“No.” He lifted his head up, peering over at me. “And no, I have no interest in ever finding her either. I have no desire to know a thing about her. Who knows, she’s probably dead too.” He lifted a shoulder. “She was hardcore into drugs, didn’t stop even when she was pregnant with me. I was a mistake to her. And her addiction came first.”
“Wow,” I muttered.
“She did enough damage to me. I’d rather not know anything about her,” he declared. “Pretty much an orphan.”
“Me too.”
“Really?” He sat up, curving toward me.
“My mother died of cancer over thirteen years ago, and my dad was gunned down in a biker gang shooting when I was around six, I think.”
“Shit.” Mason’s eyebrows went up. “Really?”
“My mom liked the dangerous, violent ones.” My fingers played with the edge of my blanket. “They never married but had enough sexual attraction to produce both Harper and me over the years. Similar to your parents, my father didn’t want kids either. He had days he would pretend, but he enjoyed the biker life too much and would disappear for months at a time.”
“Damn, I’m sorry,” Mason said, his gaze moving over me like he was seeing me in full color.
“It’s fine.” I adjusted against the arm of the sofa, his thigh brushing my knee. Neither of us moved, as if we needed the contact. “It’s probably why I always chose safety. Security. Not venturing too far out into the unknown. Growing up, money was tight, and nothing felt stable. I went for the opposite. Everything about Ben was safe, and I think that’s why it was even worse.” I swallowed back. “He was supposed to be the steady thing. My safety. And when he died, it shattered the world I built, thinking I was safe and protected from pain.”
“Fuck, I get it.” He leaned over his legs; his head turned to me. “You don’t know how much I get that.”
I realized how much we had in common. So much loss, hurt, and agony. We recognized it in each other, felt it deeper. The strings between us seemed to multiply, linking us together, making it harder to pull back.
Our gazes met, the intimacy of sharing our grief, the undeniable chemistry that always sparked like live wires closed in around us, stinging and sparking at my skin. The air was thick, need pulsating like a drum in the room, growing louder with every second our eyes stayed on each other. The contact between us was no longer comforting. It was an electrical charge racing up between my thighs.
I tried to control my breath, but could hear his quivering in my lungs. The desire for him rattled through me. Overpowering, about to pull me under.
“You probably should go,” I spoke quietly, but the implication was strong behind my tone.
His jaw clenched, his gaze finally dropping from mine, his head dipping in understanding. “Yeah.”
We both knew we were riding the line of danger. We were getting too close to the sun.
He blew out and stood up, grabbing his jacket, his eyes finding mine when he reached the door.
“Good night, Emery.” It felt so much deeper than the actual words. His voice licked through me, making me shudder as he closed the door behind him.
Later that night, for the first time, I let myself think of him as I pleasured myself. The featureless fantasy man had an identity now.
I didn’t know if I’d see Mason again, but he showed up the next few nights, coming over after visiting his grandmother at the hospital. He’d get his grandpa settled and come over with food. We cooked together, talked, laughed, and watched movies. It felt so effortless with him, so good, I lost all reasoning to stop it.
I didn’t want to.
“Grandma’s mad she wasn’t home for my birthday.” He served a heaping portion of spaghetti Bolognese onto my plate, adding a slice of fresh garlic bread, which smelled so good I wanted to face plant into it. “But at least she gets to come home in time for Christmas.”
“Your birthday?” I blinked up at him, forgetting he told me it was in December. “When is it?”
His mouth twitched, as if he wished he hadn’t said anything.
“Mason?” I had a warning in my tone. “When is it?”
“It’s not a big deal. I mean, this one feels even more pointless than the last,” he grumbled. “Still can’t go to bars, and I’m an even older asshole still in high school.”
“Every birthday is important. And this one means you are no longer a teen, right?” Why did that make it better in my head, as if I were trying to find a reason I wasn’t some perverted cougar? The difference between us was still the same. “Plus, bars are overrated.”
“Still be nice to be able to go to one.” His gaze drifted to me. Heavy. Weighted.
“When is your birthday?” It was more an order than a question.
His shoulders rolled; he faced the pot of pasta. “Today.”
“What?” I exclaimed, my mouth dropping open. “Today?”
He shrugged.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I hit his arm lightly. “At least I would have been the one to make dinner.”
“Oh no, it’s okay. I’d like to see my twenty-first.”
“Shut up.” I swatted him again. “Dammit. I feel like an ass.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Well, Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.” He brushed it off. “And I said it’s not a big deal.”
“You should be out with your friends, celebrating.”
“I guess I need to get some of those.”
“You have a ton of friends. Addison tells me how many people seem to worship the ground you walk on at school.”
“That makes them followers… not friends.” He shoveled spaghetti onto his plate. “I don’t seem to really fit with anyone at school.”
“What about friends from where you used to live?”
He went to the fridge, opening it up and grabbing a bottle of juice. “They disappeared when football did. We no longer had anything in common, and then I moved here and none of us kept in touch.”
I understood more than he realized. It took me a while to recognize that all those friends I thought I had were really Ben’s. I was no longer part of a couple you invited to dinner, not someone you called when you had a group BBQ. Slowly, all those people who had been at the house that night drifted away, no longer in my life.
“It’s your birthday. You should be—”
“Emery.” My name off his lips stopped my sentence dead in his tracks, his timbre stern. “I’m exactly where I want to be.” He clutched his plate of food and breezed past me to the living room.
I stood there, my mouth parted, feeling every syllable, every nuance of his response. Somehow the tables were flipping on me. He was the one in control, the one who could say something like that and walk away, while I was the schoolgirl with a crush.
Recapturing my breath, I pulled my shoulders back and went into the living room, seeing him settle into his spot as if he did this every night, not for only a few days. The last two nights, we ate dinner out here while watching holiday movies.
We stayed abnormally quiet, a weight in the space between us as we devoured his amazing pasta, though my stomach wasn’t letting me enjoy it as much as I wanted. Distracted, my attention kept sliding over to him, slyly watching him through my lashes.