Page 18 of Mason

Jo made a face, but what could she say? In all likelihood, she would fall and possibly injure herself.

She powered through her shower, but as tired as she was, sleep eluded her. So instead, she went down to the basement where she had her studio set up, complete with soundproofed walls. Mason had helped her. Since it was against house rules to put anything up that might damage the walls, they’d first put up plastic sheeting and then applied the soundproofing tiles to that. It took a bit, but it turned out pretty great.

The room itself held a desk, her gaming desktop, and enough lights for Santa to see down the runway as he took flight from the North Pole. She booted up the PC, a new one that had been specially made with all the bells and whistles. It was a Christmas present from her family. Mason had told her brother she needed a new computer to compete with the other YouTubers. Mason, Keith, and her parents pitched in and got it for her. She didn’t even want to know the price. Just thinking about how much it cost gave her hives, but she had to admit, it made everything so much easier.

She flipped the switch, and several lights turned on, showcasing the white bookshelves she had directly behind where she sat. It housed some fan art, her favorite video game knickknacks, and some photos of her and her friends and family. The one of her and Mason was front and center. His black eyes twinkled with devilment, even in the photo. He was ornery, but the sweetest person.

Smiling, she sat at the desk and turned her attention to her gaming email first. She had several publishers asking her to showcase their games. She marked those and moved them to a folder. She needed to look through them whenResident Evilwas done. She made it a policy to only work through one game at a time. A lot of YouTube gamers had Let’s Plays of several different games going all at once for variety, but that wasn’t how she ran her channel. She broke up the monotony with movie reviews and other fun videos. Mason had starred in a few. He was fun to be on screen with. Some of her viewers had subscribed to his channel, and she was glad she could help him with that, at least, after all he’d done for her.

Once she’d finished all that, she opened her personal email. Keith had sent her a bunch of birthday memes, which made her laugh. Leave it to her big brother to know when she needed to smile.

Spam. How did her personal email always end up with more spam than actual emails? Delete, delete, delete…wait. One email caught her attention. Its subject was “Hey, Baby.”

Like the note from this morning.

She opened it, and it simply read, “I hope you had a good morning.”

The sender was anonymous.

Someone was seriously pranking her. She deleted the email and went through the rest of them. As much as she tried to dismiss it, she found she couldn’t. It stayed with her while she answered emails, set up some co-plays with a few friends, and put out a tweet about tonight’s Twitch stream featuring the newResident Evil.

It had to be a prank.

But what if it wasn’t?

Mason dropped his bookbag in the corner and sauntered over to his laptop. He really should work on his paper, but he wasn’t in the mood. Jo would give him grief if she knew he was waiting until the last minute to do it. She considered grades important. He did okay. He’d even managed to snag the dean’s list once or twice. He was too worried about his papa, Jo’s creepy note, missing money from the frat, and now he had to figure out if he should propose or just ’fess up to Jo and hope she’d go along with it.

But how would that make her feel? Him asking her to go along with playing at a fake engagement? It felt wrong, but it felt even more wrong to propose and hide the truth from her. He loved her, and he would marry her one day, but to have her feel forced into it? He was caught between a rock and a hard place. If he didn’t tell her, Papa would stop going to treatment, and if he did tell her, she’d be pissed. Or agree and then wonder if he’d ever really planned on asking her.

Fuck.

How did he get into these situations?

There was a knock on the door, and Ben stuck his head in. “You busy?”

“Nah, man. I just got out of my last class for the day. Whatcha need?”

“Did the police talk to you?”

Mason nodded. “Yeah, around noon. You notice the one detective with the eye that kept tracking to the right? It was so distracting, I can’t even tell you half of what they asked me.”

“Probably why they brought him.” Ben laughed and came in, closing the door behind him. “Everyone is pissed.”

“I figured they would be.” He’d been mad as hell himself when he found out.

“They’re talking about removing me as president.”

“You shitting me?” That was uncalled for. It wasn’t Ben’s fault some asshat decided to steal funds.

“Me and Billy both, since we’re the only two in the house who had access to the accounts. The cops confiscated both our laptops.”

“When is our next house meeting?” Mason would do what he could to keep Ben in his role as president. The guy had worked his ass off for this house.

“Day after tomorrow. I figured I’d give everyone a couple days to cool down. Billy’s freaked the hell out, and if I’m honest, so am I.”

“I’m sorry, man.”

He shook his head. “I just wanted to give you a heads up. Some of the guys may come talk to you about it, and I understand if you want me to step down too.”

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