Chapter Fourteen
Mason
Big fat raindrops plunked against the windshield. April showers bring May flowers, or so they said, but Mason would have happily foregone the colors of spring if he could go out even once this month without getting soaked to the bone.
An obnoxious wail cut through the steady pitter-patter. If the idiot behind him honked one more time, Mason was ready to throw his truck in reverse and ram him. Where the hell did he want him to go? An ocean of brake lights lit up the road ahead.
Buzzing started in the passenger seat and the theme song to his favorite old-school cartoon filled the space between horn blares. Mason dumped the truck into park—he wasn’t going anywhere anyway—and reached for his phone. A picture of Ashlyn lit up the screen. A candid shot she didn’t know he’d taken and would probably insist he delete if she ever saw it. It was Mason’s favorite. The godawful Bart’s apron hung around her neck and wild hair was plastered to her cheeks, but she was smiling at something Em had said and she looked . . . happy.
He’d taken it back when they all worked together. Mason missed those days, but things had gotten complicated. That was mostly his fault. It didn’t matter, though. School would be over in less than a year and then he’d be on his way, starting ground-floor at his parents’ company just like everyone else and earning his way up. He’d looked forward to the challenge for a long time.
Sliding his finger over the glass, Mason lifted the phone and sank back into his seat. “Hey. I’m on my way home, but I’m stuck in—”
“Mason.” Her voice sounded as though it had been squeezed through a straw and he could hear her panting on the other end of the line.
“Ash?” He straightened. “What’s the matter?”
“I . . . um . . .” An audible swallow told him they were on dangerous ground.
The guy behind him honked again, but Mason didn’t have time for his bullshit. The technical term for what Ashlyn did was called ‘purging’. Mason had done his homework. Countless hours spent browsing endless websites on the subject. There was some disturbing stuff out there, but he’d screwed things up royally with Lucy. This was too important—Ash was too important—to get it wrong again.
“Talk to me. What happened?”
In most cases it seemed purging was used as a way to eliminate calories after binge eating to avoid weight gain; a strategy that had recently been proven ineffective, not to mention dangerous. That wasn’t Ash. She didn’t pick at food like a bird the way some girls did, but she never over ate either. He’d always admired her healthy appetite and her ability to go wing-for-wing with him on buffalo nights at the Pizza Palace. Never once had she gone running for the closest bathroom after one of those.
No, Ashlyn was part of a smaller percentage that used purging to eliminate feelings. Negative emotions that she let build up inside of her. She buried them—locked them away behind a beautiful smile and a sharp tongue—until she couldn’t contain it anymore. All that negativity had to go somewhere, so she found a way to expel it without having to rely on anyone but herself.
Now she was relying on him.
“I got a letter.”
“Okay.” Mason shifted into drive, creeping forward the grand total of three feet of space that had built up between him and the car in front of him. The gray sky flashed and thunder rolled over him. “Who was it from?”
Keep it simple. She wasn’t great at opening up, so he aimed to make it as easy as possible for her.
“I . . . I don’t know. I think . . .” A quiet sniffle and he knew she’d been crying. Maybe she still was. Mason dropped his head back against the headrest and ground his teeth. What he wouldn’t give to be there to wipe away her tears. “ . . . I think it was him, Mas. The guy who spray painted my house.”
“Where are you? Are you home right now? Alone? Is the door locked? Are you okay?” Dammit. Reports of flooding had been playing on the radio when he left work. Why hadn’t he taken a different route?
“Yes. Yes. Yes. And I think so . . . Maybe? I d-don’t know.” Her voice was so quiet he could barely hear her over the whoosh of his wiper blades. Convulsive swallowing traveled down the line and she took a shaky breath.
“Stay with me, Ash. I’m on my way.” His fingers clenched around the steering wheel. It was a battle to keep his impatience buried.
“What if my mother was right? What if I should have dropped out of the trial? I told you, Mason. I make bad decisions. What if I made another one? What if someone gets hurt because I—”
“Whoa. Take a breath with me, okay?” He waited and heard her do as he asked.
Do not screw this up. Mason’s mouth ran dry. He felt trapped. Helpless. His sweaty palms slid down the wheel. One wrong word and he could shake the narrow ledge of control she teetered on.
“It’s gonna be alright. No one’s getting hurt.” Christ. Mason shut his eyes and breathed deep, resting his forehead against the steering wheel. “No one can predict the future, Ashlyn. We all take a risk every time we make a choice. Sometimes we’re right. Other times we’re wrong. We’re human. We all make mistakes. The best any of us can do is decide what we believe is right . . . and do it. No one can decide that for you. And I can’t promise it’ll always work out the way you want it to. But I can promise that you won’t have to face it alone.” His voice was thick and he knew she could hear it, but he didn’t care. “I will be there with you, no matter what.”
A car horn blared behind him again and Mason jerked his head up to examine a bleary view of the open road ahead. The water must have been cleared and traffic was on the move.
“Mason?” Ashlyn’s voice sounded much sturdier.
He hit the gas. “Yeah?”
“Can you pick up a pizza?”
Mason smiled to himself. Crisis averted. “Yeah. I think I can do that.”
***
The pizza was hot. Hot, hot, hot. Burning his hands through the flimsy cardboard box. Mason shut the door and stopped to kick off his sneakers, precariously balancing the pie and the two liter in one hand. A trick he’d mastered working at the Pizza Palace. But the Pizza Palace didn’t have entryways that felt like a freaking ice rink. His foot shot out from under him and the pizza box skidded across the slippery hardwood. The soda erupted like Mount Saint Helens, spraying the walls and entry floor where Mason lay sprawled on his back.
Ashlyn appeared and he could see her straining to fight back a smile even as her hands went to her hips. She scanned the wreckage and rolled her eyes. “That happened.”
Without bothering to ask if he was alright or offer him a hand, she scooped up the pizza and retreated into the living room, leaving Mason lying there . . . grinning like an idiot.
How long had it been since he’d laid eyes on her? Two weeks? Three? Harrison had kept his shit together so she hadn’t needed to make use of his personal taxi service and with finals coming up, all of Mason’s spare time was spent going over notes and analyzing flow charts. One late night rolled into the next early morning, hours piled on top of one another until too many had passed without him even noticing. Sure they’d texted, but, damn, he’d missed seeing her face.
After using half a roll of paper towels to sop up the mess, he stripped out of his jacket and hung it on a peg inside the door, rubbing a sore spot on his lower spine.
“I’m fine in case you were wonder—” Goosebumps sprouted up and a chill swept through him. Scrubbing his hands up and down his arms, Mason frowned. He was sorely tempted to reclaim his coat. “Did you forget to mention you adopted a penguin?”
Ashlyn smirked. “Stop being a baby. It’s not that cold.”
Her argument might have held more merit, however, if she hadn’t issued it from beneath a blanket fort on the couch.
Bloodshot eyes and a blotchy rose color in her cheeks were the only signs of the raw emotions he’d heard from her not twenty minutes earlier. She’d dug a hole and buried them deep again and Mason was willing to let it go. She’d done an incredible job managing them and he was proud of her. But he couldn’t dismiss what had caused them to come to the surface in the first place.
“Where is it?”
Ashlyn set her paper plate aside, having only taken a single bite of her pizza.
“I . . . um . . .” Scrape, scrape, scrape. Her fingernails bore the sole focus of all of her concentration. “I dropped it.”
Mason settled on the couch and tucked his fingers into his palms to keep from reaching for hers.
“It said . . .” The scraping ceased. “Mason, it was . . .”
“What?” She was afraid to tell him and that sent fear slithering deep in his gut. “What was it, Ash?”
“That.” Chipped purple nail polish flicked across the coffee table as she pointed to a piece of paper discarded on the floor.
Mason kept an eye on Ashlyn as he moved to retrieve it. It didn’t take long to figure out what had her so upset.
“Christ.”
Individual letters cut from magazine clippings, like something from an old horror movie, spelled out a macabre poem:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
He’ll die first,
Then it’s me and you.
“Sick. Twisted. Bastard.” The page crumpled in his fist before dropping to the floor.
Too pissed to keep still, Mason paced across the living room. He could feel Ashlyn watching him, but couldn’t bring himself to stop until he noticed the way she’d pulled her feet up onto the couch and wrapped her arms around her knees, making herself as small as possible.
“Hey.” Taking a knee on the floor beside her, he folded her hands in his. “Don’t you let this asshole scare you.”
“He threatened you, Mas.” She blinked hard.
“He’s nothing but a bully and a coward. He can’t hurt anyone. Not me. Not you.” Her fingers tightened around his and he moved one hand to cup her cheek. “I will not let him hurt you.”