“Are you kidding me with this? Whitney, tell me you’re not this reckless.” He looks from Jacob to me. His hazel eyes narrow. “I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Mason,” Jacob interjects. “I’m all in with this… with her.”

Mason lets out a deep sigh before turning back to me. “You know what you’re doing?”

“No,” I tell him honestly. “But, if I’m so uncertain…” I trail off and tears begin to build in my throat. “Please don’t judge me,” I whisper.

“Never.” He pulls me into a hug and when he pulls back, he glares at Jacob. “I judge you.”

“Mase…” I try to calm his anger but he’s already heading back into the house without another glance at either of us.

Neither of us say anything on the way back to his house but his hand, his large strong warm hand is firmly resting on my thigh as he weaves us through traffic. The buzz has slowly started to wear off and the gravity of what I’m about to do takes over. I open my phone and open my messages with Parker, unanswered ones from last night and this morning that are starting to irritate me. Perhaps I’m being a bit of a hypocrite with what has transpired between me and Jacob but what the fuck?

Definitely a hypocrite.

“The boyfriend?” he asks.

“Fiancé,” I correct, though I don’t really know why.

“Does it make a difference?” he counters and I look out the window as we near Jacob’s house. He lives in a somewhat secluded community about fifteen minutes from my parents that he kept even while he was in Mexico. I think he had a housekeeper and a gardener come in monthly to maintain it and a few family members and friends may have stayed there while they were in town visiting but for the most part it had been vacant for three years while he was gone.

“It isn’t fair.”

“What isn’t, angel?”

I try to ignore one of the many pet names Jacob had for me but my heart flutters in my chest. “Any of this. All of this. We would probably be married by now. Or at least engaged… the way you always were with me before you decided to end us on a fucking whim,” I bite out. “I believe you would have had a ring on my finger the second my parents knew about us. Instead, now we’re in this mess because you’re having a mid-life crisis or whatever the fuck and realized you don’t want to spend the rest of your years drowning in random pussy. That’s what this is right? You’re over being single and you realize no one can suck your dick like I can?”