The Price of Mason

by Linda Kage

  One of the tears that had been swimming in her eyes finally fell.

  It broke me.

  “Christ, don’t cry.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she sobbed, wiping the tear away. “Do you want me to call it off? Tell him no?”

  Surprised I had that kind of power over her, I glanced away, shame covering me like a rash. I didn’t want to ruin her big date. Riker had asked her out before last night; he probably hadn’t even known she and I were friends until today… Even though he hadn’t seemed very surprised or even upset that I’d been sitting at the same table with her, talking to her. So, he had to have known.

  Still…

  I didn’t want to ruin anything for Reese until I gathered all the facts. Even if the idea of her with anyone else killed me, I would step back and not interfere. Much.

  So I shook my head and said, “No. Don’t call it off. I want you to be happy. I’m sorry for being a drama queen. Okay? I want you to have fun with…whomever. Just have fun and be happy. Keep being you.”

  That only made her cry more.

  I was bombing this. I was bombing it so hard. Needing to flee before I started crying right along with her, I snatched my homework from her hand. “I have to go.” Wiping at my own eyes, I hurried off, running blind.

  Reese wanted to date. I could deal with that. She was one of my favorite people on the planet. I wanted her to be happy. I did.

  It was just…

  I was a selfish bastard.

  I wanted her to be happy with me. Not with the moron Riker.

  Even though he wasn’t a gigolo and didn’t have a bad reputation.

  Plus, the guy loved his mother, even if he sucked at showing her so. And I mean, he sucked bad at it. But he’d warned me away from her twice now because he was worried about her. That had to mean something.

  If he hadn’t used Reese to get at me, she would probably be okay with him, better off than she’d ever be with me, anyway.

  Damn it.

  I entered the main building and veered right, no idea where I was going. I just needed to move, to escape this pressure that was building in my chest. It’d be nice if I could escape who I was altogether, or at least un-make all the mistakes I’d made, but I couldn’t, so I just kept striding along.

  Just as I was approaching a T-intersection in the hall and I was trying to decide which way to go from there, left or right—God, I hated being forced to make one drastic decision after another—I heard her voice.

  “Mason!”

  I slowed on instinct, unable to ignore her, but then I realized… What purpose would another conversation right now serve except to make things worse, to make me want her more and then to just hurt her even harder? The result between us was always going to be the same. We could never happen.

  “I can’t believe you just walked away from me like that,” she raged. “We are so not done talking about this.”

  Not done?

  Not done!

  What the fuck was she talking about? We hadn’t even started. We could never start. And that’s what killed me most.

  Swallowed up by the agony of it, I snapped, letting it consume me whole.

  When I spun to face her, she gasped from the unexpectedness of it. I caught her arm just above the elbow and tugged her through the open doorway of a nearby empty classroom. Once I shut us inside alone, I pressed her back to the door and came in close, snarling in her face.

  But the anger died on impact because…holy hell. Being this close flipped my world on its axis. Air hissed from my lungs as we nearly touched chest to chest. I felt her immediate arousal from the primal depths of me, and I knew she’d let me do anything I wanted.

  And I did want. I wanted every little piece of her, and every part of me screamed for me to just take it.

  That’s why I held back. Her trust scared me senseless, made me feel responsible, like I needed to do the right thing. And fucking her against this door was probably not the right thing, no matter how amazing it might feel.

  My body was tense and heavy with need as I groaned out my misery and levered my face over her shoulder so I could thump my forehead to the door. Our cheeks brushed past each other in the process, and she shuddered.

  Setting my chin on her shoulder, I spilled out my biggest fears, posing them as accusations.

  “Was he in your apartment all night? Did he sleep on your couch? Did he touch you? Did he kiss you?” A harsh breath scraped from me as I reached up to touch the scar on the back of her neck. “Did you tell him the secret behind this?”

  She touched my cheek and sobbed out a choked breath. “No. Mason. Stop.”

  Lifting my face to meet her gaze, I sucked in a painful breath when I saw how red-rimmed her eyes were.

  I’d made her cry. What kind of monster would make such a sweet, quirky, cheerful, optimistic girl like this cry?

  “God. Reese, I’m trying to be cool about this. I’m trying not to blow off the handle. And I know I’m failing. But damn…”

  I wiped away some wetness from under her eye with my thumb.

  “This sucks,” I muttered from clenched teeth. “He can ask you out, and take you to dinner, and try to steal a goodnight kiss. He can go as far into it as you’ll let him take you. And I can’t even compete.”

  Her eyes misted even more. When she lifted her hand to touch my cheek, I caught her fingers, stopping her.

  “You know, I think I fell for you the moment I heard you laugh across the campus courtyard,” I admitted. “When I looked over and saw you, I knew. You were something different. Something incredible. I knew from that first glance that nothing was ever going to be the same again. You were a complete game changer. Even when I realized you were sitting with Eva and might be like her, I didn’t care. I wanted to know everything about you.”

  She gave a tear-filled smile. “And here I thought you hated me from that first glance.”

  “I never hated you,” I promised. “You just scared the shit out of me, so I tried to stay away. I was afraid to get to know you because I wanted to so badly. I thought surely you couldn’t be as good as I’d already built you up to be in my head. Except every time I turned around, there you were, and you ended up being better than I ever imagined.”

  I have no idea why I was admitting all this. But it just kept bleeding out, like a wound that couldn’t heal. “The more I got to know you, the more I knew I should stay away. I could only hurt you. But I could never quite stay far enough away.”

  I sank closer to her until I felt her breath against my mouth, stealing a phantom kiss. I closed my eyes, imagining what it would be like for real, what it’d be like if she were mine.

  “Are you still a gigolo?” she asked.

  And there it was. Reality.

  I pulled back, sucking in a tortured breath. “I’ll always be a gigolo, Reese.”

  Her features crumpled. “No.” She shook her head adamantly. “No, I don’t believe that. You can stop. You can—”

  “Don’t you get it yet?” I moved back, hating the sudden absence of her body heat even as I craved more space to breathe again. “It doesn’t matter if I stop or not. This stigma, this curse, will never go away. Eighty years from now, people will read my obituary and say, ‘Mason Lowe? Wasn’t he that gigolo?’ God!” I closed my eyes and clutched my hair with both hands. “That even rhymes. They’ll probably make a damn limerick out of me and I’ll become an immortal prostitute.”

  Needing to move again, give myself the illusion that I could escape, I started to pace the room.

  But Reese caught my arm. “Mason, I don’t care about your reputation. I don’t like your past but I don’t care about that either. All I want to know about is right now. So right now… Are you still having sex with other women?”

  I looked at her, debating.

  Should I tell her the truth?

  If I laid it all out there, told her I couldn’t be with anyone else because all I wanted was her, she might… Fuck, she might accept me a
s I was and fulfill all my fantasies. We might actually end up together. The mere idea made me lightheaded with a want so strong it scared the fucking shit out of me, which immediately made me want to back away, untrusting it, because the vision was too good, too tempting. It could never happen.

  Because in reality, we couldn’t be together. She’d just end up hurt.

  She let go of my arm as if she knew she wasn’t going to like my answer right before I said, “Well, I think you do care about my reputation. Ethan Riker is pristine white and you agreed to go on a date with him, didn’t you?”

  Frustrated annoyance flared in her eyes as she clenched her teeth. “Mason.”

  She tried to reach for me again, but I evaded her. “Don’t. It’s fine, okay. I’m not the type to bring home to your parents. I get it.”

  “No, you don’t get it! Just shut up for a second.”

  When I did, she took a moment to visibly calm herself before meeting my gaze.

  “In the library that day,” she said, “you told Dr. Janison you weren’t scheduling any more clients.”

  “Jesus,” I groaned. “Do you have elephant ears? You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

  “Well, I did. And it made me think… I thought you were retiring. But then… Then you came to my apartment and started in about almost getting caught by a husband, and I wasn’t sure anymore.”

  I’d said what at her apartment? That must’ve been on the night I’d drank too much. Didn’t matter. The important thing here was that my past fibs were finally catching up with me. I closed my eyes and bowed my head. “I lied about the husband. I haven’t… I haven’t taken a client since…”

  “Since when?” she prodded.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, refusing to think about her English professor and the role-play she’d had me act out in that office.

  “Yes!” Reese cried. “It does.” When I remained stubbornly quiet, she demanded, “So why did you lie about the husband thing then? What really happened there?”

  I cringed, unable to tell her I’d raced over to her place that night because I’d been worried what Patricia might do to her. I didn’t want her worrying in case the landlady was full of hot air.

  So I lied again. “Nothing,” I said, glancing away. “I turned down a persistent woman wanting services, and she got nasty, that’s all. She called me… She called me some names. Nothing I hadn’t heard before, but it left me stewing afterward, and I wanted to… I had to… I just needed to see you. I needed to be around someone who didn’t think of me that way.”

  When tears filled her eyes, I felt like a cad. “Oh, Mason,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

  Because then you’d know how wrong I really was for you.

  I took a step back, guilt nearly suffocating me.

  Needing to redeem myself, I gave her one truth. “Because if I’d told you the truth and you knew I’d stopped whoring myself out for money, I was scared you’d let me do things to you that I was dying to do.”

  Blinking at me, Reese gripped her head in her hands as if trying to process what I’d said. “Okay, let me get this straight. You stopped your practice because you wanted me, and then you turned around and lied about it, making me think you were still doing it in order to keep me away.”

  Yeah, sounded crazy, didn’t it? But that fit, because I’d lost my mind a while ago. “Maybe,” I said.

  She scowled at me. “That makes no sense. If you stopped so you could have me, then why did you lie to keep me away?”

  “I didn’t stop so I could have you. I know I can never have you.”

  “What? Why can’t you ever have me?”

  “Because,” I sputtered. “We just went over this. I could never deserve you. You’re too good for me. You’re out of my reach. You’re… You’re Reese Randall.”

  “You’re wrong.” She shook her head adamantly. “I’m not. All you have to do is stretch out your hand, Mason.” She patted the center of her chest. “I’m right here.”

  Oh, God. I wanted to. I wanted to so bad. But… “I can’t. I’m tainted.”

  “No.” She stepped toward me.

  Knowing that if she caught me, if she touched me, I’d give in, I darted past her and opened the door of the classroom before glancing back to take in her shocked expression.

  “I thought we could just be friends,” I said. “But we can’t. I won’t be sitting with you at lunch anymore. I won’t be doing anything with you anymore. I hope you enjoy your date.”

  I left the room, already regretting my decision.

  But thinking about everything I’d done to her already, forcing her through my back-and-forth indecision, I knew it was better this way. She’d be much better off with—

  Thinking his name seemed to produce Ethan Riker in front of me. He must’ve seen Reese follow me inside the building and then watched us enter the empty classroom together. He leaned against a wall at the other end of the hall, just waiting for us to emerge. When my gaze caught his, he sent me a dirty glare, then pushed away from the wall and stalked off.

  I stared after him, wondering what his agenda was. Had he asked Reese out to get at me, or did he genuinely like her and want to date her? It seemed like a strange coincidence that we’d be into the same girl. But then again, this was Reese. Who wouldn’t fall for her?

  One thing was for certain. I wasn’t going to let him take out my favorite girl without discovering the truth first.

  I hurried after him.

  Confession #25: Hey, I had to make sure he wasn’t going to hurt Reese!

  Riker didn’t realize I was following him until it was too late. Glancing around when he heard me approaching fast, his eyes went wide a split second before I grabbed a handful of the back of his shirt and propelled him forward—a lot more roughly than I had Reese—into the men’s bathroom.

  “What the fuck?” he started, scowling and shoving away from me as soon as I let go of him.

  I glanced around to make sure we were alone before I shoved him into the wall. I had let him shove me around plenty when we’d been at the Country Club and I couldn’t shove back without risking my job. So I figured I owed him a couple.

  “Just so we’re clear,” I growled into his face, “I never fucked your mother. Ever.”

  “Get off me,” he spat, trying to push free, but I was having none of it.

  “Not until you listen to me, asshole. She calls me, yes. She asks me to meet her places.”

  When his face went pale and he turned away to block me out, I shoved him again, just to get his attention. As soon as he snapped a glare back to me, I added, “And then all she does is talk. Just…talk. Nothing else.” I paused before shrugging. “Well, sometimes she wants a hug.”

  He opened his mouth, his face flooding with color, so I pointed at him, quickly explaining, “And when I say hug, I don’t mean some dirty euphemism. I mean a simple, plain, old-fashioned hug.”

  Riker scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Whatever. You expect me to believe that bullshit? I know what you are.”

  My eyebrows lifted. “Oh, do you? Do you really? Because you obviously don’t even know your own mother. Think about it, brainiac. Do you honestly believe she’s the type of woman to pay some kid her son’s age to have sex with her?”

  His face went even redder than it already was. Gritting his teeth, he muttered, “Why would she pick you, though, if talking and hugging was all she was doing? If she wanted to just talk to someone, she has a million friends she could—”

  “Oh, you mean, like Darlene?” I cut in, scoffing. “The one who went to your dad and told him everything your mom used to confide to her? Yeah, great friend that one was. Or Georgina, who your dad told your mom she shouldn’t be friends with anymore? Or Paula, who fucked your dad behind your mom’s back?”

  Ethan’s mouth fell open. “Paula didn’t…wait! How do you even know those names?”

  “Because Amanda told me. She tells me all kinds of shit I never want to
hear. But apparently I’m the only person she feels she can confide in, so…” I spread my arms and sniffed bitterly. “Lucky me.”

  “Wha…?” Ethan shook his head, at a loss for words. Then he frowned. “But… Why you?” he repeated, beginning to believe me about my relationship with his mom, yet still stumped about the rest.

  But I was just as baffled as he was.

  With a shrug, I answered as best I could. “I’m not exactly sure. I think she contacted me the first time because… You know… She’d heard the same rumors about me that you had.”

  Snorting, Ethan rolled his eyes.

  I kept talking. “But then once we actually met, she started talking, like that really fast monologue she gets when she’s nervous.”

  He narrowed his eyes and flashed his teeth at me. “It’s not even right that you know about her nervous chatter.”

  “And when I actually listened,” I went on, ignoring him, “I guess she…I don’t know…thought I was a good person to talk to from that point on. Fuck, I’m not sure. I just know I wouldn’t have to do any of that if you did it instead.”

  Riker’s frown deepened. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not her son. You are. So step up and do your job already, so I don’t have to.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means, you idiot, that she’d rather do all this shit with you. Not me. She doesn’t really want to hug me. But she settles for me, because when was the last time you hugged her?” When he just frowned, I shook my head. “When was the last time you had a true legitimate conversation with your mother and listened to her instead of talked at her?”

  “I talk to her every damn day,” he cried.

  “Talking that didn’t involve you asking her to wash your pants or lecturing her about how much wine she drinks.”

  He opened his mouth, only to close it and glare at me.

  “That’s what I thought. Start treating her like someone you actually care about, and she’ll forget I even exist. Hell, she’d probably never hurt herself again. She just wants attention. Your attention.”