Page 120 of Escape Velocity
“I will, Mom.”
She smiles at him and rubs his leg.
“Get back to packing. We’ll have a talk with your father at dinner later.”
She gets up and closes the door behind her and Mason rests his head on his headboard.
He feels silly now. If he had just been more vocal with what he wanted and spoke with more conviction, then maybe he wouldn’t have had to lie and protect himself all the time.
He had wasted so much time not saying how he felt that he had boxed himself into a cage of his own making. Maybe his parents had high expectations, but he never learned to question them.
This whole time, all he had to do was think for himself.
He vows to himself that as soon as he steps foot on the Montgomery campus that he’ll live the rest of this semester and every semester after as authentically as he can.
He’ll make himself known.
36
MASON
“Joel toldyour parents about your degree?”
“Yep.”
“And Callum told them about you two being an item?”
“Yes.”
“And then he told his dad about you both and your mom got him arrested?”
“Precisely.”
“And Joel and your cousin broke up?”
“Thankfully.”
“Geez, you miss one day in Northwood, and the entire place goes haywire.”
Mason chuckles as he interlinks his arm with Jenna’s.
He’s glad he has her by his side again after going the whole weekend having to deal with the police and his family.
It’s almost finals and he had completely forgotten about it all in the madness of everything.
Jenna gets a text, and Mason watches as her face completelyflushes.
Mason cranes his neck to try and see who she’s texting, but she angles her phone away from him.
He decides not to push it.
The air feels lighter as he walks across the frosty quad of Montgomery. Everything’s out in the open. He’s a well and true physics major who’s also on the school paper. It’s the same as it used to be, but knowing that his parents already know is enough of a weight lifted off his shoulders.
Whenever he sees Joel, he just laughs at him, watching him dejectedly try to avoid eye contact with Mason whenever he passes by.
He still hasn’t seen much of Callum since that day in their clearing.
It halted everything in their relationship, but he still can’t stop thinking about Callum’s confession to Mrs. Fanning and to Mr. Brown.
