by Aubrey Cara
His words only served to make her feel even more stupid. She'd been so easy to manipulate. Again. And she'd wanted it so bad. “I wanted you, Mason. Just you. You could have had me without going behind my back.”
“That's why you said you wouldn't be with someone not into your kinks?”
“Are you really going to throw that in my face? I was drunk and vulnerable and talking out my ass.”
“Are you really going to say you didn't enjoy what we did? That this week didn't mean anything to you?”
“Of course I enjoyed it! That's not the point. This week...with you...it meant the world to me and now I don't know if any of it was real. Were you just playing pretend? You lied and manipulated me this whole week. You had me eating out of the palm of your hand. All you had to do was order me around and spank my ass. Stupid, naïve, horny Mimi. You knew just what buttons to push.”
How could she have been so stupid? Again. After Jay she'd sworn she never put herself in a position where she could be hurt like this.
“It was real,” he said. “Dammit Mimi, look at me.” He grabbed her tear stained face in both hands forcing her to look at him, and fresh tears streamed from her eyes at his anguished expression. He looked tortured. Like his world was breaking apart. But it was her world he'd broken apart.
“Mimi,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “It was real. This week, with you was the most real I've ever been in my life. I swear, I swear I wasn't trying to manipulate or lie to you. And I never meant to hurt you. I never want to hurt you. I love you, Mimi.”
She shook her head. She couldn't care. She couldn't let herself care. “No,” she said, tearing away from him and fumbling with the door handle. “I have to go. I can't do this. I can't listen to you tell me you love me. I can't.”
“Mimi, please” he said, reaching out pulling her back by her wrist. “Dammit, don't give up on us. Be angry. Be mad, but please, please, we're real. What we have is real. You may not want to hear it, but I do love you. You have to believe that.”
Believing that was the problem. Her head swam. She felt too ripped open. “Please, just go,” she said pulling her wrist out of his grip. “I'll get a ride home.” Turning back around she said, “Please don't call...or text me.”
“Mimi,” he said, his voice raw. “Don't do this. Please don't shut me out.”
“Goodbye, Mason,” she said slamming the door of the jeep before running toward the house, tears streaming down her face.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mason parked his Jeep Grand Cherokee near his family's headstones and got out of the vehicle clutching an expensive bottle of single malt scotch. He'd been surprised the liquor store in Gibson had carried it. It had been his father's favorite brand. His father had only drank it on occasion. He hadn't been like Mason. He hadn't felt the pull. He hadn't heard the call. For Mason, it was like a scratch that he just couldn't itch. A call he hadn't even tried to ignore when he'd been younger.
Over the years of sobriety the call had been muted. Tonight it was so loud it rang through him like the angry toll of a bell.
He plopped down leaning back up against his father's headstone, eyes closed, setting the bottle of scotch on the ground next to him. “Well dad. I really fucked up this time.”
The air was crisp. A cold front had been moving through but he hardly felt the chill. He kept picturing Mimi's face. She'd been utterly devastated. It had gutted him.
He wasn't sure how long he'd waited outside Kat and Caleb's house. Staring at their front door Mimi had disappeared behind. Willing her to come out and forgive him. Eventually Caleb had come home and knocked on the driver's side window, breaking Mason out of his stupor.
Caleb asked if Mason was okay and Mason had just shook his head and started up the engine. He'd driven away while Caleb stood in the yard looking concerned.
Caleb was a good friend but Mason just couldn't talk to anyone at that moment. He felt like one wrong move and he'd shatter into a million pieces he wouldn't ever be able to put back together.
He was sure Mimi or Kat would fill Caleb in on the mess Mason had made of things. Hadn't Caleb even said he should ask Mimi point blank? But, oh no. Mason Coleman had a plan.
He was such an arrogant jackass.
From Kat and Caleb's house he'd gone to the liquor store on autopilot. He figured his body recalled the last time he felt this much self loathing the liquor store was where he was heading to or from. He'd sat in the parking lot wondering how he'd gotten there before blindly wandering around the store. When the clerk—some middle aged woman he didn't recognize—asked if she could help him he'd asked for his father's brand of scotch, and here he was.
He picked the bottle up off the ground staring at it. It whispered, “Open me, just for a smell. A little taste. No one will know.”
He'd know. He'd know and he'd hate himself even more than he already did, but Lord the temptation. Just a few hours of sweet oblivion may be worth the hell he'd pay tomorrow. He closed his eyes and let his head thump back against the headstone. He did it twice more trying to knock some sense into himself.
“I really fucked up, dad, and I don't know how to fix it. I don't know if I can.” And that scared him most of all. How could he live the rest of his life off a glimmer, a taste of how full his life could be with Mimi in it. He felt hollowed out just thinking about it. Longing for what could have been with her was so much easier to deal with and put on a shelf when he had no idea what he'd been missing. Now he knew what he was doing without.
He knew what her body felt like under his. The sounds she made when she came. When she slept, she snored. It was this little heavy breathing snore that he wanted to fall asleep to every night for the rest of his life. He wanted her to quote Dr. Seuss and give him sleepy smiles in the morning. He wanted to do stupid everyday shit with her. Hold her hand. Go to the grocery store. Pick out Christmas trees.
In just one week she'd filled in all the cracks and now all that was left was a gaping hole.
So wrapped up in his self misery he almost missed his phone ringing in his pocket.
His fucking phone.
Why hadn't he deleted those pictures? Hadn't he known what he was doing was wrong when he took those blasted pictures? Pulling his phone out of his pocket he nearly fumbled it when he saw the caller ID. Relief and hope spearing through him.
He clicked and answered, “Mimi,” he said on a breath.
“Mason?” Zeke's little voice on the other end of the line sent a myriad of other sensations knifing through him, beginning and ending with panic.
“Zeke? Are you okay? Where's your mother?”
“She's with Auntie Kat in the work room. I’m not supposed to mess with stuff in there. I'm watching Scooby-Doo.”
All the breath whooshed out of him. Mason felt momentarily dizzy from the rush of relief coursing through him. “Does your mom know you're using her phone?”
“No,” Zeke answered in a small voice.
“You know you're not supposed to use her phone without her permission, unless it's an emergency.”
“But she was crying. Really hard. And you weren't here. Why aren't you here, Mason?”
“Ah, buddy.” Mason had to swallow twice before he could talk. Zeke sounded scared and Mason wanted to race right back to Kat and Caleb's and reassure him everything was going to be alright. But, he didn't have the right to do that and he had no idea if everything was going to be alright.
“Your mom—well I—I did something that wasn't very nice. It was actually really wrong. And dishonest. And I hurt your mama's feelings really bad. So I had to leave.”
“Oh...whatcha do?”
Mason sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “It's grownup stuff between your mama and I. I don't think she'd appreciate me telling you, buddy.”
“Oh. Are you sorry?”
“I really am.”
“Are you going to do it again?”
Mason would have smiled had he not been so miserable. This sounded exactly
like what Mimi was always saying to Zeke after he got in trouble. “No, kiddo. It's not something I'm going to do again.”
“Then she'll forgive you. Mama always forgives me if I mean it.”
“Ah, kiddo, I don't know.” Mason pictured Mimi's face when she said “goodbye”. It had been so final. Like she was saying goodbye forever. “Sometimes it's harder to forgive grownup stuff. Cause we're supposed to know better.”
“I'm seeing Santa tomorrow,” Zeke said changing the subject without a thought like only a six-year-old could.
“That's awesome buddy.” Mason wished he'd be there. It was such a strange tradition. Setting your kid in some jolly fat man's lap. A stranger's no less, but damned if it wasn't something he wanted to be there for. “So, whatcha gonna ask Santa for?” he asked gruffly, knowing he wasn't going to be there for the trip to Santa or Christmas morning. Possibly any other morning.
“I'm going to ask Santa for you to be my dad. And I've been really good, so I know it's going to happen.”
Mason felt like he'd just taken a direct hit to the gut. Shit. Shit. What the fuck was he supposed to say to that? “Zeke, buddy—”
“I gotta go. Someone's coming,” Zeke whispered into the phone before the line went dead.
Mason sat staring at his phone contemplating what he should do. He wanted to call Mimi, now not so much to apologize but to let her know Zeke called him. Warn her, kiddo was going to ask Santa for something a mythical fat man couldn't give. Fuck. This was exactly the kind of thing Mimi had wanted Zeke protected from. Now the poor kid was stuck right in the middle of their shit and he was too young to understand what was going on.
Looking to the cloudless sky Mason took in the sea of stars. “Well, Dad. If you have any suggestion on how I should proceed from here, now would be the time.”
Just then headlights came up the path nearest him. The blue and red over head lights of a squad car flipped on with a Woop Woop, as it pulled in behind where his jeep was parked half in the path, half in the grass.
He was just standing up and brushing the grass off his pants as a spot light flashed on him. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes.
“Mason Coleman, son, is that you?”
That was a voice he hadn't heard in a while. Sheriff Charlie Morgan. The big gruff sheriff had been a good friend of Mason's father and the one who had usually been the one to drive Mason's drunk ass home from the bar the first two years after his parent's died.
“Charlie, long time no see.” Mason picked up the bottle of scotch off the ground and walked over to the squad car.
“You're not drinking again, are you son?”
“No, sir. Just came to talk to my dad. Thought I'd bring him a bottle of his favorite single malt scotch.”
Charlie just gave Mason an appraising, skeptical look. Not that Mason could blame him. It had been Charlie who had hauled his sorry ass home more times than he could count. Charlie had tried to talk some sense into Mason back then, but Mason hadn't wanted to hear it.
Charlie had grown up here in Gibson with Mason's dad, and had known Mason since he was a baby. The man looked older and Mason realized he had to be getting close to retirement if not past it. Mason suddenly felt bad he'd fallen out of contact with Charlie.
“You look like hell, son.”
Mason rubbed the back of his neck shrugging his shoulders. “I-I don't feel so great either.”
Holding up the bottle he said, “You like scotch, Charlie?”
“Not as much as you,” Charlie said. “But I partake now and again.”
“Here,” he said, holding out the bottle. “Merry Christmas.”
Charlie took it, his eyebrows up, lips pursed. He looked over the bottle and whistled. “Well now, this is damn fine scotch. Where'd you find this?”
It was damn fine, and had cost over three hundred dollars, not that Mason cared. “Gibson Liquors believe it or not. I think it was their only bottle, so enjoy.”
“I'll do that. I'll do just that.” Looking up from the bottle Charlie nodded his head in the direction of the headstone. “You wanna talk about it?”
Mason sighed, feeling like a jackass. “Not really. I uh. I think I lost the only woman I've ever loved.”
Charlie's eyebrows went up. “You think so, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Well, then it's probably good I'm holding on to this,” he said indicating the bottle of booze.
Mason nodded. Charlie looked over at the headstones again as he spoke. “She fall in love with someone else? You cheat on her?”
“No. I...I lied by invading her privacy. I discovered something about her—something personal she hadn't shared with me—and I used it to my advantage.”
“Well now, that's not good,” Charlie said stating the obvious.
“No. No it's not.”
“You know, I have all daughters.”
Mason nodded. He did know that. Two of them were older than Mason, and one was younger. He'd had a crush on the oldest when he'd been twelve and she'd been sixteen.
“I'm surrounded by women, son,” Charlie said, fixing Mason with an all knowing look. “When they're mad about something—and it's your fault—well, you just can't fix it the way you want to fix it. You gotta fix it the way they want you to fix it. Sometimes they don't want you to fix it at all. They just want to be mad at you. Then you gotta let them be mad, and hope that you can fix it.”
“Well hell.” Mason hadn't had enough experience with women to even begin to decipher that.
“Basically,” Charlie said patting Mason on the back. “Go home. Try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is a new day.”
Hours later Mason still had no idea what the hell Charlie was talking about but he did know that he was going to abide by her wishes—for now—and not call or text. At least for a while. Even if it killed him.
She'd said this past week had meant the world to her, and he was holding on to that. He wasn't sure how he was going to make her see what they had was real while she wasn't talking to him, but he would.
Without prompting Caleb had sent him a text letting him know that Kat had taken Mimi and Zeke home safe and sound. He wasn't sure how he could ever repay Caleb for that text. Mason would probably even now be stalking around the apartment complex like some crazy asshole without that text. He was in Caleb's debt.
He deleted all the pictures of her books, even though in actuality he now owned copies of most of them. He thought about deleting them off his tablet too, but decided to keep them. As twisted as it may be they had made him feel closer to her, and at the moment were the only thing he had that was part of her.
Face buried in the pillow that still held her scent, Mason finally drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mimi had stood in the doorway of Kat and Caleb's den and listened to her son tell Mason what he was going to ask Santa for. Too numb to say a word, Mimi had just silently stood there. I'm going to ask Santa for you to be my dad. And I've been really good, so I know it's going to happen.
Already too emotionally wrung out to deal with it, she'd blinked back the tears and she'd pretended not to have heard. Not to have walked in on Zeke talking to the man they'd both wanted to be his father.
Before.
Maybe she was just overreacting, but it felt like a confirmation of all her fears she'd been having. Every niggling doubt had been screaming, “Ah-ha! I knew it! He's too good to be true.”
Kat had been supportive but told Mimi the same thing Mimi had said to her a year ago when Kat was ready to end things with Caleb. Don't be your own worst enemy.
Maybe Mimi was letting fear guide her judgment.
Caleb, who rarely ever said a word to her, told her not to hate Mason too much. “We men do stupid shit when we're in love,” he'd said. Like it was a forgone conclusion that Mason was in love with her and had been for a while.
She just didn't know. It felt like the rug had been swept out from under her. The wind had gotten knocked out of her on the fall
and she still hadn't caught her breath.
Now it was Monday morning. She'd had two days to think. Two days to come up with more questions than answers. Two days of picking up the phone to call him and putting it back down. She'd nearly called in sick this morning—twice—but she refused to let this affect her job. She had a son to take care of. Or at least that was what she'd told herself as she'd stiffened her spine and strode up the stairs to her office.
She was just opening a new spreadsheet when there was a knock knock that had her looking up. Mason stood framed in the doorway wearing his usual business casual attire that didn't serve to make him appear any more plebeian. He still looked like the man in charge. His sad hangdog expression only proved to give him a broody intense air.
The bastard looked sexier than ever.
Not that she cared.
His stormy gray eyes wandered over her in appraisal. “You came in,” he said with surprise.
The statement chaffed. How dare he think she wouldn't come in? The fact that she nearly hadn't didn't matter. “Of course I came in. I may be gullible but I'm not stupid enough to throw away my only means of providing for my family.”
Mason looked like she'd slapped him across the face. “I didn't mean, or think you would—I just..it would have been okay to take a day off is all.”
“Thank you,” she said tersely. “If that's all...” she trailed off indicating he could leave.
“I know you're not talking to me but I thought you should know Zeke's been calling me. The first time was Friday night. He was upset when you came in crying and I wasn't there. And the last two nights have been to say goodnight. I haven't encouraged him but I haven't really discouraged him either.”
Mimi actually knew that but hadn't known how she felt besides a tad envious. Just thinking about telling Zeke he couldn't talk to Mason anymore had made her nauseous. I'm going to ask Santa for you to be my dad. She shook her head to dispel her son's voice. There was no way she'd make it through the day if she let herself think about things she couldn't change.