Reputation (Mason Family 2)

She opens her mouth to respond when her phone dings again. I bite my lip as she looks at the reply and brace myself for the punch that hits me in record time.

“Ouch!” I chuckle, rubbing my shoulder where she blasted me with her fist.

She looks at her screen and reads the text I sent from her phone to Suit out loud.

“I’m fucking someone else now. Don’t text me again. Coy!” She hits me again. “Why did you do that?”

I don’t know.

It was a huge overstep on my part, and I’m aware of that. But at the same time, it doesn’t feel wrong. Not even a little bit.

I reach for her slowly, carefully, and take her in my arms. And then I hold her against me again.

“You’re much more cooperative when you’re in my arms,” I tell her.

She hums with her cheek pressed against my arm.

“Was I out of line doing that?” I ask her.

“Probably.”

“Huh.”

She turns her head so she can see me. “Aren’t you going to apologize?”

“No. Why would I do that? I’m not sorry.”

She rolls her eyes and turns her head again. “Just because we had this night together doesn’t mean I’m never having sex with anyone ever again.”

Her body stills against mine as I let that simple sentence resonate in my brain.

She’s right, of course. She’ll end up in bed with another man, and it’ll probably be some asshole like Suit who doesn’t give a flying fuck about her.

That pisses me off.

I hold her tighter.

I try to construct a response that fits the situation but also isn’t a lie. But no matter how I phrase it, it fails.

“It’s okay,” she says quietly.

“What’s okay?”

“I know you have to leave.” She looks at me over her shoulder again. “That’s what you’re thinking about, aren’t you? That you have to leave, and you’re afraid I’ll be mad again.”

“Kind of.”

She smiles sadly. “I won’t be. Unlike before, I feel like we’ve laid everything on the table. And …” She turns away and presses a soft kiss to my forearm. “I have a lot going on here to worry too much about it. You know?”

My heart breaks at the pain in her voice. You can hear the scab being ripped off her wound. Being together allowed her to escape it for the past few hours. But now that an end is in sight again, her reality festers again.

I have a reality too—one with multi-million-dollar contracts and agreements and tour dates and recording schedules. Or at least, I will have all of that. All of those things aren’t possible in Savannah.

We both know that.

I can sense her pulling away from me emotionally. I hate it, but I don’t have an answer or a solution to offer her.

“You know what?” I ask.

“What?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You have a lot on your plate, and so do I,” I say, even though my shit feels a whole lot less important than hers. “You might wake up in the morning and decide you hate me again, too. Then none of this stuff will matter.”

She nods. “Except that you’ve ruined my booty call with Suit. I’ll have to find someone else to service me quickly.”

Her words hit a spark deep inside me. I roll her over on her back.

Hovering over her, I stare into the blues of her eyes.

“If you ever need anything, you call me, and I’ll either talk to you, come home, or fly you to me,” I tell her. “You wanna fight, fuck, or flee your life for a while—I’m your man.”

She grins. “You’re in the top four of them, anyway.”

A slow smile spreads across my cheeks. “You little shit.”

She laughs. It’s music to my ears.

I reach over to the nightstand again.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I think you need to be reminded who your number one is.” I grab a condom out of the box and flop back on the bed.

She rolls onto her side and watches me rip the wrapper.

“I thought you were exhausted. And old,” Bellamy teases me.

“I am. Both.”

“So, how are you going another round?”

I roll the condom over my cock yet again.

“Because you, beautiful girl, don’t realize how gorgeous you are and how impossible it is not to want to fuck you when you pretend I’m not the best.”

She grins. “Who said I’m pretending?”

I lean over and kiss her. She melts into me, just like I knew—and hoped—she would.

“You just did,” I whisper.

She bites her lip to hide a smile, but I still see it. I see so many things buried in her sky-blue orbs that I could get lost there for days.

I don’t know how to sort all of this out or what it means—if anything—for the two of us. I just know that right now, there is absolutely nowhere else I want to be.

Bellamy has always drawn me toward her. How did I walk away without looking back?