Page 134 of I Heart Mason Cartwright
Mason
Willow steps asideto let me in.
Oh, thank god! One hurdle down. Now to convince her why I did what I did.
“Your dad was here, are you okay?” I ask. She looks like she’s been crying. Probably because I’m the world’s biggest asshole. Or else her dad is.
She nods in response to my question. “We talked. It was good. Really good. He said a lot of things I needed to hear.” She sits down in her favorite chair. I sit on the coffee table in front of her and take her hands in mine. She doesn’t pull away.
So far, so good.
“I am so sorry about AshLynn and not telling you the truth. I was embarrassed about something that happened, that she caught me doing, and at first I didn’t want you to know. Then, as more time passed, I couldn’t figure out how to tell you without making you angry that I hadn’t told you before.” I pause in case she wants to say something, but she stays silent.
I continue, “The first night we were here, after AshLynn and I arrived, you remember we ordered pizza?”
She nods.
“I went outside to play ball with P-Tink. Only we lost the ball. When I was looking for it, I saw you, through your bedroom windows, just out of the shower. The curtains you had up hid nothing. You were putting lotion on that beautiful body of yours.”
She gasps.
“I watched you from the time you got out of the shower, until you got dressed. I fell in love with you that night. Not just because you are beautiful, but because of how I felt when I was with you. When you look at me, and now that we’ve been together, for so much more.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with AshLynn,” she says.
“I’m getting to that,” I tell her. “As you were dressing, AshLynn caught me watching you from the beach. She threatened to have me arrested for voyeurism if I didn’t pretend to be her fiancé.”
“I’d like to say I’m surprised,” she says. “But I don’t think I am.”
“Yeah, well, I sure was. I knew I had feelings for you, I didn’t want you to get creeped out knowing I’d seen you. And I was only supposed to have to pretend for an hour or so, it was never supposed to go as far as it did.”
“Why did it go so far?”
“AshLynn thought she could get her inheritance if we were engaged. And she claimed to have a picture of me touching myself while watching you.”
Willow smirks. “Did she?”
“No.”
“Wait, how were you even together in the first place then?”
“I met her at the bar in the hotel where I was staying. I bought her a couple drinks, she told me she was stranded, and needed a ride to Seattle. I was coming here anyway and before I realized what I was doing, I offered.”
“So, did you guys . . .?”
“No, we did nothing, no kissing, no hand holding, absolutely nothing. I felt bad for her because her boyfriend had just abandoned her at the wedding she was at, when she’d thought he was going to propose. Apparently, she’d told everyone he was going to and was humiliated when he didn’t.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yeah, Brian I think his name was. They hadn’t been together long. They met a week or so before at the bachelor/bachelorette party.”
“Leave it to AshLynn to think she can get engaged to a guy she’s known a couple weeks.”
“I wanted to marry you after a couple hours,” I tell her.
“No, you didn’t,” she says.
“Yeah, I did. And as far as I knew today, you accepted my proposal, then left me. You took off the ring I’d just given you and left in the middle of what was about to be an engagement party, to go with your family. Who, as far as I’m concerned, do not deserve any time or consideration from you.”
