Page 123 of I Heart Mason Cartwright
Mason
Did that just happen?
I look at the house in shock. Then around at the party. Everyone’s face there reflects what I’m feeling. Except my mom, she looks at me with sympathy.
Sympathy.
Her family crashed the party, insulted everyone here, then left.
And she went with them.
Fuck!
I have to tell her we weren’t really engaged. I should have told her long ago. It was stupid not to.
Goddammit.
And now she’s gone. I run into the house to stop her. But the town car is passing the bend in the drive by the time I reach the front yard.
“Willow!” I yell. The car doesn’t stop. I head back into the house to get my keys so I can go after her.
Which is when I see the ring.
Right next to her cell phone.
She left the ring on a small counter in the kitchen where we keep our keys and charge our cell phones. She took it off minutes after I put it on her finger. Minutes after she said she would marry me. She took it off and left it here to follow her insufferable, fucked-up family to god knows where.
What the fuck is going on?
I sink to the floor with the ring in my hand. Looking at it as though it holds all the answers to what just happened. Is this her way of now saying no?
She nodded yes. She kissed me like she meant yes.
Kissed you back, you mean.
I can’t even call her if she doesn’t have her phone.
She left her ring. She doesn’t want you calling her.
“Mason, are you in here?” I hear my mom, but I don’t answer. She’ll find me eventually. And she does. “Oh no. Oh, Mason, I’m so sorry,” is what I get when she sees the ring.
“What does this mean?” I ask, looking at the ring. The fucking ring.
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
“She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry, Mason.”
“You don’t seem surprised,” I say. “Even out there, when everyone else was shocked as hell, you looked at me like you were sorry. What does that mean? Why did you do that?”
“I am shocked, Mason. I did not expect this at all.”
“Then what is it?”
“Family dynamics are difficult. And what Willow has gone through is harder than most. She has an attachment to her family, and it’s understandable. It would make sense that she would talk to them after what happened today.”
“Why leave with them? Why take off the ring? Why not just do it here? With me?”
