After everyone else has left for th

After everyone else has left for the evening, Leigh Anne offers to take me home.
We spent a few hours around the fire talking. Everyone had a ton of questions for Mason once he told them about his plans to take off for a while. Preston kept looking at me like he was scared I might lose it. He wanted to drive me home, but I didn’t want to risk blurting out the truth to him. He’d only try to talk me out of it.
“You aren’t spending the night with Knox out here?” I ask Leigh Anne as we climb into her car.
“Not tonight,” she says. “I’ve got to work a double shift tomorrow, so I want to actually get some rest for a change.”
“Well, considering it’s already after midnight, I think you’re already screwed,” I say.
She giggles. “Not as screwed as I would be if I stayed.”
“Haha,” I say, slapping her arm as she gets in and starts down the bumpy dirt road leading to the highway.
We ride for a moment in silence, but as soon as she pulls out onto the main road, I turn toward her in my seat.
“Thanks for tonight,” I say. “I really needed a night to just chill without anyone looking at me like I’m some horrible person.”
She crinkles her face and pats my leg. “We’ve all messed up, Penny. We’ve all got regrets.”
“Thanks,” I say.
She frowns. “How are you taking Mason’s news?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I say. “No. I don’t know, really.”
“Did you get to talk to him much about what happened last week?”
“A little.”
She clears her throat. “Penny, what exactly did happen last week?” she asks. “One minute you were kissing Braxton and having a good time, then the next Mason was dragging you out into the parking lot. What happened between the two of you out there?”
As far as Leigh Anne knows, Mason is nothing more than a dream to me. I’ve never told her the truth about us sleeping together for the past year.
Maybe it’s time.
I lean back against the seat and play with a strand of my hair, twirling it around and around my finger. “My hair used to be so long,” I say. “Remember how Mason used to tease me about it?”
She smiles. “He used to call you Rapunzel. He said if your parents ever locked you up in a tower, he would come save you.”
“My knight in shining armor,” I say. “Last summer Preston and I had some friends over on the boat. Mason and a few others. We stayed up really late drinking and playing cards. Watching movies. After everyone left and Preston went to bed, it was just me and Mason.”
I take a deep breath in, remembering that night like it was yesterday.
“We must have stayed up talking until five in the morning,” I say. “I had my hair in one long braid down my back and out of the blue, he asked me to take it down. I remember feeling something shift between us. Like a wall coming down. I pulled the braid apart and he ran his hands through it over and over. That was the first time he ever told me I was beautiful.”
Leigh Anne looks over at me, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
“He kissed me,” I say, running my hand through my hair. “And then he did a whole lot more than that.”
I watch for her reaction, hoping she’s not going to be angry at me for not telling her sooner. Her mouth falls open slightly, but she doesn’t say a word. She just listens.
“He told me right from the start that he wasn’t looking for a serious relationship,” I say. “I didn’t want to freak him out, so I said I wasn’t either. He told me up front that he didn’t intend to be exclusive, but I thought I could handle it. I thought it would be worth it just to be with him.”
“Oh, Penny,” Leigh Anne says. She reaches for my hand and I take it. “I had no idea.”
“Two days later he showed up at a bonfire on the beach with another girl,” I say, laughing. The sound is hollow and joyless. “The next day I walked into the salon and told them to chop my hair off.”
She pulls up to the gate at my house and the night guard waves us through. When she stops in front of the house, she turns and pulls me into a hug.
“I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been,” she says.
“I’ve been caught in that same cycle ever since,” I say. “When it’s just the two of us, it’s like magic. But every time I see him with another girl, it breaks my heart.”
“This has been going on for over a year?” she asks.
I shrug.
Her eyes widen. “Penny, how come you haven’t told him how you feel about him? You can’t live like that,” she says. “You deserve better than that.”
I suck in a breath. “I know,” I say. “I tried to call it off with him at the boat party just before you came home. That’s why I went out with Braxton. I was trying to move on and have fun. But Mason walked in and saw me kissing Braxton and he freaked out.”
Leigh Anne leans her head against the back of the seat. “Oh my god,” she says. “That’s why he took you outside to talk?”
“Yes,” I say, my nose starting to run from holding back tears. Saying all this out loud makes me sound like a fool, but there’s no way anyone else can see what Mason and I share when it’s just the two of us. If they could see that, they’d understand why I can never let him go. “We kissed, but he gave me the same speech he always gives me about not being able to offer me what I want. I guess I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed his keys and drove off, not really thinking about what I was doing. All I knew was that I was angry and I wanted to get away. It was stupid.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been going through this alone,” she says.
I shrug. “It’s nothing compared to what you were going through. I chose this, you know?”
“You love him,” she says. “Love makes us do crazy things.”
I smile and wipe my eyes. “Yes it does,” I say. “So if you find out I’ve done something crazy in the name of love, don’t judge me, okay? Promise?”
She cocks her head to the side and narrows her eyes. “Crazy like what?”
I laugh. I shake my head. “I really need to get inside,” I say. I wrap my arms around her. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she says, hugging me back. “I’m here for you if you want to talk about it, okay? You don’t have to go through the hard times alone. I learned that the hard way.”
“I know,” I say. “Goodnight, Leigh Anne.”
“Goodnight,” she says. “And for what it’s worth, I really like your hair like this. It suits you.”
I smile. “Mason said the same thing,” I say. “And here I thought cutting it would piss him off, but he actually liked it.”
“Sometimes men don’t really know what they want until they see it for themselves,” she says.
A nervousness flutters through me as I realize that’s exactly what I’m counting on.