Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty


I took my lunch break, leaving Penny in charge of the shop, to drop a basket of muffins off at the gym.

I didn’t text Mason first to let him know I was coming, that was my first mistake. I was wreathed in new confidence and a blissful determination.

Maybe Mason just needed time, or maybe he needed a little push. Whatever it took, I didn’t want to live in fear anymore, unable to reach for what I truly wanted.

I wanted him, more than I’d wanted anything other than my own cake shop, of course.

Drifting along in my summery blue dress and kitten heels, I came around a copse of scary looking weightlifting equipment, only to stop dead.

There he was, the man of my dreams, standing there talking to a leggy brunette, half naked in her workout gear and covered in a fine sheen of sweat that somehow managed to be attractive and not just gross.

She was playing with her perfectly curled ponytail as she flirted with him.

But it wasn’t this that bothered me, it was the way Mason was smiling at her.

He was supposed to only look at me like that.

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Blinded by my tears of fresh heartbreak, I left the basket of muffins on the front desk and let myself out of the building, which suddenly felt like it was freezing cold.

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After seeing Mason with that tall, leggy brunette, my brain just shut off and my heart took over. I needed to run.

But I don’t just mean down the street to get away from the feelings for a few minutes. I needed to run, all the way home.

I asked Penny to look after the shop for me for a few days, and I gave her that hefty raise she’d been asking for.

Penelope was pleased with the extra $2.25, but she seemed morose when I told her I was flying home to Texas for a long weekend.

I knew things weren’t going well between her and Charlie. I could tell because she was no longer glowing and humming around the shop, and she didn’t talk about him anymore.

I honestly hoped they would work it out. Whatever I might feel about Charlie, it genuinely seemed like he made my friend happy, and it had been too long since I had seen Penelope Hart truly happy.

But I also didn’t have the energy to worry about them, I was much too focused on my own devastated system right then.

It was painfully obvious to me now.

Mason has chosen a girl like me; plump, ordinary, a normal human being, because his mother would find it more believable that he had fallen, seriously. And Claudia clearly had bought it; Mason knew his mother well.

But he had lied when he’d told me that he wasn’t interested in dating. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in dating, more like he just had a type, and I wasn’t it.

I had let myself start to seriously care for Mason Blacksteele, but he was just another idiot man who thought he knew what he wanted in a pair of supermodel legs and some big fake tits.

Well, I certainly hoped that they kept him warm at night.