“I don’t want you to go.”
“I can’t stay.”
“You can.”
Can I?
My heart feels like a baseball that’s been pummeled by so many swinging bats. My whole life I’ve fought to keep the stitching together, tending to the battered edges. Yet, Mason Lowell shows up, and I allow him to hit a home run straight out of the gate.
Why am I still here?
“Sleep in my bed. I refuse to leave you alone after...” His pity sears into my skin, making me want to claw at the flesh. “Sleep in my bed, please. I will stay in the spare room and will drop you home first thing. Just don’t leave.”
Pride is a funny thing. It’s restricting, suffocating, and at times has held me back from making life choices.
Always refusing to leave myself open to any more hits. Everything insidemetells me to go, and it’s not my pride or morals or stubbornness that stops me.
I’m at war with something else.
It’s the soul-deep pride in the blacks of his eyes that bleeds out between us.
‘Just don’t leave.’
And I won’t. My pride, my morals, my stubbornness—who knows, but I don’t leave. I lethispride suffocate me, restrict me, hold me back from making a choice that I may or may not regret.
* * *
Vinny arrives justafter seven a.m. to pick me up. I lay awake for the last three hours, waiting for a semi-acceptable time to call him, and his expression as I climb into the front seat of the Audi is the exact reason I couldn’t call a taxi. I look like a mess.
“Good morning, Nina,” he says chirpily.
“I’m so sorry, Vinny. I know it’s a Sunday.” I do up my seat belt and settle in as he pulls out onto the deserted road.
“You can call me anytime, you know that, love.”
“Thank you. I couldn’t get a taxi in this.” I gesture to the oversized joggers and T-shirt I stole from Mason’s wardrobe.
“I’ve seen worse.” He winks.
I smile, leaning my head back against the seat, glad to be away from the penthouse but sad to leave Mason behind.
Vinny sits quiet, tapping his finger on the steering wheel whilst listening to the radio. I try to think of anything but the doubts in my head.
“Do you have a family, Vinny? A wife?”
“No. I’m better, happier alone.” He smiles, and I can tell he is being genuine. He believes his words.
“I can relate to that,” I look up at him. “You don’t think one day though, if you found the right person?”
“It would take a saint to put up with me, Nina.”
“Because of your job? Having to rescue damsels in distress from raving lunatics at stupid hours of the day?”
“Exactly that,” he chuckles. “And then some.”
“Well, I think any woman would be lucky to have you. You’re a catch, you know,” I say, elbowing him in the arm.
His phone starts to ring throughout the car, and Mason’s name lights up the screen.
