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“For God’s sake, just tell me in words, Mason. I’m sure you can guess that my mind can’t exactly wrap around this concept right now!”
“I can talk to you when you stop crying.”
“Don’t. Don’t act like I’m being crazy or too emotional when you just handed me an invitation to a wedding between my fiancé and a woman who is not me,” I seethed, turning away from him as the tears finally spilled. I trapped my sobs in my throat, refusing to let them out because I knew Mason would yell at me. But when a tiny one escaped, I heard more of a sigh.
“Taylor, I know this is a mindfuck. If it’s any consolation, it was probably Eva’s idea.”
“Why would she be with Aaron after being with you?” I demanded, blushing the second the question left my lips. But I couldn’t pinpoint why – at least not till I realized I was asking how a girl would settle for Aaron after having had Mason. Jesus, what kind of question was that, Taylor? I’d never entertained that way of thinking before. Ever. I had always loved having Aaron over Mason, no matter how hard my friends lusted over Mase and pressed me to confess that I fantasized about him. I didn’t. Not consciously, at least. Aaron was my choice Leo brother because he was handsome and smart and he made me feel safe because he wasn’t a heartless playboy.
He was loyal.
At least I thought he was.
Cheeks burning, I slowly returned wet eyes to Mason, waiting for him to pounce on my slip of tongue and point out that I’d given him a hugely inadvertent compliment. There was a glint of amusement in his eye that I wanted to strangle him for but to my surprise, he took mercy and gave me answers instead of grief.
“From what I heard, Eva thought she’d be the one to get me to propose. Her friend told me she already started picking out bridesmaids dresses, so yeah. She took it hard when I ended things.” He tilted his head. “You might’ve heard.”
“Yeah,” I said flatly. I didn’t read the tabloids that covered Mason’s sexcapades – mostly because I didn’t want to encourage Aaron’s bad habit of devouring them – but the news about Eva and Mason’s breakup had been absolutely everywhere. “TECH PRINCESS VANDALIZES LEO GROUP OFFICE!” The headline was emblazoned across every blog, paper and magazine, and Aaron and I had literally made a bag of popcorn to watch the viral footage when it came out. It was admittedly hilarious. The surveillance cameras at Mason’s Park Avenue office shot practically in HD, and they caught Eva with four friends breaking in just past 4AM. They all looked gorgeous in their mini skirts and stilettos as they trashed the entire floor, drawing dicks on the walls with lipstick and taking breaks only to wink up at the camera.
Mason never pressed charges, and last I checked the clip was nearing twenty million views.
“Yeah.” He pressed his mouth into a hard line, but I could see the laughter dancing behind his blue eyes. “So, my guess here is that Eva’s trying to get back at me now by marrying my brother – which sounds crazy to a normal person like you, but to someone who’s dated her, it’s just another day of the week.”
I was speechless, staring through tears at Mason in my miniscule kitchen. So it was real. Really happening. True love or not, Aaron had left me for a billionaire’s daughter and not only that they’d be wed in a matter of weeks. It was humiliating and to make things worse on me, my brain was repeating that pesky mantra that had been haunting the past two perfect years with Aaron. You should have let it end when you had the chance. You could have avoided all this pain.
“Fuck,” I breathed out hard, feeling worse now than I did on the day that he left me because on top of being heartbroken, I was livid. I never wanted to look at Aaron ever again, and at the same time, I was desperate to see him. I needed to ask a million questions to his face but most of all, I needed to know when his heart had grown so cold. When he had found the bravery to leave the woman he’d been to hell and back with – the woman he said he couldn’t wait to have children with.
Lastly, I wanted to know if he thought about how I’d be alone in bed every night, crying myself to sleep while he spent his evenings with Eva at the Tully estate in Silicon Valley, popping bottles of champagne three times the price of our rent.
The rent that was now solely mine to pay.
Double fuck.
And just like that, I burst into tears. Damn it, Taylor, I cursed myself because the only thing I hated more than feeling this emotionally out of control was Mason Leo, so ugly crying in front of him was most definitely a worst-case scenario on this lovely Wednesday morning. It didn’t help that as I cried, his expression refused to move let alone twitch with even an ounce of sympathy. A pathetic hiccup escaped my lips as Mason glanced at his cell phone.
“When you’re done, I’ve got a proposition for you.”
I swallowed and stared in disbelief. “You are so remarkably insensitive,” I breathed.
“I can’t imagine that’s new information for you.”
“It’s not, yet I keep letting you surprise me.”
“We Leo boys are full of surprises then, aren’t we?”
Fire lit my eyes as I burst from my chair. “Okay. You have to go now.” I tried to grip his arms, but my fingers failed to wrap around even half their muscle. Goddamnit, Mase. I knew he was smirking as he watched me struggle to remove him from my kitchen and apartment. When I finally got him to the door, he stopped to face me.
“I want you to come with me to that wedding, Taylor.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“If I am, it benefits you.”
“How?”
“Come with me and I’ll make your debt disappear.”
“Like I said, you’re out of your fucking mind,” I hissed, going for the door. But with a hard step forward Mason backed me up against it. My breath hitched in my throat as he hovered just over me, a dark look clouding over his face.
