Chapter 4
Chelsea
Mason’s staring at me like I’ve just uttered another language. When he doesn’t respond, I say, “There were reasons for my actions that you know nothing of.”
That gets his attention. “What kind of reasons would be worth ending the kind of friendship we had?” His words arrow pain into my heart. He’s right to ask this question, but that doesn’t make it any less painful.
“Reasons I wish never existed.”
Anger paints his face and grips his body. “Fuck, Chelsea, stop talking in fucking circles. If you want to discuss this, fucking discuss it and tell me what your reasons were.”
I take a moment to steady my breath and collect my thoughts.
This is the conversation I’ve dreamed of having for years, but I’m not entirely convinced it’s a good one to have.
Mason was always impulsive and ready to take on anyone who threatened him.
Or who threatened me. I don’t know how he’ll process this information.
I don’t know whether he’s grown into a man who doesn’t care about what happened when he was a teenager or whether he’ll go after my father for what he forced me to do.
I don’t care what he does to my father if he chooses that course of action; I only care about what my father can do to him.
When I take too long to gather myself, he spits out, “Right, so from your silence, I’m taking it your reasons are bullshit and you just smashed my heart to fucking pieces because you—”
“My father made me,” I blurt, desperately needing him to know I’m not the bad person he thinks I am. Desperately needing him to understand how much I loved him and never wanted to hurt him. Desperately needing him to know I made that choice for him, not for me.
His mouth snaps shut.
His nostrils flare.
His eyes narrow at me.
“The fuck did you just say?”
Shit.
I swallow hard and look down, trying to avoid his gaze.
“Chelsea,” Mason says fiercely, “repeat what you just said so I know I heard it right.” When I keep my eyes down, he reaches for my chin and roughly forces it up so I have no place to look but at him. “Start talking and don’t stop until I know every-fucking-thing that happened.”
“A few months before that party, the last one we ever went to together, Dad told me to stop being friends with you. He knew you were doing drugs and he thought you were a bad influence. I let him believe we weren’t friends anymore, which wasn’t hard because he was so busy with work that he didn’t notice what I did most of the time. ”
The look in his eyes tells me he’s piecing things together in his mind. “That was when you started insisting we hang out at my house instead of yours.”
I nod. “Everything was okay until the cops raided that party and our parents were called. Dad was furious when he found out we were still friends. He was also furious over the bad publicity that party gave him. He threatened to ruin you if I didn’t end our friendship straight away.
I knew he’d make good on that, too, because I’d seen the way he ruined men when they didn’t fall in line with what he wanted.
” I stop for a beat, my eyes boring into his, my voice cracking as I continue.
“I couldn’t let him do that to you, Mason.
I had to make sure you were safe from him. ”
He works his jaw, something I remember from when we were teens.
It was what he did when he was pissed off over someone trash talking me.
Always my protector. “So you decided that cutting all ties was the best way to do that?” He’s pissed all right.
At me. “You decided that never talking to me again, never looking at me again, never fucking taking the time to explain why, after over a decade of friendship, you no longer wanted a fucking bar of me was the best way to keep me safe from your asshole father.” He pushes up off the floor and stabs his fingers through his hair as he paces.
“That’s not what friends do, Chelsea. Not by a long fucking shot. ”
I push up off the floor, too, my own anger surfacing.
It’s mostly at myself, but also at the situation.
Grabbing his arm, I stop him from pacing.
“I know that now. God, do I know that. But I was a seventeen-year-old girl who didn’t know better back then.
All I knew was that my father scared me and had more power than anyone I knew.
I honestly believed he would make good on his threat. ”
The fury radiating from him should be a caution to me, but it isn’t.
I’m drawn to this man in inexplicable ways.
We’re a mess of first love and broken hearts and angst, but I don’t want to be anywhere but here.
With him. When he gets in my face, I should pull away, but I don’t.
I can’t. “You’ve had eight fucking years to fix this.
Eight!” He rips his arm free of my hold and paces away from me again.
Mason’s angry, but I’m certain he’s caging most of his anger in. I think he’s pacing to help with that, so as much as I want to go to him and make him hear me, I don’t. I give him the space he needs.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know that two words can’t make up for what I did, but I—”
At that, he turns and stalks back to me, a hurricane of emotions in his eyes.
I expect him to stop in front of me and unleash more of his anger, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he keeps on coming, gripping my waist and taking me with him as he barrels his way to the wall.
Crushing me against it, he breathes, “We wasted so much fucking time.” His other hand comes to my face, cupping my cheek.
“You should have been mine all these years. Mine.” With that, his lips crash down onto mine and I finally have my first taste of Mason Blaise.