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Wrung out and exhausted, we fell asleep in each other’s arms, and I didn’t even look at the clock on the nightstand until after four p.m., when I blinked my bleary eyes open.
Mason’s phone buzzed in his pants pocket a few times, and I was sure it was the other Princes calling or texting to see if he was okay. My backpack was still near the entryway, but I was sure I had missed messages from them too. Honestly, I was a little surprised they hadn’t barged into Prentice Hall and come banging down my door, but I assumed they hadn’t because they trusted me to handle Mason.
That in itself was a somewhat terrifying thought, but as I glanced at the sleeping boy next to me, I had to admit that maybe they weren’t wrong.
I hoped like hell they’d been able to smooth over whatever fallout there’d been from Mason beating up Preston on campus.
Adena and her minions had gotten away with jumping me during my first year at Oak Park, but no teachers or staff had witnessed that attack. It would be harder for Dean Levy to turn a blind eye like he seemed to be so fond of doing if the teachers had seen anything too damaging.
My gaze drifted down to Mason’s right hand, which lay across his stomach, rising and falling gently with his breath. I’d pulled my blanket over our bottom halves, and my head rested on his shoulder. The knuckles of his hand were red, the skin unbroken but bruised.
Pressing up onto my elbow, I peered down at his face, looking my fill without feeling the need to glance away for once.
I had never seen him sleep before. His brilliant green eyes were hidden by his closed lids, and his thick brown lashes curved gently over his cheeks.
He was beautiful.
But even in sleep, there was a hardness to the set of his features, a tension he carried in his muscles. As if even at his most vulnerable, he kept a shield up between himself and the rest of the world.
I chewed my lip, tilting my head slightly as my fingertips brushed over his chest.
In all the time I’d known him, Mason had always looked like this. I had never seen the tension drain from his face.
Except once.
Today.
When he was inside me.
I dropped my head back to his shoulder again, resting my hand over his on his stomach and curling into his body.
He had heard my quiet, barely-whispered words earlier. I was sure of it. But I truly was glad he hadn’t said anything, because I was fucked up in the head about it enough as it was.
Maybe the problem was that there weren’t enough words for love in the English language—not enough variations to express what we truly meant to say.
I wasn’t in love with Mason. So much more time would need to pass for me to know if that was even possible.
But what was the word for when a broken soul recognized another just like it? For when they joined together and their jagged edges fit?
Maybe it wasn’t love. But whatever it was, it made me want to wrap the blanket around the two of us and try to find peace in the storm, to let Mason protect me and to protect him right back.
I fell asleep in his arms again as those thoughts chased each other around and around in my head, and a few hours later, a loud knock on my apartment’s door jerked us both awake.
“For fuck’s sake,” Mason groaned, craning his neck to look at the clock.
My heart had jumped into overdrive when I was startled awake, and it didn’t slow down as the knocking came again. “Is it the other guys?”
“What do you think?” He rolled his eyes and sat up. Then he hesitated before leaning back down to cover my body with his own and kiss me.
It wasn’t as desperate as our previous kisses had been, but there was something… intentional about it that made my chest warm. He pulled back and stared down at me, his green eyes un-shuttered and fuzzy with sleep like they had been the night I’d gone up to his dorm to learn the truth about my mother.
He ran his fingertips over the line of my jaw, studying my face with a serious gaze. “Princess…”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I told him quickly.
I didn’t want to hear false words—hell, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to hear true ones. Whatever was going on between me and the Princes was confusing enough already without adding anything else into it.
He didn’t look satisfied with that answer one bit, but before he could say anything else, someone banged on my front door again.
