Page 66 of Hypnotized By Love

To be fair, he had warned me that he couldn’t turn the charm off, and he was true to his word.

Thankfully, my mom announced that dinner was ready, and we all filed into the dining room.

I sat in my regular seat, and when Sierra went to sit next to me, my mom said, “Sierra, you sit over here, next to Heather.”

Which meant the only seat left open for Mason was next to me.

Could my family be any more obvious?

Sierra reached down and grabbed the sharp knives from both of our place settings. “Just going to remove these potential murder weapons,” she said, quietly enough that only I heard her.

She probably had a point.

That urge to run had returned, but I had promised my mom I wouldn’t go up to the bedrooms and hide out. I would get through this dinner with Mason sitting right next to me and his arm bumping up against mine the whole time, and I would be calm and polite and make sure that Heather and my grandma had a good time.

And I managed to do it for a good twenty minutes, until I became worried I was going to burst out of my own skin.

At first Mason and I didn’t speak to each other, but his elbow kept brushing against my arm as we ate. Of course they had seated Mason not on my left but on my right, which pretty much guaranteed that we would bump into each other because of our dominant hands.

It was like my mom had orchestrated this entire evening just to frustrate me.

The longer it went on, the madder I got.

Part of that anger was because of how much I liked touching him, even accidentally. I was stupid and pathetic, and the longer I felt that way, the worse it got.

Tingles kept running up and down my arm, and I was having a hard time eating and breathing. It was like my brain wasn’t functioning properly, because all I could think about was how strong his arm felt and how warm his skin was and how good he smelled.

“Make sure you get your vegetables, Savannah,” Nana said, handing them to Mason to give to me. “You are what you eat.”

“I don’t remember eating stress and a sore ankle,” I said softly, and I saw the way his face lit up, as he’d clearly heard me, and I hated how much I liked it.

I also didn’t like the reminder that he and I had spent years making little inside jokes about my grandma’s platitudes and that I had just done it again, by accident.

I couldn’t even pay attention to the conversation. All of my energy was focused solely on him. Everyone else seemed to be enjoyingthemselves, and I would have tried to contribute if I’d been able to put two words together, but I was tongue tied and worked up and mad all at the same time.

It was so confusing.

My family were all sitting around talking to Mason like he hadn’t hurt me and everything was awesome, and I felt like the outsider, while he was the prodigal son who had finally come home.

Maybe I was the reason for that. Like, I was isolating myself. I should stop letting him distract me and pay more attention. Nana was telling a story about how she’d joined a knitting club but realized it wasn’t for her, and so she’d tried to give all of her yarn to one of her friends, but they’d had a falling-out because her friend didn’t want “used yarn.”

“I told her not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Nana said.

Mason leaned over to whisper to me, “To be fair, lots of people died because no one took the time to look in the most famous gift horse’s mouth in history.”

Only Mason would make a Trojan horse joke at dinner. I was amused against my will, and the back of my neck was breaking out in goose bumps from him whispering in my ear, his breath hot against my skin.

While caught up in my bewildering responses, I had to bear witness as Mason charmed Nana. Which caused my grandmother to make several comments to Sierra about Mason being single, which Sierra agreed was, in fact, a crying shame while sending pointed looks my way.

A conspiracy. This was an absolute plot to wear me down.

As soon as dinner was mostly over, I immediately stood up. “Please excuse me.”

My mom probably expected me to help clear the table, but I couldn’t do it right now. It was like my drunken night out with Mason had flipped some switch and I couldn’t turn it off again.

I wanted him despite all my best judgment, despite all my anger and resentment.

Then I had to remind myself that he hadn’t wanted me. That he’d turned me down. Even though he’d said he wanted to kiss me, too, he hadn’t done anything about it when he had the chance.

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