Chapter 1
Mason
What man turned down a woman when her hand was on his dick? No sane man—that was for sure. So, that meant I was officially crazy.
The windows were fogged up, and Janice’s legs were wrapped around my hips, her lips on my neck, her hands everywhere.
“We need to stop,” I croaked out, but it didn’t sound convincing.
We’d broken up six months ago. Why couldn’t my dick get the memo? And how had we gone from talking to locking lips and a hand job over my jeans?
When her hands trailed down my chest to my zipper, I stilled and held her shoulders, breathing heavily. We both were.
“Janice.”
She peered up at me with her emerald-green eyes, and my heart seized. I loved this girl. Well, I’d once loved her—for years, since college. If I could force the love to return, I would. But it wasn’t that way between us anymore. It hadn’t been that way for quite a while now. For the longest time, we had only been together for convenience, the familiarity of knowing each other, the comfort of having someone.
What had really driven a wedge between us was that we wanted different things. And we weren’t the same people we had been back in college.
She huffed and slid back to her seat, arms crossed over her chest and eyes staring out into the street of parked cars in front of us, near her condo.
“We can’t keep doing this,” I panted, trying to catch my breath.
Because we couldn’t. But there was always this push and pull between us. The arguments, the making out, the sex—it all had to stop.
She’d said she had to talk to me—again. And like many times before—too many to count—talking had turned into arguing, which turned into consoling and would end in sex. It was an unhealthy cycle.
I groaned, hating myself for turning down sex with her, but it had to be done. “I don’t want to keep doing this back and forth with you, Janice. It’s not fair to either of us.”
She flipped toward me, eyes narrowed, blazing fire. “Then, don’t do the back and forth. I gave you your ‘break.’” She put the word in air quotes, as though it were a word without backing, like I hadn’t meant it. “And now, it’s officially over.” She nodded, her lips pursing out.
I exhaled and closed my eyes, leaning my head against the headrest. How many times did I have to tell her? We weren’t on a “break.” We were broken up. Done. Forever. For good.
The tipping point had been her pressuring me to get married. I understood that marriage was the natural progression of any couple who’d been together for years. But when I thought of forever with her … well, I couldn’t. That was the problem. I couldn’t picture us together for the long haul, until we were gray and old like my parents.
I couldn’t picture her as a mom. I couldn’t get myself to imagine reciting vows to this woman, unsure if she’d mean it back. In sickness and in health. I’d taken care of her when she was drunk or had a cold, but I couldn’t say I’d received the same treatment. Janice simply was not the nurturing type. She had good qualities, great ones, but none of them included raising a family, which was important to me.
Where I had grown up in a household of brothers and a loving mother whose sole job was taking care of us, Janice had grown up as an only child. Her father and mother worked odd jobs to make ends meet, and Janice was passed from babysitter to babysitter, ones who were neither nurturing nor loving and who saw her simply as a paycheck. This had shaped Janice into the ambitious woman that she was. It was one of her greatest qualities—her ability to always strive for the best, to have more than what her parents had. I should have been flattered because, obviously, she’d picked me, right?
But when I thought about children, of which I wanted many, I couldn’t picture Janice being a mother like I’d had—the one who dried up every tear, kissed every bruise, taught us to be compassionate and that family was of the utmost importance. If I had to pinpoint where our relationship had gone sour, it was not only the marriage pressure, but also the fact that she was unsure if she wanted children.
“If you really want children, we can have one,” she had told me once. “But I’m not the type of woman who needs children to fulfill me.”
And I got that. But I was the type of man who knew that children would fulfill me. With two brothers myself and two nieces I adored, I knew I wanted a big family of my own.
“We’re done, Janice. It’s better. For me. For you.” I turned to face her, and honesty was all I had. “I can’t picture us getting married.”
She opened her mouth to speak, peered up at the ceiling, and blinked back to focus, her voice quieter this time. “If you’re freaking out, then fine, we’ll wait.” Her eyes softened, and then she reached for me, placing a light hand on my forearm. “I love you, Mason. We’ve been through so much together. Are you telling me you’re going to let our history, our past, everything we shared go? Why? For what, baby? Because you’re scared to get married?”
Because I’m scared to marry you. The words rang clear in my head.
It wasn’t because I was afraid of commitment. My parents had been happily married for thirty years. Charles had the happiest marriage out there. Brad was practically on his way down the aisle. I wouldn’t be surprised if he proposed within the next six months. I wanted commitment. I was the until death do us part kind of guy.
“I really have to go,” I said, mentally exhausted from this merry-go-round of emotions.
She practically growled and pushed out her lip, “Fine.”
“We need time apart right now.” My gaze dropped to the clutch of my Porsche. “I just don’t think we can be friends with everything going on, so it’s better …” I dared to look up at her. Her eyes screamed murder, but I’d take it. I’d take an angry Janice over a crying Janice. “It’s better if we don’t see each other at all.”
She huffed and placed a red-manicured hand on the door handle before shoving it open. She stepped out of the car and then leaned in. “Mason?” she said in the sweetest voice possible.
“Yeah?”
She smiled a vindictive smile. “Fuck you.” Then, she slammed the door shut.
I watched her storm to her condo. Not until after she threw up her middle finger and slipped inside did I let my head rest against the wheel of my car.
I am officially done with all women.
Gabby
It was a late Saturday evening, and I was immersed in grading papers for my eighth grade class, but for the life of me, I couldn’t concentrate. Usually, I’d be out at a salsa club on a Saturday, but I hadn’t been dancing in weeks.
I sat at our kitchen table, which was also our dining room table since we didn’t have a dining room. I was ignoring the noise around me—the coffee machine brewing in the background and the TV sitting on the counter, broadcasting the late-night news.
All I could focus on were the pictures in front of me. Pictures of Mike, my boyfriend—I should clarify, my ex-boyfriend. Pictures that had been sent to me.
Why couldn’t I date a normal guy?
My first boyfriend had been a professional pickpocket. Of course, I hadn’t known this at the time. I’d thought he got paid big bucks at Jack’s Pizza Place, which was why he could afford to buy me a Rolex watch and a Louis Vuitton purse at the tender age of seventeen.