For a second, I think the document is something he signed recently, and my stomach hardens into a knot around the egg and cheese sandwich I ate on the way home. But then I look at the date next to Mason’s name, and my muscles relax with a spasm of relief.
It’s an old agreement, dated August tenth, four years ago.
August tenth…
My stomach clenches all over again.
Mason proposed to me on August fifteenth. Five days after he signed an agreement to live with four other boys in New York City. Five days after he decided to leave me and maybe never come back.
“What is it?” Mason asks, suddenly at my side though I don’t remember him circling around the table. “What’s wrong?”
I push the folder and rental agreement clumsily into his hands and move away, stumbling a few feet across the patio. Mason follows me, but I lift one hand, motioning for him to stay back, feeling like I might shatter if he touches me.
“Lark, what’s going on?” Mason asks in a deep, concerned voice. “You’re scaring me.”
“Look at it,” I whisper, fighting to speak past the misery tightening my chest.
Mason sighs in frustration, but he finally looks down at the papers in his hand, flipping to the back page, going still when he realizes what he’s holding.
“How did Aria get this?” he asks, his tone oddly flat.
“I don’t know,” I say after a moment. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters,” Mason says, scowling as he snaps the folder shut and tosses it back onto the table. “A rental agreement isn’t a matter of public record. I want to know how she—”
“I don’t care!” I say, far louder than I intend. I ball my hands into fists at my sides. “It doesn’t matter,” I add in a wounded voice, a voice like a big, black bruise that’s going to take forever to heal. “I think you should go.”
“What?” Mason starts toward me, but stops when I take a quick step back. “Lark, please, this is crazy. There’s no reason to—”
“I’m not crazy. You lied,” I say, pointing an accusing finger at his chest.
“I didn’t say you were crazy, I said—”
“You lied,” I say again, struggling to maintain control. “You went looking for apartments in Atlanta with me, acting like we were going to move in together like we’d always planned, acting like you loved me, while behind my back you’d already signed a lease for an apartment in New York.”
“Please, Lark. Just listen. Please.” Mason lifts his hands, palms up, in a gesture that says he has nothing to hide.
A gesture I know is just another lie.
“It was four years ago,” he says. “I told you I was messed up and confused. I signed the lease on a bad day when my head was a mess. I was going to talk to you about it, but—”
I shake my head. “Messed up and confused is one thing, lying to me for almost a week, and proposing to me when you were planning to leave for New York the very next day is something else.”
“I didn’t plan to leave the next day,” Mason says, frustration and desperation warring in his tone. “I was going to back out of the lease. I was going to stay here and go to school in Atlanta and plan a wedding with you. But then Parker and I had that horrible fight and—” He breaks off with a shake of his head. “And then I stopped thinking and just…ran. New York was the backup plan, so I backed into it.”
Tears sting into my eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“Please,” he says, driving a clawed hand through his already messy hair. “Yes, I signed the lease in New York. That was the part of me that felt like I was doomed if I stayed in this town, that didn’t think I was ever going to be good enough for you or get away from my past. But the other part of me couldn’t imagine starting a life without you in it.”
“But you did.” I fight to swallow past the lump rising in my throat. “And I had no idea there was a war going on inside of you, Mason. You seemed exactly the same. I’ve been over the days before you left in my head a thousand times, looking for clues that would have told me you were planning to bolt, but there was nothing.”
“Lark, please—”
“Nothing!” I repeat, his face swimming. “Not a single sign. The only thing I could think of was that it was an impulsive, last minute decision. That you ran because you were afraid of marrying me or afraid of moving forward or…something. Just that something had spooked you and you’d run without thinking.”
“That’s what happened, I—”
“No. That’s not true.” I take a deep breath, forcing myself to meet Mason’s eyes before I continue. “This lease proves it. Now I know that it wasn’t impulsive, and that you deceived me in a way I never even imagined.”