by Kendall Ryan
With a deep breath, I followed him into the bedroom and watched as he pulled on a hoodie and pajama pants, then tossed a T-shirt and pants onto his gray comforter.
He nodded toward the clothes. “For you. If you want to get more comfortable.”
I forced a smile. “No thanks. I think I’m going to get going.”
His gaze narrowed on my face and it was all I could do not to squirm. Even though he didn’t say anything, his expression said it all.
Coward.
“What’s the rush?” he asked softly.
You just knocked my socks off again and that wasn’t supposed to be how it went. You can own my body but you can’t own my heart.
But I couldn’t say that either.
“You should stay. We’ll go into the living room and watch some TV.”
I shook my head, panic ceasing my heartbeat in my chest. “I don’t think so.”
“Something better to do, or just need some space?” he asked as he picked up a pile of socks and shoved them into a new drawer before turning to face me. It was freakish how well he knew me after so short a time. He was getting close to figuring me out. Too close.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice going shrill.
“Making room for you. My place is closer to the zoo than yours, and that way, if there is a night you do decide to stay, it will be easy. You can keep some clothes here and—”
“What? No.” I blinked. “We barely know each other, Mason.”
He closed the drawer before turning to face me and crossing his arms over his chest. “We know that we fit together like hand in glove,” he said, his eyes skimming over me and making me shiver. “We know that I might be the father of your child. And we know that we like each other’s company. It only makes sense that we try to spend some time together so that we can get to know each other even better, doesn’t it? Isn’t that what we agreed to do?”
“No, it doesn’t make sense, and no, that wasn’t what we agreed to do,” I shot back. “None of this makes sense. Look, what we just did? That was a mistake. I should have gone before. Just pretend it never happened, okay? I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were thinking you’re attracted to me. Just like I’m attracted to you. I thought we established that.” He took another step toward me, but I retreated, making my way toward the bedroom door.
“I need to get some air. Some time to think. I’ll call you…or something.”
I sprinted for my sandals and slid them on quickly before heading for the front door. When my hand closed around the knob, I felt a warm, masculine hand on my bicep, but I yanked my shoulder away and hurried out the door without bothering to turn around.
That orgasm?
My own drawer?
Oh, hell no.
It was all too much. He was too much, and I had to get out of there before this thing between us swallowed me whole.
Chapter Sixten
Mason
I got as far as the hall outside my apartment, watching her almost insane mad dash to the elevators, when the phone in my pocket vibrated.
At first, I thought it might be better to ignore it—to follow Bren down to the lobby and walk her to her car at the very least, but after what just happened, there was no doubting that she needed space and I had no choice but to give it to her. Even though I didn’t work at the zoo like she did, I knew what happened when you tried to cage a wild animal.
The only question was why she needed space to begin with.
After everything that had happened today—the zoo, dinner, and the mind-blowing almost-sex—I thought we were finally making progress. But she felt different…
I heard the distant ding of the elevator doors, then headed back inside my apartment, and my phone buzzed again against my thigh.
Gritting my teeth, I fished the device from my pocket and swiped my thumb across the glass to see that I had missed a call from my mother and she’d left a message.
I thumbed the voice mail button and pressed the smartphone to my ear, listening as the warm, familiar tone of my mother’s voice floated through the speaker.
“Mason, honey, it’s mom. I was calling to ask if you might be able to come over tonight or tomorrow? Your father and I have something important to tell you and we’d like if you could stop by the house so we can do it in person.”
My heart jumped into my throat as the recording ended.
Something important to tell me? The last time I’d gotten a call like this, I’d been on my way to Johns Hopkins, ready to start my freshman year and make a name for myself, only to turn around and find that the world was coming apart. My mother was sick with cancer. Potentially terminal.
The idea of a recurrence hadn’t been far from my mind ever since. It was the reason I’d never moved away and tried to make sure I always made time with both my parents, no matter how busy life got. And if my mom was sick again…
My stomach tightened at the thought.
I’d been on top of the world only ten minutes before, with Bren’s warm, solid palm pressed against my cock, and now my whole life had turned into one giant shit show.
I shot a quick text to my mom and slipped into a pair of shoes before locking my apartment and heading for the parking garage. If my parents needed to tell me something, then I was going to be there to hear it—come hell or high water.
I broke nearly every traffic law on the books trying to get there, but when I finally pulled up in front of the classic brick house where I’d grown up, I felt worse instead of better. It just all felt so familiar—the call, the drive, all of it. And when I went inside, I felt intense dread, like I already knew what would be waiting for me on the other end.
Steeling myself, I rapped on the door once before letting myself in with my spare key. My mother appeared on the other side of the door just as I stepped in, her blue eyes wary as she looked me over.
“You got here awfully fast.”
“If there’s something you couldn’t tell me on the phone, I wanted to know what it was right away.”
She nodded, pursing her lips. “I can understand that. Come in. Your father just made coffee.”
The tension around her eyes and the fact that she didn’t elaborate then or there settled it. My gut clenched and I braced myself for the blow.
Jesus, what if this was it? If she was sick again and Bren was pregnant, it would add a whole new level of grief to the mix. She wanted grandchildren so desperately.
Full of dread, I followed her into the quaint living room and settled onto one of the pink floral couches as my father appeared in the doorway with a black coffee carafe in his hand and a tray of mugs in the other.
“Let me help you with that.” My mother rushed toward him and took the tray, setting it on the coffee table between us before taking a seat opposite me and beside my father.
For a moment, silence fell over us and my father leaned forward, the light shining off his bald spot, as he poured three cups of black coffee and handed one to my mother and one to me.
“So let’s hear it. What going on?” I asked.
My parents looked at one another, then back at me.
Finally my mother cleared her throat. “Your father and I have come to an important decision, and we felt it was important that you knew about it as soon as we were certain.”
“Okay.” I nodded, my skull pounding with a tension headache as I resisted the urge to demand they just say it already.
“We’ve decided that, as we are now entering new stages in our lives, we’d be better off apart from one another,” my father said, patting my mother on her knee as she nodded solemnly.
I examined each of them, not sure I’d heard them right. Apart from one another?
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“We mean we’re going to enter into a trial separation,” my mother said, the finality in her voice ringing through the otherwise silent room.
For the next minute, my brain did a decathlon. On one hand, I felt
nothing but relief. Neither of them was dying or prepping to spend months in the hospital dripping poison into their veins to kill something worse than poison. On the other, this was the second thing that had happened in the past hour that made absolutely no sense.
“I don’t understand. You guys have always been inseparable.” I shot a pointed gaze at the spot where my father’s hand rested on my mother’s knee. “Even now, you’re a team.”
My dad pulled his hand away and sighed.
“Just because we’re separating doesn’t mean we don’t love and support one another. And I know it probably feels like we have a perfect marriage because we’re your parents and we don’t fight, but if you really think about it, do you think that’s true?” my mother asked. “Do you think we’re a good match?”
I took a deep breath, thinking her words over carefully. In truth, I knew they had their differences—every couple did. My mother had always been the life of the party, the light in every room she entered. Whenever I called her, she was on her way to some bingo tournament or garden luncheon while my father stayed home, desperate to find out what happened on the next episode of one crime drama or another, and was happiest with his nose buried in a book.
Sure, they had different interests, but was that really reason enough for a divorce?
“Our differences are significant,” my father cut in. “Your mother wants to go and explore the world and now that we’re getting older, I can’t bring myself to hold her back. But I also can’t bring myself to even think about traveling like that.”
“We are still a family.” My mother smiled from my father to me. “We always will be. We have shared so much of our lives with one another and we have you, but I can’t sit around this house and become an old lady who knits and stares out the window, wishing for more.”
“And I wouldn’t want you to.” My father nodded toward her, then closed his hand over hers. He shot a glance to me and shrugged. “It’s time, son. And we are both at peace with it.”
My mouth went completely dry. Were they serious right now? It’d be one thing if they’d been unhappy. I’d be fully supportive, encouraging each of them to move on to something that made them happier. But this? What in the what? I took a deep breath, searching for the words I knew I was supposed to say as their adult son.
“You should do whatever makes you both happiest, of course. It’s a shock, is all, so I’m just trying to process.” Now that I’d finally found my voice, I couldn’t seem to shut up. “I thought you guys had this fairy-tale marriage, you know?”
“A lot of kids think that,” Mom said. “You never would have known the struggle and compromises we’ve made along the way to make it work as long as it did.”
“But the cancer—”
“—was terrible,” Dad said with a wince, his eyes soft with remembered pain. “But just because someone stood by you through a bad time doesn’t mean you’re shackled to him for life. We get only so much time and we each should guard it as we get older. Use it exactly as we each see fit.”
“Exactly. So instead of ignoring the fact that we are different people, we’ve decided to embrace it and try to find our bliss while we still can.” My mother squeezed my father’s hand. “We hope once you’ve wrapped your head around it all, you can understand and support that decision.”
I nodded slowly and then pushed myself to my feet.
“I need to get some air. Are you guys okay if I just take a little walk and come back in ten?” I asked.
I was a grown-ass man and my parents had to live their lives. There was no question I would support and love them unconditionally. But suddenly, the room felt stuffy and hot and I had to get out, if only to reconcile everything that had just happened.
“Sure thing, sweetie,” Mom said, but I was already halfway toward the door, ready to breathe in the crisp evening air and think through…well, my entire life, really.
Every decision I’d made, every relationship I’d been in had been founded on the belief that once you found your soul mate, that was it. Game over. You stayed together through thick and thin. There was no challenge or difference too great for the two of you to overcome.
Now, though? That was gone. And the timing couldn’t have been worse, from a totally selfish standpoint. I was on the precipice of a huge relationship in my own life with someone who was gun-shy and possibly pregnant with my child. Not only that, I was locked and loaded to go all in based on my own confidence in the premise of soul mates and my unshakeable belief that I’d found mine.
Only soul mates weren’t real. Or at least, the pair I’d always hung my hat on weren’t. And I couldn’t deny, this news was like an A-bomb, obliterating my world and shaking one of my core beliefs.
I took the familiar route I used to walk when I’d hung around with my friends in this neighborhood, but I barely noticed the brick homes or stately trees as I strode past them. Instead, I was focused on my life, the faces of all the girls I’d run through or disappointed over the years because I’d had such strict blinders on. I’d been searching for my one and only the entire time.
If my parents’ happy, perfect relationship wasn’t as happy or perfect as I’d thought, then why had I stayed single for so long? Why had I insisted on being so choosy about the person I’d finally settle down with?
Not for the first time, I thought about fate. That maybe, after all of this, fate had forced me to be single in the hope that it would lead me to Bren and, maybe, our baby?
But now, if my parents were right, what did any of it matter? I had only the here and now.
For the next ten minutes, I ate up the block with my stride, trying to work off some of the tension that had been building since Bren had left.
By the time I got back to my parents’ house, I was feeling less breathless and my brain had finally calmed.
My parents were healthy and, by the looks of it, happy with their decision. They would be fine and so would I. And as for Bren?
Nothing had changed for me.
I thought of her panicked face as she’d sprinted from my apartment. Of her sweet-smelling hair and her soft lips. Of the way her mouth tilted to the side when there was something else on her mind—something she wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, tell me. She was hiding something, and I just hoped she’d tell me before it was too late.
She was like no other woman I’d ever known and if it wasn’t love yet, I was well on my way. She could say what she wanted but her body didn’t lie. She was just as into me as I was into her. She was just scared.
I’d known that from the beginning and I’d pushed too hard. She needed time. Time I hadn’t been giving her.
The drawer had been a stupid idea, but I could make it up to her. I just had to figure out how, and how the fuck to get a hold of some extra patience.
Because I had a feeling I was going to need it. Even if soul mates were a crock of shit, she and I needed our shot.
Chapter Seventeen
Bren
“Guess who brought donuts.”
Mandy’s chipper singsong echoed through the front hall of my apartment and I grimaced, groaning to let her know where I was before shoving my pillow over my face.
Lord knew I wasn’t in shape for company—I was barely in shape to be around myself.
Ever since I’d left Mason’s last night, I hadn’t been able to think about anything other than what a complete and total ass I’d been and the sheer, utter terror that had filled my heart as soon as I’d realized what our hot, passionate moment of fun had become.
Together.
Not that Mandy would understand.
In her mind, everything was rainbows and puppy dogs and every chance at love ought to be snatched up and savored—at least, that was the only way I could figure she’d gotten married so young. But that was just it. She was married. She didn’t know, couldn’t know, what a risk it was to take a chance on someone nowadays. It was a jungle out here.
A gentle knock sounded on my wooden bedroom door an
d I croaked for her to come in, though I didn’t bother to drag the pillow from over my face. Distantly, I heard the rustle of her donut bag and caught the savory, sweet smell of my favorite hazelnut latte.
“If that’s what I think it is, you’re a goddess,” I muttered.
“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty.” There was a little thunk and I peeked through the small space between my comforter and pillow to see her setting a tray of drinks on my nightstand before she poked me in the stomach. “It’s ten thirty,” she said with a disapproving click of her tongue.
“So?” I grumbled. “It’s Sunday.”
“Which means you should already have gone on your run and come back by now.”
“I can’t run. I’m pregnant,” I argued.
“You don’t know that,” she shot back with a chuckle. “And besides, I’m pretty sure pregnant people are allowed to run.”
“It’ll wiggle the baby. Or something,” I said stubbornly, pushing the covers off me. Any excuse not to run was just fine by me.
“If your new boyfriend taught you that, then I have some bad news about his credentials as a doctor. Now come on, get up and have a donut with me.”
Grumbling to myself, I propped a few pillows between my back and the headboard, then grabbed for the cup with my name on it.
“Is this caffeine-free?” I asked suspiciously.
“Yup.” Mandy nodded. “Who knows? The caffeine might—what was the medical term you used? Ah, yes. It might ‘wiggle the baby.’ We’d hate to have that happen.” She rolled her eyes, then took her own cup from the cardboard carrier and brought it to her lips.
I took a sip of hazelnut goodness, sighing at the comforting heat before meeting my friend’s questioning gaze.
