CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Oh, God. Oh, God. What should I tell him?

My mind went blank, so I had to stick with the truth. “Umm…yes?” The answer came out as a question and I wanted to slug myself. Why was I being so meek all of the sudden?

Probably because Mason’s body looked strangely still. I mean, not that he usually fidgeted, but nothing on him even twitched, not even his hard gray eyes that bored right into me as if I’d betrayed him.

Strangely, I felt as if I ~had~ betrayed him.

His jaw went rigid as he looked down, staring blindly at his opened calculus book. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I…” I floundered. “Well, for one, I haven’t seen you since ~Sunday~. Then I…I completely forgot about it until he showed up just now, and…” I shrugged. “By then, you already knew.”

“When?” Mason demanded.

I frowned. “When what?”

“When did he ask you out?”

“Oh. Um…Tuesday night. Why?”

Mason’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you had study group on Tuesday nights.”

I was startled he actually remembered my schedule. “I do. I mean, I did. He’s ~in~ my study group.” When Mason flinched at that as if it physically hurt him to learn I had something in common with Ethan that I didn’t with him, I rushed on, hoping my explanation somehow soothed him. “When the library closed, we weren’t finished with our assignment, so he came back to my apartment and we worked on it—”

“He did ~what~?” Mason boomed, looking like he wanted to jump off his bench and chase Ethan down to remove a couple of the guy’s teeth…with his knuckles.

“Hey, what is ~wrong~ with you?” I demanded.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he sneered. “Maybe it’s this irresistible urge I have to ~break Ethan Riker’s face~.”

My mouth fell open. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he damn near bellowed again.

“Mason,” I hissed, glancing around to see if anyone was staring at us. “What the hell? It’s not like I have to babysit Sarah that night.”

“This isn’t about Sarah. And you ~know~ it.”

Of course I knew it. But I thought we were still in denial, only flirting around the issue and holding tight to the whole just-friends lie. I had no idea he suddenly wanted to come out.

I swallowed and tried to rein in my racing nerves, having a bad feeling the rest of this conversation was going to leave me shredded inside.

“You said we were just friends.” My voice went hoarse as I studied his taut features. “I thought—”

“We ~are~.” He glanced away and closed his eyes. “Damn it. We are, but the only reason we’re ~just friends~ is because there’s no way we could possibly ~ever~ be anything more.”

“You want…” My lungs spasmed. It freaked me out, and I understood how Sarah must feel all the time with no control over her muscles, even her breathing muscles. I couldn’t catch my breath, and it scared me.

“Do you really…want more?” I whispered in a trembling voice.

The emotions leaking into his face gave him that haggard, regretful look I’d seen the first night I’d caught him in a bath towel. “Don’t you?” he whispered back. Then he gave a harsh laugh and glanced away. “Or is this only sexual attraction for you?”

My chest ached. I still couldn’t catch a good lungful. “You know it’s not.”

“Then why the hell are you so confused about why I’m flying off the handle?”

“I don’t know.” I winced. “Because it’s easier to play dumb?” And because he’d made it abundantly clear he’d chosen his job over me. I had every right to date whomever I wanted...whether I technically felt that way or not.

“Well, you’re not dumb. Don’t play dumb.” When he shoved his calculus book into his bag and began to gather his things, I panicked.

“Mason? What’re you doing? Where are you going?”

“I’m ~leaving~. What does it look like I’m doing?”

And just as quickly as the panic came, it dissolved into pissed off outrage. Slamming my hand over his half-finished calculus paper that had fluttered across the table, I jerked it out of his grasp as soon as he reached for it. When he glared at me, I scowled. “So if you can’t have me, then I’m not allowed to date ~anyone~? Is that what you’re saying? My God, Mason. Do you realize how much of a douche bag you sound like right now?”

“Yes, damn it!”

The admission came so freely from his lips, I blinked, startled to actually hear him confirm it.

Chest heaving, he sent me that tortured, haggard look of his again. “I realize exactly what I sound like. And I’m trying to stop, Reese.” His voice broke. “I’m ~trying~ here. Jesus, why do you think I’m taking off right now? If I stay, I’m only going to say something worse.”

I think his agony got to me more than my own. Tears filled my eyes. When I blinked them away, he choked out a sound of misery.

“Christ, don’t cry.”

I probably should’ve warned him that once I started with the waterworks, they didn’t just dry up on command.

“What do you want me to do?” I sobbed. “Do you want me to call it off? Tell him no?”

I have no idea what happened to all my girl power. A guy I couldn’t have was acting like a butt because I was going to spend a little time with another man. I should be cussing him up one wall and down the next for his asshole attitude. But there I sat, in tears and begging to know what I could do to make him happy.

Man, I was whipped.

His face contorted and turned an angry red as if he was going to start bawling right along with me. But then his features cleared and he shook his head savagely. “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.”

More tears filled my eyes. Cursing under his breath, he practically leaped across the table to snag his homework out of my hand. Crumpling it in his fist, he shoved it into his bag.

“I have to go,” he muttered, swiping the palm of his hands across his eyes before he rushed off as if the hounds of hell were after him.

As I watched him stride away, it struck me how much I’d hurt him by agreeing to go on a date with Ethan. That hadn’t been my intention at all. I’d only wanted to save myself from getting hurt. I’d wanted to force Reese Randall to move on with her life. But watching him in pain ripped me up inside.

I was in love with him.

Dear God.

I was in love with a gigolo.

It was crazy insane; I was fully aware of that. But this was ~Mason~. My spider killer. My leftover food vacuum. My fellow ~Harry Potter~ fan. He was my soul mate. It was easy to look past the gigolo detail when I was with him.

And so it was easy for me to scramble off my bench and fight for him.

Though he hadn’t actually ~run~ away, he’d been moving fast when he’d left. Chasing him, I entered the main building, only to spot him nowhere in the glass-ceilinged main atrium. I glanced left down one hall with no luck. When I looked the other way, I saw his retreating back and took off in hot pursuit.

“Mason!”

He heard me and slowed to a stop but didn’t turn around.

“I can’t believe you just walked away from me like that,” I began to rail as soon as I was ten feet away. “We are so not done talking about this.”

He whirled around, catching me by surprise. I gasped when he grasped my arm, his grip hot and firm but not painful. Spinning me toward an opened nearby doorway, he corralled me into an empty classroom and slammed the door shut to pin me against it.

The breath rushed from my lungs as his body pressed into mine. He felt…oh, my God…really nice. Warm, protective, muscled, male. My insides wept from the beauty of it.

With a tortured groan, he lightly pounded his forehead to the door and our cheeks brushed by each other. Then he bowed his face and rested his chin on top of my shoulder.

“Was he in your apartment all night? Did he sleep on your couch? Did he touch you? Did he ~kiss~ you?” Another sound escaped him. A kind of sob, kind of curse. Grazing the side of my neck, he shifted his fingers around lightly until he found my scar. “Did you tell ~him~ the secret behind this?”

“No. Mason, stop.” It was killing me to listen to his misery. When I cupped his cheek, he lifted his forehead from the door to look down at me.

His whole body shuddered, and I knew it was from regret. “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…”

His thumb traced the curve of my cheekbone until he swiped away some moisture from my recent sob fest.

A look of utter wonder and sadness crossed his face.

Then he shook his head and gritted his teeth. “This sucks. 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.” He grinned, though his eyes were still full of agony. “I think I fell for you the moment I heard you laugh across the campus courtyard. 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.”

I shook my head, too amazed to think clearly. “And here I thought you hated me from that first glance.”

He shook his head. “I never hated you. 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.” His grin fell. “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.”

As if he couldn’t stay away now either, he sank closer, his breath caressing my lips. When his eyes slid closed, I knew he was going to kiss me. I wanted it more than my next meal, but I needed to be certain of one thing first.

“Are you still a gigolo?”

He froze, then drew in a breath and pulled back to send me a ragged look, begging me not to go there. “I’ll always be a gigolo, Reese.”

My chest collapsed in on my lungs. “No.” I shook my head. “No, I don’t believe that. You can stop. You can—”

“Don’t you get it yet?” He stepped away some more until we no longer touched. “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!” He squeezed his eyes closed and whipped his hand through his hair, grabbing fistfuls. “That even rhymes. They’ll probably make a damn limerick out of me and I’ll become an immortal ~prostitute~.”

He began to turn away but I caught his 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?”

He dropped his hand from his head and studied me. I had the strangest notion he was debating with himself over whether he should lie or not. Then he winced and glanced away. “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?”

That wasn’t fair. I clenched my teeth. “Mason.”

When I reached for his arm, he lifted it to ward me back. “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!” Growling out my frustrations, I flashed my teeth at him. “Just shut up for a second.”

Blowing out a harassed breath, I massaged my aching temples. We were arguing two totally different points, and it was confusing me. I wanted to tell him I’d be proud to show him off to my mom and dad, but I had to know if he was honestly free from a certain lifestyle first.

After arching my eyebrows at him in warning to silently tell him not to stray off the topic again, I took a breath and started fresh.

“In the library that day,” I said, trying a different tact, “you told Dr. Janison you weren’t scheduling any more clients.”

His face paled, making his eyes sparkle like polished silver. “Jesus, 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.”

Mason closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I lied about the husband. I haven’t…I haven’t taken a client since…”

“Since when?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes! It does.” When he sent me a sharp glance, I snarled at the obstinate ass. “So why did you lie about the husband thing then? What really happened there?”

He winced. “Nothing. I turned down a persistent woman wanting services, and she got nasty, that’s all. She called me...” He wrinkled his face into a grimace. “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 he glanced at me, tears filled my eyes. “Oh, Mason,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

He took another step back, putting more space between us. “Because if I’d told you the truth and you knew I’d stopping whoring myself out for money, I was scared you’d let me do things to you that I was dying to do.”

I pressed my hand to my aching temples. “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.”

He gulped. “Maybe.”

Damn it! Would he just give me a straight answer?

I sent him an irritated glower. “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.”

I frowned. “What? Why can’t you ever have me?”

“Because,” he sputtered, sending me an incredulous look as if he thought I shouldn’t even have to ask such a ridiculous question. “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. I’m not.” I wasn’t really Reese Randall, and I certainly wasn’t out of his reach. “All you have to do is stretch out your hand, Mason.” Pressing my palm against my chest, I whispered, “I’m right here.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I’m tainted.”

“No.” To my own doom, I stepped away from the door, going to him, my arms outstretched to hold him and soothe his wounded soul.

But he dodged around me and darted toward the escape. Yanking the door open, he paused and turned just enough to address me but not look at me. “I thought we could just be friends. 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.”

When he slipped from the empty classroom, he left the door hanging open.

His departure annihilated me. And let me tell you, the gloomy, miserable, angst-ridden look so did not look good on me.