The Man Behind the Mask

by Barbara Wallace

“Actually, it’s about your prep school.” She decided her earlier decision not to bring the subject up no longer applied. Something—or someone—had clearly damaged Simon, and this might be her only chance to find out information. “The other night your father mentioned a hazing scandal.”

  “Oh, that. Yeah, some of the kids on the sports teams got out of hand. Why?”

  “After he mentioned it, I read some of the articles and it made me wonder if the same sort of thing went on while you were there.”

  “Are you kidding?” He gave a short barklike laugh. “Worse.”

  Blood running cold, she repeated his response, hoping he’d tell her she’d made a mistake. “Worse? How so?”

  “Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t do football or spring rowing.”

  Rowing. “Why’s that?”

  “Well, there was this one kid, Chip Amato, who was a real pig when it came to that stuff. There were all sorts of rumors about what he made kids do down at the boathouse. Nasty things. I’d share, but they’re not the sort of thing you talk about in mixed company—if you get my drift.”

  Delilah did, unfortunately, and she didn’t like the picture forming in her mind. “Sounds like a really nice guy.”

  “Of course they were only rumors, but all the same, where there’s smoke...”

  “There’s fire,” she finished for him.

  “Exactly.”

  “And no one said anything? No one told the administrators? The coaches?”

  Josh shook his head. “Not while I was there. Seriously, can’t blame them for keeping their mouths shut. If some of the stories I heard are true, I wouldn’t want to admit what happened, either.”

  “Suppose not,” Delilah murmured. Pieces began sliding into place. Horrible, heartbreaking pieces if the stories Josh heard had any relation to the truth. Poor, poor Simon. She felt sick to her stomach. “Thank you for filling me in.”

  “No problem. Surprised you asked me instead of Simon though.”

  “I would have asked him, but he...” She scrambled for an excuse Josh wouldn’t question. “He’s been preoccupied with impressing your father. I didn’t want to bother him with school gossip.”

  “Fair enough.” The chair scraped the cement as he shifted his weight from one foot to another, clearly working up to changing the topic. “By the way...since my role with this agency search is over and I no longer have to take out Roberto’s assistant, I was wondering if you and I—”

  Delilah could practically hear Simon gloating in her head. Told you so, he’d say with that maddeningly attractive smirk. “Josh, you’re a really—”

  “You don’t need to explain,” Josh interrupted, thankfully cutting the discussion off before it became any more awkward. “I had a feeling you would say something like that.”

  “Sorry.” He truly was a nice guy. She wished she could make herself be interested.

  “You’re a terrible liar, you know.”

  “I’m not lying,” she told him. “I really am sorry.”

  “I believe you. I meant you’re lying about nothing going on between you and Simon.

  “I saw you on the beach,” he added with a crooked smile.

  “Then why did you...?” Oh. He’d been information fishing. “Your espionage skills improved during the afternoon.”

  Josh flashed a grin. “What can I say? Practice makes perfect.”

  Too bad he was still wrong. At least as far as Simon was concerned.

  * * *

  She spent the remainder of the party thinking about what Josh had told her regarding the hazing scandal. The evidence was significant. Chip Amato was on the rowing team. Simon was on the rowing team. At the same time, unless she heard incorrectly last night. Something happened to Simon and whatever it was, it left him scarred. The theories her mind conjured up made her sick to her stomach.

  As soon as the party broke up, she said good-night to Josh and headed back to the guest cottage. It wasn’t until she had her cell phone in hand and Chloe’s phone number half dialed that she realized she couldn’t complete the call. Chloe and Larissa worked for Simon. It would be wrong to tell them anything about his past, let alone her theories about what happened to him. In fact, she couldn’t tell them anything that happened this weekend. Not without divulging her feelings.

  At a loss, she twirled her cell phone between her fingers. Simon was still on the beach with Roberto and Jim. She really didn’t want to approach him until she had had a chance to sort through the thoughts in her head.

  What time was it in KC?

  The phone rang several times with no answer. Delilah was about to hang up when her mother finally answered. Her voice was rushed.

  “Sorry,” she said. “My phone was at the bottom of my bag. I had trouble hearing the ring out here.”

  Out here meant the baseball diamond. The twins played summer league under the lights, and her mother’s renewed commitment to family involvement meant attending every game. Delilah could hear sounds of the crowd in the background. She let out a silent sigh. The bleachers were so not the right place for this discussion.

  “I thought you were on a business trip,” her mother continued. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong. Everything’s great.” And Josh called her a lousy liar. “I’m actually spending the night on Cape Cod.” She quickly explained the last-minute invitation that led to her being there.

  “Wow. I can’t believe you saw a shark! Sounds like a terrific time. Is your boss happy with how things are going?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she said. Her fingers toyed absentmindedly with her lower lip. “He’s keeping his thoughts to himself.”

  “Bosses often do. You only find out what they’re thinking when you mess up.” There was a long pause when Delilah didn’t reply. Long enough even her mother picked up on it. “Honey, are you sure everything’s all right?” she asked.

  “Just tired,” Delilah assured her. “Smiling all day takes a lot of energy.”

  “Yes, it does. Hold on, your brother’s up.” On the other end of the line, she heard her mother cheering.

  “Sorry,” she said when she returned. “He struck out last time at bat. If he strikes out a second time, Brian will never let him hear the end of it.”

  “I’ll let you get back to cheering him on then,” Delilah replied. “I’ll call you when I get back to New York.”

  “And you’re sure everything’s okay?”

  Delilah forced a smile into her voice. “Of course. Everything’s great.”

  No sooner had she hung up than a wave of loneliness struck. There was no one she could share her thoughts with. Not even her best friends, who she thought of as sisters. She liked to think the three of them shared everything, but they didn’t, did they? Keeping bad stuff to herself had become such a habit she no longer realized when she was doing it. In fact, the only person she’d come close to sharing with had been Simon. Talk about irony. The two of them were more alike than either realized.

  Setting her phone on the nightstand, she stretched out across the paisley comforter and closed her eyes. She must have dozed off because when she opened them, the room was dark. Outside her window, she could see the three-quarter moon hanging above the midnight ocean.

  Someone had covered her with a blanket. Simon. Awareness flooded her at the notion he had been watching her sleep. Sitting up, she saw her door had been closed, as well. A quick look at the dresser clock told her she’d been asleep a couple of hours.

  Outside her door, she heard the floor creak, followed by the soft clap of the screen door being shut. There was only one place she could think of where Simon would head this time of night. A soft splash a few minutes later confirmed her guess.

  The tiki torches were still lit, their flames flickering and casting shadows across
the concrete surrounding the pool. Now that it was dark, the pool had been lit up and underwater spotlights gave the water an otherworldly glow.

  In the very center, cutting across the surface was Simon, his frame long and lean. His pace was different. Yesterday, he swam with an almost manic aggression, his arms attacking the water. Tonight he looked slower, more... Was it possible to call a swimming stroke resigned?

  Whatever the stroke, his body in motion remained a thing of beauty. Longing filled Delilah’s chest. He was too focused to notice her presence, so she stood by the water’s edge and watched as he completed several more laps.

  Eventually, he slowed way down, touched the wall one last time and stopped. He hovered in the water, his hand on the tiled edge, the firelight casting shadows on his profile. Delilah heard the quiet splatter of water mix with his breathing as he wiped his face.

  “Hey,” she called out to him.

  He turned, and while she knew he was surprised to see her, his expression remained unchanged. “Hey,” he answered back.

  “Little late for your morning workout, isn’t it?”

  “Swimming helps to clear my head.”

  “Is it?” she asked. “Clear, that is?”

  “Not this time. Maybe in a few more laps.”

  As though realizing holding their conversation with a pool between them only increased the awkwardness, he swam over to where she stood. Delilah looked down with a smile. “Thank you for the blanket.”

  “It was nothing.”

  The air hung thick between them. Simon stood in the chest-high water, his shoulders silver and shadow. Perhaps his swimming closer wasn’t such a good idea after all. She felt self-conscious standing over him and looking down.

  Ignoring how her skirt would rise up, she rectified the situation by sitting down and slipping her legs into the water. “You were gone a long time. Did you and Bartlett walk all the way to the tip?”

  “No, the three of us made camp at the bonfire and talked. Roberto did most of the talking. I decided less was more. Just as well. Turns out I was a bit distracted.”

  By their conversation on the beach. “You did say you were tired,” she said.

  “So I did.”

  They both dodged the obvious. Delilah wondered if he regretted saying anything and waited for the inevitable request for her to forget. To her surprise, none came. Perhaps he realized the list was long enough.

  In a way, she wished he had spoken. The ensuing silence was way too thick and awkward.

  Suddenly, there was a splash and a warm, wet presence filled the space beside her. “I owe you an apology,” she heard him say. “It wasn’t fair of me to dump my baggage on you. I was tired and spouting a lot of nonsense.”

  So he was going to skip asking, and go straight to pretending. “Didn’t sound like nonsense to me.”

  “I wish you’d think otherwise.”

  Too late, she wanted to tell him. The words were already out there.

  She settled for kicking her feet back and forth and watching the whirlpools the motion created in the aquamarine depths.

  “You didn’t come out here to thank me for the blanket, did you?” Simon asked her.

  Delilah could lie. She could give him a nice pat answer like she had for the past four years. Only she didn’t want to. She’d reached her quota of nice and pat for the weekend. “You want the truth? I was worried about you. Your admission on the beach was pretty rough.”

  He gave a crooked smile. “Not so rough. I’ll survive.”

  A reassurance that would work better if the smile met his eyes.

  “We aren’t talking about some embarrassing anecdote, Simon. You called yourself a coward. That’s a pretty damning statement.”

  “Truth isn’t always pretty.”

  “No, it’s not.” Delilah took a good look at his profile. The shadows under his eyes weren’t caused by the light. “Last night, when you talked about the boy not defending himself, you were really talking about yourself, weren’t you?”

  Simon didn’t speak, but the way his body grew taut was answer enough. Hoping the next comment didn’t blow up in her face, she plunged on. “I know about the hazing,” she said. “About Chip Amato.”

  Every inch of Simon turned rigid. He pulled himself so tight in fact, she could see the muscles twitch beneath the surface of his skin. “Who told you about Chip?”

  “I—” She tucked her hair behind her ear, more to get her nerves under control than anything. “I asked Josh.”

  “Dammit!” He jumped to his feet, splashing water everywhere as he stalked his way to a nearby table.

  “He didn’t say anything specific,” she quickly continued. “Only that there were rumors.” Which Simon’s agitation gave weight to. “Whatever happened—”

  “Is in the past,” Simon spat.

  Was it? Delilah might not know the details, but she wasn’t stupid. The scars from whatever happened were still very much present.

  She looked at him, standing in the torches’ glow. The night was warm with summer’s heat, yet he was trembling. The uncharacteristic fragility broke her heart. Needing to be closer, she rose and walked toward him, stopping a few inches from his shoulder when he stiffened. “What happened, Simon?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Maybe not the details, but the pain that was left behind certainly does.”

  His eyes had dulled, and she knew his thoughts had gone to some place inside himself. She stood listening to the sound of his breathing, not knowing what would happen next. Piece by piece, he’d bury the dark thoughts until all you could see was his calm, collected exterior. A mask that told the world everything was fine.

  “I get it,” she said. “Wanting to pretend that everything—that you’re—okay.”

  Slowly, he lifted his eyes to look at her. “When my dad died, my mom died, too,” she told him. “Only she was still in the house. When she wasn’t in bed crying, she was a ghost, walking around the house, barely speaking. For months, I took care of everything, the kids, the house, the bills and...”

  She had to sniff back the emotion. After all these years, the memory still hurt. “And the entire time I was afraid if someone found out, they’d come in and take everything away. So when a teacher or people asked how things were at home, I’d put on a big, fake smile and say ‘great.’ Then, when my mom got better, I kept smiling. I kept saying ‘great’ even if it wasn’t true because who knew what piece of news might send her spiraling back.

  “So, I get it,” she said. “And I get how it can become second nature, but at some point pretending becomes very lonely.” Hand trembling, she reached out to touch his arm. Silently letting him know he didn’t have to be alone.

  He broke away, back to the pool’s edge, where he stood staring into the aqua-colored depths. “You know what I love about swimming?” he asked.

  Startled by his change of topic, she didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to notice because he answered himself. “The peacefulness. When I’m alone doing laps, everything fades away but the sounds of the pool. It’s when I can truly be myself.”

  “You can be yourself now, too,” she told him. “I’m not going to judge.”

  His laugh was soft but skeptical.

  When several beats passed, and he didn’t say any more, Delilah’s hope for an explanation faded. It was foolish of her to think he’d open up to her in the first place. It was obvious he regretted what little he did say. If only he would trust her, she thought sadly.

  “I didn’t fight.”

  “What?” She’d turned to walk away and barely heard his softly spoken words.

  “I said I didn’t fight.” His eyes were hard and glittering. “They found me in the boathouse and I should have fought them, and I didn’t.”

  “Them?” She hadn�
�t stopped to think, but of course, Chip would bring his teammates. “How many were there?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Because—”

  He whirled around. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I didn’t fight. Instead I cried, and I let them pin my arms, and I did what they told me to do. Like a pathetic coward.”

  Dear God. She pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from crying out loud. The tears burned her eyes anyway. Poor, poor Simon. “You were fifteen years old and outnumbered. You weren’t—”

  “Don’t tell me what I wasn’t!” he hissed. “For God’s sake, I gave in without a fight. If that doesn’t tell you what kind of man I really am, I don’t know what does.”

  As he ran a hand through his wet curls, his face caught the light, and for the first time Delilah could see how heavily his thoughts weighed on him.

  How many times had she looked at this same profile and felt her heart skip a beat? Tonight, she saw a different man. One who was vulnerable and damaged and that same heart ached like never before. The emotions inside her shifted. Infatuation became something far deeper.

  Slowly, she walked toward him and without a word or a second thought, wrapped her arms around him. His body stiffened and his fingers gripped her shoulders to push her away, but she held firm.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered in his ear. “So, so sorry.”

  She heard a hitch in his breath as a tremor passed through his body. Another shudder, and he drew her close, burying his face in the crook of her neck. Moved by the unexpected show of vulnerability, Delilah carded her fingers in his curls and pressed soft kisses to his temple. Just thinking about the injustice brought tears to her eyes. Squeezing her eyes shut, she let the moisture slide down her cheeks. She held him tight, offering solace. For what Simon had endured and for the shame he needlessly felt. And for all those years of feeling alone with no one to talk to.

  Eventually, Simon’s breathing slowed. His grip, which had been like steel, loosened as his hands began to stroke a path up and down her spine. Slowly other things made their way into Delilah’s consciousness. Things like the way his damp body molded against hers. There was a growing pressure against her hip bone. Without thinking, Delilah shifted her hips. The movement earned her a groan, and told her she wasn’t the only one becoming flooded with awareness.