16. Lilah
LILAH
The Mason situation dropped me in the middle of a game I hadn’t signed up for with a whole new set of terrible rules. There was the smart thing to do and what the bone-deep longing called for me to do.
Before, dealing with Mason had been easy—well, easier. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. A simple choice with no caveats or decisions to make.
Stay stony in his presence and never let him know he’d hurt me.
Stay as far away as I could.
Stay safe.
If I were smart, I’d keep going with the same tactic as before, but apparently my GPA was not a true indicator of intelligence.
He was impossible to dodge when he kept plopping himself in front of me every chance he got, now not with blistering glares or biting words, but lingering looks, regretful words and tender touches.
And even more annoying, I looked forward to seeing him. It was a lot harder to force myself to want to stay away when he was Summer Mason. I kept reminding myself of the scalding humiliation rituals he’d relished subjecting me to.
Use your brain, Lilah.
My application for the Windsor Award had been accepted.
All I needed to do was maintain my class rank.
That was the only thing I should care about, other than not gnawing my fingernails to nothing while I waited for college admissions decisions.
Winter finals were a month away, with Thanksgiving breathing down my neck.
My early morning walks to school and the study sessions in the library before homeroom were filled with racing thoughts and worry.
If I got rejected from all my colleges, my options turned from hopeful to bleak. It would also mean submitting a whole new round of premed applications, sacrificing more precious money for application fees and figuring out how I’d pay for med school.
Everyone else around me had acceptances in their back pocket and could pay for any school their hearts desired.
There were a lot of scholarships available, but we weren’t allowed to double up on the bigger ones, which often had narrow requirements.
My path forward was a winding trail through a ravine where any screwup would leave me needing to rewrite my whole plan while buried under a mountain of crushing debt.
I climbed the stairs to homeroom. The skin-tingling feeling flushed through me and I looked up. Other seniors moved past me, bags knocked into me.
Mason stood on the landing leading to the second floor and my classroom. People flowed around him like river currents splitting around a rock.
Then my brain blanked, and all those swirling thoughts and worries were blotted out.
“Lilah,” he said, voice like caramelized honey. He cupped my elbow and swapped spots. He took the bottom step and I was on the landing, eye-to-eye with him. No one else bumped into me.
“Mason.” Had that come out as breathless as it felt? I kept reminding myself to stay strong.
He was the buffer keeping the swell of students at bay, but that didn’t mean people didn’t crane their necks and slow their pace. “I waited for you this morning,” he said.
“Where? Why?”
“At home. I wanted to give you a ride.” He didn’t drop his fingers from my arm.
The warm press of his touch centered all my attention on that spot. That and his lips, the way he stared at me.
“A ride?” I shrugged and shifted to dislodge his gentle hold, not liking how much I wanted him to be standing outside, waiting for me to hop into his car. “I’ve started coming in early. It’s easier to study in the library than at home in the mornings. Things get chaotic.”
“Noted.” His cheek twitched, like there was a joke I’d missed. He was twenty-two red flags sewn into a person, but one disarming look turned my knees to jelly.
Noted? What the hell did that mean? With only three minutes until homeroom started, the stairwell was packed with students, but it felt more crowded than usual, and there were a few faces I swear walked past more than once.
He stared at me expectantly like there was something more I was supposed to do.
It had been a week since he’d waited outside English class then cornered me in the bathroom, so I couldn’t avoid him there.
Did he think I was going to fling myself at him after an explanation and some wounded looks?
Did he think me being a little flustered by how the sunlight shone on his face and highlighted his hair was enough for me to get anywhere near trusting him?
A stony determination overtook me, and I straightened, not wanting to get drawn closer to him.
“I’ve got to go.” I took a step backward, putting space between us and expecting him to stop me, but he didn’t.
“Okay, bye.”
I scurried away, pushing past the people on the staircase, all the while feeling his gaze on me until I finally burst through the doors to the third floor.
Paige almost ran into me like she’d been sprinting in my direction. She craned her neck toward the stairs.
“News traveled that fast?”
“What?” She looked at me, face flushed and breathing hard, then her cheeks reddened even brighter. “I was coming to see what was taking you so long.”
“Can we not talk about Mason?” I bit out, sharper than I’d intended.
Her jaw dropped, eyes widened. “I didn’t say anything about Mason. I—”
“Sorry, Paige. I…I don’t know.” I sagged, heart still racing at the lingering warmth of his skin against mine.
My head was as confused as every other part of me when it came to Mason.
And I had finals to worry about. College.
A massive scholarship. Oh, and apparently a guy who was so sweet, then hated me, now couldn’t stay away.
“I don’t know what to do about all of this. ”
“It’s not like whatever you choose has to be your forever.” She stepped up beside me. “Maybe hear him out.”
So much for not talking about Mason. “I have. I’ve heard it, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being blinded by the great Mason Shaw. How can I trust myself to not get sucked into his orbit again? How can I know he’s not going to turn on me again?”
Paige knew broad strokes about the summer of us running into each other once I moved, but not about the nightly talks and none of the details.
“I guess you can’t. So you have to decide if it’s worth the risk.”
Her words lingered through the rest of my classes. Good thing I’d gotten in some studying in this morning because my brain was fried by second break.
Paige found me on the way to the sewing lab even though I had the period off today and tugged me toward the dining hall. “I’ll buy you whatever you want. I need to finish my credits before December. They don’t roll over.”
Hurt and humiliation had kept me from going into the dining hall for months. That and the cost of the meals. They were delicious, but there weren’t any free lunch vouchers here. My scholarship only covered tuition, books and my tablet.
“Get me whatever you’re having and we can eat it outside?”
“Lilah, be real. It’s minus a million degrees out there.”
“It’s barely below 50.” I glanced out the window as the trees took a blistering, gusty beating. We could sneak the food into the library. Or eat on a back stairwell.
“But you forgot about wind chill.” Paige pulled me again and opened one of the doors. “My mom hasn’t let me have carbs for a week. My mouth has been watering all morning dreaming about the dining hall pasta.”
My knees locked up outside the large double doors with the brushed brass handles, stomach close to revolt. Pasta.
She looked at me again and her face dropped. “Oh shit.” A quick glance showed the space filled with our classmates at tables with pitchers of water at the center. “No one even remembers. And he’d never do that again,” she said emphatically.
After the pool house. The pep rally. The bathroom. Every single class we shared together. How many times would it take for me to shoot him down before he got pissed off?
“Come on.” Paige tugged at my arm. “I’m starving. My mom’s decided grapefruit is the only allowable breakfast. She won’t even let me put sugar on it.”
We stepped inside and the chatter in the room stopped. Had my brain shorted out? A full two seconds of dead silence before it all roared back to life. Paige nudged me toward the lunch buffet.
Unable to stop myself, my eyes darted to their table. Galen, Calder and Erik sat at Havoc’s table. No Mason. If I was lucky, he wouldn’t show up at all. Paige and I could grab our food and head out.
Since the lunch break was already halfway over, there wasn’t a line when we picked up our trays.
It had sucked not wanting to sacrifice savings to eat here every day. Even the Hawthorne Prep students whose parents regularly dropped four figures on a dinner loved the meals they served.
Paige placed a serving on my tray steering clear of the red meat sauce.
Instead, my pasta was nested in a wide, shallow bowl, surrounded by a pesto sauce and topped with parmesan shavings.
She also grabbed me two slices of garlic bread, a chocolate chunk brownie and a Cherry Coke.
She paid while I looked for a place to sit.
There were no empty tables, and I wasn’t brave enough to sit at one with anyone else already at it after what happened last time, even now. Nothing like a little trauma to lock in an aversion to a totally normal activity.
I wasn’t sure if the quiet when I walked was in my head or not, but it was certainly real when Mason burst through the double doors. There wasn’t even the scrape of a fork against the plates.
Sunlight reflections danced across the room and made blinding little spotlights with all the non-cracked phones not-so surreptitiously raised to document this interaction.
Calder stood and said something to Mason too quietly for me to hear over my pounding heart. Both their eyes shifted to me. Mason walked toward me like he’d been alerted to my presence. Heads whipped from him and back to me. Right in the middle of the dining hall.
Each of his steps chewed up the space between us.