
There’d been a time when I might’ve cowered before Mason, might’ve let the animal force of him overwhelm me. But it’d been a long time since I’d stepped down in front of this boy, and I wasn’t going to move backward.
Only forward.
I squared my shoulders, looking him dead in the eye and keeping my voice steady as I spoke.
“If you really think that’s true, then you should’ve kept coming after me. You never should’ve stopped.” He winced at my words like I’d physically hit him, but I kept going. “You should still hate me. You know who my mom is—you know what she did. Why don’t I deserve to be punished for that? I’m the last of the Hildebrand line. Doesn’t the buck stop with me?”
He and I had only discussed his mother’s death once, the night I’d snuck into Clarendon Hall to question him about the past. I hadn’t brought it up since then because I knew how much it hurt him. I had never wanted to poke the raw, exposed wound.
But I was poking it now.
Because he needed to feel this. He needed to understand it on a visceral level.
That there were consequences to his pain.
That his own hurts didn’t give him the right to hurt others indiscriminately.
His eyes widened, a flash of overwhelming grief sparking in his bright emerald irises. His nostrils flared, and he shook his head slowly, the animalistic movement of a bull about to charge.
“That’s not the same, Princess. You didn’t do anything. I understand that now. Adena and fucking Preston—”
“It is the same!” My voice cut across his like a whip. “It is the exact goddamn same, Mason. You love so intensely that you let it destroy you, let it turn into a monster! You take something that should be good and beautiful, and you turn it into something awful. Do you think that’s what your mom would’ve wanted? For you to go after me with everything you had? Do you think this is what I want? For you to go after Preston in the fucking hallway, to risk getting yourself expelled just because you think he hurt me? Even if he did, even if he and Adena are guilty, I wouldn’t want you to become a monster, something you’re not, just to defend me!”
He moved toward me again, and even though I refused to give ground, he kept on coming until our chests brushed together and I took two steps back. My heels thunked against the door, and my back hit it a second later, but Mason didn’t stop coming.
Our bodies were practically flush against each other as he tilted his head down to stare at me. I had to lift my chin uncomfortably to meet his gaze, and I could feel his body trembling through all the places we touched.
“What if I am, Princess? What if I am a monster?” His voice had dropped to match mine, becoming a low, dangerous purr. His green eyes softened—the kind of softness I hated, the kind he used as a shield when he allowed himself to be abjectly cruel. “If I’m already lost, shouldn’t I try to save the people I care about while I still I can?”
I was trapped between him and the door, rendered completely immobile. My hands slipped between us to rest against his chest, but instead of shoving, I just left them there, absorbing the heavy, dull thud of his heart with my palm.
“You’re not a monster,” I whispered. “I can see you, and you’re not.”
A low noise sounded in his throat. His heart pounded against me like it was looking for an escape, but there was no escape for either of us at this point.
My fingers dug into his chest, and I shook my head. “And you can’t save everyone, Mason. You just can’t.”
For a moment, his face crumpled.
It was as if every mask he’d ever worn was stripped away. The pure, unfiltered truth of who this boy was washed over me as grief, confusion, and helpless rage flowed across his features.
Then he grabbed my face in both hands and kissed me.
Chapter 14
My body jerked at the sudden onslaught of sensations, and I unconsciously fisted Mason’s shirt with both hands as I tried to keep my head above water in the rising tidal wave of his kiss.
He kissed me like he was trying to find salvation between my lips… or he was trying to drag me down to hell with him.
And maybe there was a little bit of a monster in both of us, because wherever he went, wherever his soul ended up, I wanted to go there too.
The last time I had kissed Mason, truly kissed him, had been in the ocean on my seventeenth birthday. In that kiss, we had walked the delicate line between love and hate.
In this kiss, we redrew the line completely.
His hands were on either side of my head, and his fingers dug into my hair as his lips attacked mine with desperate need. His tongue swept my mouth, and mine clashed with every stroke, forcing his aside to delve into his mouth. It felt like we were trying to devour each other alive, to be the first to consume the other person completely, to take in their entire essence.
That was what I wanted. Nothing more or less than every single thing that was Mason Van Buren.
I wanted every fucked up piece and every beautiful piece. I wanted to take them all, complete the puzzle, and then make him look at it—make him see the parts of himself he refused to acknowledge or had forgotten existed altogether.
His large body was still pinning me to the door, his hands controlling the movement of my head as he angled the kiss to bring it deeper. All I had free were my hands and arms, and I finally released my grip on his shirt to rake my fingernails over the sculpted terrain of his shoulders, bracing against the door with my back to push against his body.
I wanted freedom of motion, wanted the space to touch him everywhere.
To touch what I own.
Heat flooded my veins at the thought, and I pushed harder, tweaking a muscle in my ankle again.
I gasped into his mouth, and whether he knew what had caused the noise or not, he reacted instantly, stepping back and releasing me from the heavy wooden door.
He didn’t let go of my head though, as if he was afraid he’d lose me if he stopped holding on so tight. I pushed again, and he moved backward at my urging this time, tugging me with him as we stumbled awkwardly through the small apartment toward the bedroom.
Mason almost crashed into the wall, and I pulled him sideways into the open space of the doorway, still kissing him wildly, still running my hands over every inch of his body I could reach.
My fingertips found the hem of his shirt just as we made it into the bedroom, and the second they slipped underneath and met bare skin, Mason groaned into my mouth, as if just that small touch had almost undone him. He pulled off my uniform blazer with a sharp movement. Then his arms wrapped tightly around me, and the next thing I knew, he was lifting me, carrying me the last few steps to the bed before dropping me on the soft mattress and following me down.
His body covered mine like it belonged there, like it had never been meant to be anywhere else, and he ground his hips into me, making slick wetness dampen my panties. He was moving against me, and I was writhing beneath him, the motions desperate and almost violent as we tried to press our bodies together in more places, to touch everywhere, to satisfy the need that threaded between us like jagged bolts of lightning.
His movements were jerky and uncoordinated as he tore at my uniform, loosening my tie before giving up on it and moving down to my buttons, undoing several before grabbing both sides of the fabric and ripping them apart. His head dipped to taste the skin of my breasts as I shoved his blazer off his shoulders.
As soon as it was off, I tried to work on his shirt, but I couldn’t focus with his mouth on me, trailing fire across my skin. As his lips, tongue, and teeth worked on the soft flesh of my breasts, nudging my bra down to get better access, he slipped one hand under my skirt, finding the spot between my legs and making me buck against him.
“Fuck.”
His breathless grunt was muffled against my skin, and then his hand delved beneath the waistband of my panties, and he slipped two fingers inside me.
Air rushed
into my lungs, and I let go of him to grab fistfuls of the sheets at my sides, arching off the bed as I clenched around him.
“Mason!” The word was hardly more than a gasp, a whimper. “Please. I need—”
I didn’t know how to tell him, didn’t know how to describe the ache building inside me, the hunger and desperate need consuming me. So I showed him as best I could, lifting my hips off the bed, rubbing against his hand as his fingers pumped in and out of me.
“Fuck.”
He spoke against my skin again, moving up to lick and suck at my neck as his fingers slipped out of me. I heard the sound of his zipper and felt the rustling of his clothes before he flipped my skirt up and grabbed my panties, yanking them to the side.
Then, with a surge of his hips, he thrust into me.
He was hard and thick, filling me completely as our bodies met. We both cried out, our combined sounds filling the small space of my bedroom.
We froze like that, locked together in the most intimate way, and when he lifted his head to gaze down at me, something had shifted in his expression. He looked almost… shocked.
Then his features smoothed out, the pain and fury from earlier vanishing, and he watched my face as he withdrew almost completely and thrust back in hard. Our joined bodies rocked with the force of the movement, and twin sounds of pleasure fell from our lips. My hands still rested beside me on the bed, and I wanted to touch him again, wanted to hold onto him, but I couldn’t force myself to move at all.
I was transfixed by the look in his eyes, the sight of his face as he pulled out again in a slow drag and then surged forward.
We both groaned again, and Mason dropped his head, burying his face in my neck and keeping his pelvis pressed hard against mine, like he couldn’t bear to withdraw from me even for a second, not even for the delicious friction that came with it.
Like he’d live here if he could.
He stayed like that for several beats as our chests rose and fell against each other, our bodies resting together. When he finally pulled back out and started to thrust in again, he jerked to a stop with a strangled noise.