ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇꜱᴇ ɴɪɢʜᴛꜱ

𝚃𝚆𝙴𝙽𝚃𝚈-𝚃𝚆𝙾

Mason had tried to take heed of Sophia's words the last time he spent time with her. He couldn't allow himself to become fixated on her when he wasn't sure if there was the possibility of a future. So, he threw himself back into club football and by the time Christmas came round he had found Chelsea to be in a pretty decent place.

However, he hadn't just been sat twiddling his thumbs after he left St George's Park either. He had tried to just go about like normal, he had seemed to be jumping from relationship to relationship and he thought it was possibly time to just focus on being young and single.

And that's what he did, which did however mean he had been sleeping about a bit, more than he would care to admit. Recently he had found himself hooking up with a girl from America. He had met her one night in a London club, he had been minding his own business when she stole his attention. She wasn't his usually type, she had long blonde hair and these pierce blue eyes, she was beautiful.

They had ended up hooking up that night and again after that when she came back to the UK to see him. He couldn't deny that the sex was good, it wasn't the best he had ever had but it was better than with some of these girls he had been picking up. Plus, she was a nice girl, she would make someone very happy. But just not him. He didn't want to let her down, but he couldn't afford to get himself into another situation like he had done with Meg.

So, a week before the England Christmas party he called time on things with her, she wasn't surprised, she knew with the distance it had made things hard for them to properly spend time with each other. And besides, the time spent with her had only made one this more certain, if he couldn't have Sophia, he didn't really want anyone.

Sophia wasn't a stranger to hearing gossip about the boys out of camp, and she certainly wasn't a stranger to hearing about Mason and his latest flings. It had become a standing joke between her, Liam, and Josh, regularly discussing what sordid pictures had popped up on Getty of some of the lads. And even now, with everything that had gone on with her and Mason she found herself laughing about it.

She couldn't really say anything about his behaviour, she couldn't feel angry at him or hold it against him, it was her decision that they couldn't do anything about how they might possibly feel for each other. So instead of looking at the photos with teary eyes or an aching heart, she looked at them with a smug expression.

His smile didn't reach into his cheeks, his body didn't hold whichever girl he was with close to him, and his eyes didn't look at them with love or desire, but more nothingness than anything. Not like the way he looked when he was with her.

However, it didn't mean that her mind hadn't wandered to thoughts of him since they had been apart. That she hadn't found herself replaying in her mind the way it felt when she was with him, the way he would control her body, make her feel things she wasn't sure she was capable of or how she had used certain memories of the two of them on lonely nights when she needed some form of release.

She also couldn't help but feel awash with excitement at the thought of seeing him at their annual Christmas party. Not like the way she saw him last year and she thought he was a decent piece of eye candy that she could look at with sordid thoughts and drunken eyes, because now she knew any thoughts she could imagine of him and her, that the real thing was by far better than anything she could dream of.

She was just mostly looking forward to seeing that smile of his, that she was sure could light up the whole of Wembley if they ever needed it to. She wanted to be in his presence, she wanted to hear his laugh echo around the room, the way his voice would go up an octave when he was finding something funny, and it would pierce through the sound in the room. She just wanted to look into his honey brown eyes, seeing the way they creased in the corner, the way they would almost look inside of her and see everything she was thinking and feeling without her having to say it.