“Olivia, I didn’t know how you’d react to all of the stuff with Raymond Daniels and I can’t help but to want to protect you from it all,” he tells me as if confessing a great sin.
I let out a long, deep sigh and shake my head at him.
“You can’t protect me, Mase, it’s too late for that now. The damage was done years ago. I understand what you mean, but honestly, all of the details can’t do anything as bad as what they actually did to me.”
“I didn’t think of it that way.”
“Look he could have a hundred wives and twice as many children, I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me, and he is responsible for that, not me. I can’t deny that I do feel some guilt that I could have stopped him sooner and didn’t, but if I couldn’t stop him when I first tried why would I have been able to later?”
Mason is staring at me with confusion and possibly disbelief.
“This might sound as though I have magically come to this conclusion, but I haven’t. I’ve had some time to think and have decided that I am going to call the police, to give them a statement. Now that they are looking for evidence there’s a greater chance they’ll believe me in a way they may not have done before. Oh, and I don’t need legal advice, I have done nothing wrong.”
“I see.”
“There’s more,” I go on. “I am going to call your mum to arrange to do her sunroom and if you’re still sure you want me to live here with you, I will contact my landlord. But there is a condition Mason,” I warn. “I am not a member of your staff and this, us, is not a business negotiation where you hold a majority share. We are equal, this is a partnership and we need, both of us need to treat the other accordingly.”
“You mean me? I need to treat you as an equal,” he states.
I shrug, I don’t need to say anything else, he already knows what I mean.
“I thought I’d fucked it up completely after your panic attack,” Mason confesses and fixes me with a firm stare that says he wants me to explain why it happened.
I have no intention of telling him that some of the words he used when I pretended to be asleep were reminiscent of Raymond’s because my boyfriend would be devastated to know that and it would serve nobody’s interests, it was incidental and a coincidence.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me
I remember my dad telling me that when a girl in my class was calling me nasty names. Words can cut as deep as a knife and take a lot longer to heal, but in this case I will not allow words to hurt Mase. His crime is to have been overprotective rather than to cause any deliberate pain to me, not that I will allow him to continue to do so. As I told him previously, he needs to learn from his fuck ups, not simply apologise for repeating them.
“I had a nightmare about something that happened. I once tried to pretend I was asleep with Raymond and I think a combination of trying that last night and the news triggered the dream and the panic attack. I had one yesterday, in your office when I heard the news, but awake I can usually cope with them, use my strategies to overcome them, but clearly not in sleep.”
“Do you have them often?” He speaks as if waking up to your girlfriend having a panic attack is the most normal and socially acceptable thing in the world. There is nothing resembling pity or judgement in his tone.
I shake my head. “Not anymore, usually only if I am stressed and Conrad Mathers and Raymond being in the news is pretty stressful.” I smile weakly as I begin to drink my coffee. “I want you to tell me everything you know about what’s going on, Mase.”
“I will, I promise, no more secrets,” he pledges.
“Except for birthdays and Christmas.” I smile.
“Agreed baby.” He smiles back with his first genuine smile of the day before taking a sip of his own drink. “I can start right now.” He immediately begins to tell me everything he knows, every detail Jimmy has found out and shared with him.
Eventually, when all the details are out in the open, we both fall asleep and neither of us wake until there’s a knock on the bedroom door followed by Mona calling Mase’s name.
“Mase, it’s after ten. Arianna is here, you’re late, you have a meeting,” she calls as we both stir, wrapped around each other.
“Shit!” Mase disentangles himself from me, but then at the last minute leans back in to kiss me, gently and lovingly. “Mona, tell Arianna to give me half an hour and I’ll be there.”
“Okay,” Mona replies. “I’ll do your coffee to go,” she adds and then she’s gone.
“Sorry,” I tell Mase as I look up at him. “For giving you a sleepless night and for oversleeping.”
“I can’t say sleepless nights like last night are something I want to do on a regular basis, but it wasn’t your fault nor was the oversleeping.”
With a lazy stretch, I am wrapping my arms around Mase’s neck and pulling him in for a hug that he immediately reciprocates.
“I really can’t miss this meeting,” he says apologetically. “But if you’d like to, we could share a shower.” His suggestion is a little nervous which is not how I want him to be, to still be worried that I am fragile or holding some kind of grudge.
Deciding that I need there to be no misunderstanding in what I am saying, in how I feel about last night and the future with him I choose my words carefully. “I’d love that, assuming by a shower you mean soaping me up everywhere before fucking me against the tiled wall.”
