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“Jesus, Noah,” Mason says, suddenly beside me. Is it already the end of his weight training? I was on the treadmill longer than I thought. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“A woman,” I gasp and I try to swallow down the reflux happening in my throat. It tastes like shit, and I pull a face.
Mason whistles through his teeth. “She did a number on you.”
I don’t answer. I don’t want Mason to tell me what a fuck up I am. Raven made it clear enough that I’m not good enough for anything other than a good time. I don’t need more of the same.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Mason asks.
“No,” I pant.
Mason shrugs. “Okay.” He sips from his bottle—the liquid isn’t clear and I’m sure it’s some kind of electrolyte mix.
“She lied to me.” I said I didn’t want to talk about it, but here I fucking go.
“Yeah? About what?”
“Having a daughter.” I try to straighten up and pinch the skin beneath my ribs on the righthand side. I have a stitch so bad I think I might die.
Mason narrows his eyes at me. “Did she say, ‘I don’t have a daughter,’ or did she not mention she had a daughter.”
“What’s the difference?” I ask, but I know what Mason means.
“I don’t know about this shit, man,” Mason says. “Suzanne is like that, too. It’s a communication thing. How long have you been seeing this woman? Hell, I didn’t even know you’re dating. I thought you’re Noah, Casanova, the biggest dick out there and he knows how to use it.” Mason chuckles after he recites how they like to talk about me when the guys are bantering back and forth in the locker room.
“A week,” I say, and as I say the words, I realize how stupid it sounds.
Mason blinks at me. “You’ve been seeing her a week, and you’re mad she didn’t tell you about her daughter?”
I shake my head. “It sounds wrong, I know. But we were more than that, Mace. We wereclose. Like, fucking close. And now it’s all ruined. She made it pretty damn clear I’m not long-term material.”
Rooster arrives, and when he sees us, he grins.
“Looks like you’ve already killed yourselves off. Pity, I was hoping to join you. Spot, or something, of course.”
Mason laughs. “You’ll never do the work, man.”
“I don’t have to. They don’t have me here for my muscles; they have me here for my brain.” He taps his temples. When I don’t laugh with him or make some shitty joke about how he’s not all that smart, he frowns.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Raven and I are over,” I say.
Rooster’s face falls. “Shit.”
“Is it a big deal?” Mason asks.
Rooster nods. “Yeah, she’s the one that got him. You know how it goes, right?”
Mason nods and I know he’s thinking about his Suzanne.
“She’s leaving for Paris soon,” I say. “And I shouldn’t give a shit because it wasn’t supposed to get this serious. But it did.”
Mason gets a call and he steps away from the conversation.
“Do you want to do this with her?” Rooster asks.
I nod. “I do. Fuck, I really do. She’s everything I never knew I needed in my life. But it’s not going to work out. She lives in Paris. And she has a daughter.”
