Chapter 29
Mason
I tried to convince Ash while she was moving her things out of the room to just stop. I wanted her to stop and take a breath and understand that I didn’t invite Eva here. I didn’t expect this woman to just turn up and spoil every single thing I had planned. For the love of shit, Ash was the one I wanted. She was the one I loved. Who gave a shit if Eva turned up on the doorstep anyway? She was the one I wanted.
“Ash, come on,” I urged.
But instead, all she did was act like a child. She shoved right by me with her things and picked the room on the opposite end of the house. Everything had turned into a giant clusterfuck.
“I guess she just can’t handle the stress that comes with this lifestyle,” Eva sighed.
“You know damn well I didn’t invite you here,” I spat through clenched teeth.
“And yet, here I am,” she said. “You know as well as I do that the two of us are destined for one another.”
“Yeah,” Ash said. “The conniving bitch and the airhead with no balls. Sounds like a perfect match.”
“Such a mouth for someone trying to be so clean,” Eva said.
“Would the two of you just stop?” I exclaimed.
“You know,” Ash began. “It’s astounding to me. You say you care, you say all the wonderful things, and you buy me all these wonderful presents, and yet this is the second time she’s interjected herself somehow into plans we have, and I don’t see you coming to my defense.”
“Well, you could handle this entire situation a bit better than you are,” I said. “It’s not like I invited her here.”
“So it’s my fault?” Ash asked. “Do you really think you're innocent in all this? Poor old Mason whose mother is shoving some stick thin model of a woman onto him to marry. Poor old Mason who has to do what he’s told and marry rich and never has to work and will never understand what it means to eat ramen noodles every night for a week just to get by?”
“Oh, and you’ve got it so hard? Poor Ash who gets to do what she wants with life and marry who she falls in love with and never once has to listen to her mother or be forced to marry some psycho he could never love?”
“Seriously, Mason, I’m right here,” Eva deadpanned.
“Yeah,” Ash said. “Sounds wonderful if you’ve got your looks. Men don’t want me, Mason. Men never have. Men want the little bit of money I do bring in and the couch I let them sleep on, and that’s about it. You wanna know what I was actually doing at that play, Mason?”
“Um… play?” Eva asked.
“Can it, Eva. Ash, what does this have to do with anything?”
“Do you wanna know or not?” she spat.
“What were you doing at that play?” I asked lowly.
“Signing a release my ex wanted me to sign so he could openly talk about our disgusting and manipulative relationship on camera for a reality television show he was gunning for. And I’m so pathetic and useless, I signed it just to get rid of him.”
“For the love of everything, Mason dear, is this the type of woman you really want to be spending your time with? Someone who will be gossiped about on national television?”
“Don’t act like your name isn’t in people’s mouths, Eva,” Ash said.
“At least those mouths have class,” Eva threw back.
“Enough!” I roared. “Eva, none of this was for you. My mother wanted to invite you on this trip, and I told her not to. What she does beyond that is not within my power. Ash, this trip was for you, and only for you. I wanted to get you here and show you off to my mother, who I then hoped would get off my back with regard to Eva. Obviously, that isn’t happening. My mother is just pushing back harder, and there’s nothing I can do about that.”
I stood there and watched tears crest her eyes again. That same tug in my gut that I had when I suffered through all those nightmares came flooding back. I didn’t want to hurt her. For the love of fuck, I wanted to love the woman. To cherish her and spoil her and travel with her and take care of her.
Why the fuck was that so hard to do in my life?
“I didn’t invite Eva,” I said. “I swear to God I didn’t.”
Ash shook her head and started back for her room, and when the door clicked shut, I knew that was it. There went my beautifully-planned night where I was going to tell her how much I loved her. Gone was the night where I would tell her that I wanted to be with her, and only her, no matter what life threw at us.
“Well, that was fun,” Eva said.
I ignored her and stomped off to bed.
I woke up the next morning, and I was dead set on making Ash breakfast. I was going to take it to her in bed before she got up and left for class, and I was hoping she would take me up on my offer to do lunch with me.
I would tell her that we could dodge Eva and still have time to ourselves, and hell, I’d even get us a new space, and Eva could have the house all to herself. I wanted to salvage the rest of the trip for her, and I wanted to spend it holding her close and telling her that things were going to be alright. I still wanted to tell her that I loved her and that she was the only one for me.
But after I was done fixing breakfast, I carried it into her room only to see she had already left. She had intentionally gotten up earlier than the crack of dawn, had gotten ready, and had left.
Without me.
Eva was still sleeping, and I tossed the breakfast into the sink like it wasn’t worth a damn thing. I felt empty and useless, and I had no idea where to go from here. Eva was her own person, and I couldn’t just demand she go back home no more than I could demand Ash to forgive me again.
I thought about chasing her down after class and begging her to go have lunch with me, but then I remembered I had two classes scheduled for her again today, and that she would probably just hoard herself away in a room and make jewelry until the next one started.
It killed me to think she wouldn’t even emerge into this beautiful city because of me to eat.
“Something smells divine,” Eva said, yawning.
“Dig your breakfast out of the sink if you want it,” I said flatly.
“Mason, do you remember that time you, Winston, and I went to see that opera in Vienna?”
I sighed and pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. I hoped that if I pressed hard enough, I’d wake up from this nightmare in the back of Ash’s rickety sedan while we looked at the glowing Hollywood sign, and I’d have a chance to do this all over again and not fuck up royally time after time after time.
“Yes, Eva. I do.”
“Gosh, we had the most incredible time. Winston brought that woman back to the hotel room and that’s when Winston became in tune with his voyeuristic side of himself.”
“Yeah. They screwed on the porch. I remember, Eva.”
The entire day was like that. Eva kept asking me if I remembered things, and I would play along with her silly little game of distractive conversation. She would remind me of the trips our families took together when my father was still alive, and then she would regale me with stories of things I only vaguely remembered of the trouble myself, her, and Winston got into with the trips we took as teenagers.
“Gosh, I still cannot believe our parents let us travel to Germany alone at seventeen. Winston was drunk that entire time.”
“That’s because we went during Octoberfest,” I said.
“And the schnitzel!” Eva exclaimed.
“God, you thought it was a funnel cake,” I said. “Their faces were priceless when you asked them to put powdered sugar on it.”
“Oh, I knew what it was,” Eva admitted.
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah. I knew it wasn’t a funnel cake. I just remember you had the most terrible time with Winston being constantly drunk and sick, and I wanted to make you laugh.”
I looked over at her for a while and really studied her, and then she did it again.
“Remember the first time we took this trip to Milan without your father?”
I had completely forgotten about that. My mother was so torn down and broken after my father’s death that the only thing I could entice her with was the trip to Milan. But she didn’t want to go shopping without my father, and I had gotten sick the day before the trip. So Eva had come along with us.
“You came because I was sick, and you shopped with my mom the entire time we were here,” I said.
“It was the first time I saw her smile since your father had died, Mason,” she said.
“I never did thank you for doing that for her,” I said.
“Well, you’re welcome,” she said. “Plus, I love this city. There is something very binding about it.”
“Eva,” I warned.
“Mason. You know as well as I do that our lives are seamlessly blended. We grew up together, and Winston is your best friend. The three of us have memories for years we could reminisce about in our old age, and our families are closely fused with one another, both in business and in pleasure.”
“Eva, I can’t do this with you,” I groaned.
“Stop being so stubborn and look at it logically for a second. I know Winston has gotten this ‘slumming it’ thing in your head because of some lost bet or whatever.”
“He told you about that?”
“But,” Eva emphasized. “Give me the Mason I know to be real for just a second. The logical one who understands why our lives work the way they do.”
“You’re trying to get me to see the value in our marriage. The financial value and how our families would blend and work well together. It would cement an incredible future for two very powerful and rich bloodlines, and you are trying to get me to understand that, if we wanted to, you’d probably let me take a mistress or something to save face and keep me happy. Right?”
“Well, I don’t know about that.”
“Right?” I urged.
“Well, yes, I suppose. It simply makes logical sense. It is how things are supposed to progress. We’ve always known this, Mason.”
I stood up and ran my hands through my hair, and I slowly strode over to the terrace. I threw open the doors and drew in a deep breath of the sweet, succulent Milan air. When the sounds of the city wafted over my ear drums, I tried desperately to hone in on the sounds of Ash.
I wanted to smell her perfume in the house and take in her laughter whenever I picked her up and swung her around. I wanted to plow into her hips just to hear her moan out loud, and I wanted my name to fall like a private prayer from her lips every single time I threw her over her edge.
“All right, Eva,” I said. “I need you to listen very closely to me.”
“I can do that.”
“I do not want you.”
“Excuse me?” she said flatly.
I turned around with fire in my eyes and connected with her gaze. I pulled my shoulders back and reached into my pocket and gripped my phone tightly.
“I do not want you,” I repeated. “I do not love you, and I never will. I want Ash. I love Ash. And you will not take that from me.”
“That is not your decision to make,” Eva rumbled.
“I believe it is, and my mother has the personal background to eventually be all right with this decision.”
“Need I remind you that my father is the premier accountant and financier of the whole of Silicon Valley?”
“How interesting,” I said. “It still doesn’t make me love you, though.”
“I will ruin you, Mason,” Eva hissed. “Your mother will rip the rug of your inheritance right out from underneath you, and my father will swoop in and convince her to let him handle her accounts. My family will drain you for all you are worth, and your mother will be none the wiser. While you are scrambling in the streets for whatever ‘ramen noodles’ are, my father will be draining your mother’s accounts until she’s left with nothing.”
“Eva,” I sighed as I pulled my phone from my pocket. “I think it would be best if you left.”
Her eyes flickered to my phone, and I pressed the red stop button. I pulled up the audio file and played it back. Her voice hissed out into the room.
“I will ruin you, Mason,” the recording began, “Your mother will rip the rug of your inheritance—”
“That’s enough,” Eva sighed.
“Like I said, I think it would be best if you left. I simply want to be with Ash. The woman I love.”
And then I strode past her and left. I grabbed my robe from the couch, and I tossed it around the suit clothes I fell asleep in last night, and I proceeded to take the rented car we had into town. I knew exactly what I had to do to show Ash how much I loved her and how much I was serious about this. I knew that, with all her insecurities, she would probably need a bombastic show of affection in order to understand that Eva was just an obstacle, and nothing else.
Lucky, bombastic was my specialty, and when I passed by the ring shop I was looking for, I swerved the car into a parking spot and jumped out.
I was going to buy Ash the perfect engagement ring, and then I was going to do everything within my power to find a way for her to fit into my world.
Even if it meant abandoning it altogether.