Chapter Ten
“Hayden, no!” I said.
“He’s a mobster, Alexandra. You shouldn’t be anywhere near him.”
“No, I’m not,” Mason said in an angry voice.
The music stopped and I realized a few of the servers were headed our way.
“Sydney Algoth’s your dad?” Benny asked as he moved through the crowd toward us.
Mason looked around and sighed. “Yeah, but he’s not in the mob, and I haven’t seen him since his name got tied up with them. I have no part in the mob, either.”
Benny’s lips became tight as a throbbing silence surrounded us. “…Don’t you be coming around my shop anymore,” he finally said.
“Are you firing me?”
“Benny,” Emmaline said softly from beside him.
“And you don’t be coming around, neither,” he said as he jerked his hand away from her.
“What?!” Emmaline looked at Benny with the same heartrending expression Hayden still wore.
“I’m going to have to ask you all to leave,” one of the men in red said when he reached us.
“But he’s the one causing the trouble,” Mason said, pointing at Hayden.
“He’ll have to leave too, but we don’t allow your sort in this hall.” More men came to stand behind him.
Mason’s jaw clenched. “Fine. You should stay, though, Alexandra. This is your special night.”
“No. You all need to leave.”
“This isn’t her fault.”
“It’s all right, Mason. I would rather go with you,” I said, looking up at him. “Just let me get my purse.”
“Someone will get it for you. You really need to leave this hall,” the man in red said to me. I was humiliated. I’d never been thrown out of any place before.
“I’ll get it for you, Alexandra. Then I’m taking you home,” Hayden said before he headed to the tables.
“No, you’re not.” Mason tried to go after him, but a few men moved to stand in front of him.
“Please leave, sir, or we’ll have to call the police.”
Mason took my hand and led me to the doors.
“Wait—Benny, wait for me,” Emmaline said as she and Benny walked behind us.
He ignored her until we were outside. “I said stay away from me. You three are going to need to find someone else to take you home,” he said.
“But Benny, you said you loved me. You can’t just leave me here,” Emmaline said in a shaky voice.
“I said stay away from me.”
She stopped on the sidewalk and watched him as bitter tears streamed down over her cheeks.
“Emmaline, Benny’s not a good guy,” I said, going to put my arm around her. “When you were in the bathroom—” I glanced at Mason and decided it didn’t matter if I told him about Benny or not, since he didn’t work for him anymore. “—he tried to kiss me.”
“Are you serious?” Mason asked in disbelief.
“Yes. I could smell liquor on his breath, and then when I mentioned you and Mason he had the nerve to deny that you were his girlfriend. You’re really better off without him.”
“No…you’re lying. This is all your fault.” Emmaline pulled away from me and began sobbing.
Mason started walking away. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“He tried to kiss you.”
“Don’t leave.” Things were already bad enough.
Mason’s expression hardened when he looked behind me. A second later I felt someone take my arm and pull me toward the parking lot. “Come on, Alexandra,” Hayden said as I looked over to see who it was. My feet moved automatically when I was forced to follow him.
“I don’t want to go with you, Hayden. You’ve just destroyed Mason’s good name and cost him his job.” I pulled my arm away as hard as I could, but he kept hold as he turned to face me.
“Do you realize how much trouble you’re already in? Don’t make this worse for yourself.”
“I’m not in trouble.”
“What do you think your father’s going to say?”
Hayden finally let go when a fist collided with his face. He fell down against the long sidewalk and Mason stood over him. “I’ve tried to be patient, but you’re pushing me too far. Now LEAVE—ALEXANDRA—ALONE!” Mason shouted.
Seeing my purse lying on the ground at my feet, where Hayden had dropped it, I bent down to pick it up.
Hayden tried to kick Mason’s legs, but Mason moved out of the way. “You’re the one who’s going to leave her alone. She’s forbidden to see you. What part of that don’t you understand?”
“No one is going to keep me away from Alexandra, especially not you.” Mason took my hand and started walking away.
“No!” Hayden took my other hand and pulled me toward him. “You’re not leaving with him. I’m taking you home right now.”
Mason pushed Hayden back and stood in between us. “Back off. If Alexandra wanted to go with you I wouldn’t stand in her way, but she doesn’t. She’s going with me.”
“Hayden,” Emmaline came over to him and clutched his arm, still in desperate tears. His expression softened only slightly when he looked at her. “Hayden, will you please just take me home?”
“Of course I will, just as soon as Alexandra agrees to come.”
“Do you want me to go with you, Emmaline?” I asked, unwilling to let her go home and suffer alone. I walked around Mason to put an arm around her, but she stepped to the side and gave me a truly hateful look.
“Benny’s gone because of your boyfriend, and you knew…You always knew and you didn’t even bother to tell me.” She waved toward the dance hall. “This is your fault. You ruined everything. Don’t you dare come back to my house again tonight.”
I felt my eyes tearing up. “What are you saying?”
“Talk about it in the car.” Hayden grabbed my wrist and began dragging me again.
“Let me go.” I tried to pry his fingers off of my arm, but he was too strong.
Again Mason’s fist came like a flash of lighting, striking Hayden in the nose, from which blood immediately began streaming. Hayden let out a terrible cry of pain as he fell to his knees. “Back off,” Mason said. “She doesn’t want you. Why can’t you understand that?… She’s with me, okay? And that’s not going to change.” He took my hand and began leading me away yet again.
“Alexandra,” Hayden cried out. I looked back at the hand he held over his bleeding face, and the other one he reached out for me with. I felt sick, awful, heartless, even though my heart ached so terribly at that sight.
The tears I held over Emmaline began to fall, but I couldn’t go to him, not after what he’d just done to Mason. Mason would have to start all over again. Word that Sydney Algoth’s son was staying in Chicago would spread like wildfire, causing irreparable damage.
“I’m so sorry, Mason. This is all my fault,” I said.
“How could this possibly be your fault?”
“Because I told my parents your secret. My father must have told Hayden’s father. I should have known he would. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Have you told anyone where I’m staying?” he asked unemotionally.
“No.”
Mason turned down a dark alleyway, and then another, never saying a word. He was avoiding main roads, I realized. It was a long walk, but I did eventually see the backside of the gray building he lived on the top floor of. He led me up the stairs and into the same room he’d taken me to the last time I was there.
Moonlight poured in through the open window, revealing the tall candles on the candlestick holder he held. Mason took a dark blanket from an open box and hung it over the window, blocking all outside light and sending us into complete darkness.
“Mason?” I said nervously.
With a scratching sound, a match lit up the room, and then the candles were all lit. He put a giant box on the floor beside the couch and set the candles on top of it before he sat on the couch. He patted the seat beside him,
so I sat down.
“I wish that I could make things better for you. You don’t deserve to be thrown out of a dancehall or to have your reputation stained by the rumor that you’re dating a member of the mob…” He took my hand as he drew in a deep breath. “You deserve so much better…Maybe…we should stop seeing each other.”
“No!” I said desperately as I squeezed his hand and began crying again. “I don’t want to lose you. Nothing could be worse than that. I need you, and you said your heart is mine. I won’t give it back, and I won’t take mine back, either…Please, Mason.”
The searing pain of his words made me realize just how much I couldn’t live without him. How much I truly loved him. It wasn’t the kind of thing I would ever recover from. My first love. My first kiss.
In that terrible moment, I realized that I was truly in love with Mason, completely, unceasingly in love.
“Are you sure? Things like what happened tonight might happen again, and this relationship will be complicated for an unknown length of time.”
“I don’t care. All I care about is you; please don’t do this, Mason,” I said desperately.
He smiled and moved closer to me, the candlelight sending strange shadows across his stunning face. “I just wanted to give you the chance to walk away if that was what you wanted. But I probably couldn’t have accepted it in the end. I’m sure I would have been at your school Monday, begging you to come back to me.”
I wrapped both arms around his neck and cried softly into his shoulder. “I will never walk away from you, Mason.” Fear prevented me from telling him just how much I loved him.
Mason held me and buried his face in my hair, taking a few slow breaths.
“I wish I hadn’t told my parents about your dad,” I said, leaning back to look at his face, golden in the delicate glow.
He wiped my tears away. “I wish my dad would hurry up and get his name cleared, but there’s nothing either of us can do about it. This isn’t your fault. You were trying to protect me in keeping us together, which means a lot to me. So stop blaming yourself. Hayden’s the one that chose to announce my secret to all those people, not you.”
He pulled my hands to his lips and kissed them, then put his hand behind my neck, and pulled my lips to meet his. I felt the same intense heat wash over me as I reached out for him, pulling him even closer and pressing forward. I can’t say how long that kiss lasted, but it was perfect, replacing every concern and hurt I suffered with the taste of him, the man I loved. I felt a little breathless when Mason leaned back.
We shared a quiet smile and I wondered if the kiss was as wonderful for him as it was for me. “Thank you, Mason. That was the best gift anyone has ever given me.”
He took one arm away from my back to trace my lips with his thumb, so I kissed it. “Holding that back has been tougher than I would have thought, so I’m glad you liked it.”
“I thought you didn’t want to kiss me.”
“Are you crazy? I think any man in his right mind would give anything to have been the one to kiss you tonight.”
“I doubt that. No one’s even tried to until today.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Mason smiled before he kissed me again, something I knew I would never tire of. “Did Benny really try to kiss you, or were you just trying to make Emmaline feel better?”
I simply nodded, remembering Emmaline’s harsh words. “I lost my best friend tonight,” I said, looking down at the floor.
“She was just in shock. She’ll be over it tomorrow and then she’ll need you to help her get over Benny…It’s a good thing he fired me. I couldn’t work for a guy that tried to kiss you behind my back like that.”
I hoped he was right about Emmaline.
“Maybe you should go ahead and open the box I gave you,” Mason said, looking at the purse beside my feet.
Reaching down, I removed the little box. Then I knelt on the floor so I could hold it up to the candles as I opened it. It felt like my heart stopped when I saw what was inside. A silver ring with a glittering emerald cut diamond stared up at me. I felt my eyes widen as I turned to Mason. Was it an engagement ring? Could I really be so lucky? “Mason?” I whispered.
“Read the inside of the box,” he said, offering a slight smile. I could tell he was nervous.
I moved the box around so the light would shine right on the inside of the top. Something was inscribed on it. I had to look closer to read the tiny writing.
I promise you, Alexandra, to stand by your side, physically or not, to remain yours alone, to do whatever it takes to make this work…whatever it takes…
Love Mason
I sat beside Mason on the couch, but continued to stare at the ring. It became dark in the shadow cast by the sides of the box. “Mason?” I whispered again, still not understanding.
“You don’t like it?” Mason asked. I looked over at him and saw that he still looked nervous, perhaps even more so.
“I love it, but…” How do you ask exactly what a ring’s purpose is?
“It’s a promise ring. Since seeing each other is becoming so difficult, I wanted you to have this to wear. When I’m not there, at least you’ll be wearing my ring and my promise that things will work out, that nothing will come between us being together, no matter how bad things get.”
I felt a mixture of emotion, joy in having that promise in the ring I would always wear, and the slight disappointment that he wasn’t proposing forever to me, even if this was the next best thing. As I smiled, he reached for the box and took the ring out. Very carefully, he removed the glove from my left hand and slid the ring onto my ring finger. It fit perfectly. “Thank you, Mason. I wish I had something to give you, but I promise to do the same.”
The anxiety in his face finally left. “Your promise is enough. I…” I could almost hear the perfect closing of that sentence. I love you, Alexandra.
“You what?”
“I…I guess I’ll have to find a new job tomorrow.”
“Oh.” My spirits fell slightly. I looked down at the ring on my finger and thought of how much it must have cost, the box too, but the inscription inside meant that the box could never be returned. I forced myself to take my beloved ring off as I fought to hold back new tears. Already I considered it my most precious possession. “Maybe it would help—if you took this back.”
“No, Alexandra, I need to know you’re wearing that more than I need the money, and I’ve got plenty saved up, anyway. I’ll be fine until I find another job.”
I let out an enormous sigh of relief inside as I put it back on and held it up in the pale light to admire. Mason pressed his hand against mine and let his fingers slide in between my own. “And it might finally give Hayden the message that you’re mine,” he said.
“Maybe,” I laughed. “But why did you want me to wait until I was home to open the box?” It would have driven me crazy if I had, not knowing what to think of it. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the inscription in the box.
“For one thing, I didn’t want to do this in front of Emmaline and Benny…” He turned to stare into the tiny flames of the candles.
“What’s the second thing?”
“I don’t know…I thought you might think it was too much, or you might not want it. I guess I was scared of your reaction, but I had to give it to you. This is a tough situation, one where it would be so easy to let everything pull us apart. This is my way of preventing that. I want to make sure you have no question in your mind about us or how things will work out.”
“Are you questioning it?”
“No. But time could change things, especially now.”
“Nothing will ever change things unless it draws us closer, I promise you that,” I said before I leaned up to kiss him.
Mason scooted over so he could sit right against my side as he put his other arm around me. “Things will get better,” he said as I rested my head against his shoulder.
“I know.” But it
hardly seemed to matter as I sat there in that dark room, wearing his ring and feeling his strong arms around me. How could things possibly get any better?