“Yeah, she is. We have pancakes most mornings. And to her, my pancakes are the shit. In her head, only a crazy person would wanna miss her daddy’s awesome cooking.”

My shoulders bounce and my head falls back in laughter. “Oh, really.”

He pulls my face in close, capturing my gaze beneath his. “Yeah, sweetheart, really. She liked you. She doesn’t spend much time around women so she enjoyed your company. She was looking for more of that. I want more too, but we can’t do this if we aren’t straight with one another.”

I turn around, his words swirling in my head. Twisting the taps off, I step out of the shower before spinning back around to face him. “I can’t give you all of me. I’ll give you everything I can, but I can’t guarantee it will be enough for you and Charlotte.” I wrap a towel around my naked body and coincidently, I’m doing what I always do. Hiding the secrets away, backing off from anything feeling too real. Except this time, as the words leave my mouth, they taste of a lie.

“Why not, sweetheart? What shit in that head of yours has you so fucked up you want to run away from something good?”

I brace my hands on the edge of the vanity, leaning my head forward as Mason’s words echo in my mind. Why am I the fucked-up one? Am I fucked up? I’d never thought of myself that way. Was this how he truly saw me? What about him and those crazy nightmares? Anger pushes to the surface and I try to keep a lid on it. I press my lips in a tight line but the questioning in my head, the accusation of me being fucked up bursts through my patience.

“For a man who walks around with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Mase, I’m a little shocked by your comment.” My words are controlled, lethal. I lift my head to find Mason staring at me through the mirror. “You play the hero, catch the bad guys, and save the damsel in distress, all in a day’s work. You fixate on everyone else’s problems so you don’t have to face your own. So who are you to judge the way I handle my life? I’m not perfect. But I’m far from fucked up.”

“Not judging you, sweetheart. You know that’s not how I meant it. I was calling it how I see it,” he says, inching closer, still watching me through the mirror. His voice is calm, not the least bit mad and after what I just said, I’ll admit, I expected more of a reaction. I was being irrational but I didn’t have it in me to stay quiet. I’d been defending myself nearly my whole life. It was my natural reaction. His body curls over mine encasing it with warmth. “I wasn’t saying you’re fucked up,” he whispers beside my ear. “What I was saying is something happened to you that changed everything. I’m a detective, Lindsey. It’s my job to read people. Something happened at some point in your life, sweetheart, and you’ve let it screw with your mind for too long. Whatever crushed those dreams of yours, let me help you move on from that.”

The determination in his eyes shows how serious he is. But he’s wrong. My dreams weren’t crushed; they just changed. They grew with me and although the hurt from my past never left me for long, I didn’t let it define me. My world changed the day Jeremy left us with no money, no food. We had a home, an empty one, with a mother who was rarely there and when she was, she was too shitfaced to know it. My world changed leaving me with no option to change with it and somehow, I had to find a way to provide for my little sister and myself. We received no money because we had one parent alive. She received the payments from the government that were supposed to support us as a family. The only decent thing she did with it was pay the water and electricity bill and even then, it was only paid to provide her with her own selfish materialistic needs.

So, I did the only thing I could. I stole. One solid meal a day would suffice, along with whatever small pieces of food I could steal and hide in my clothes or stuff into the pockets of my pants. Some days I barely ate a thing, but I always made sure Ali went to school each day with food in her belly. And then the day I turned eighteen my world changed again. I found my mother dead, my sister crying, and we no longer had a bare home and a shitty mother. We had nothing but each other, so again, my dreams adjusted to cater for the nightmares life was throwing me.

Every day was like being put on trial, a test to determine whether we would sink or swim. We struggled but survived with every part of us intact, without the help of anyone else.

I turn around and Mason’s broad arms envelope me. I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Emotion blocks off my voice as a new sensation claws at the edges of my guarded façade in the hopes of being unleashed. I lift my hands to his face and glide them through each side of his short hair and I swallow past the lump in my throat. “I don’t need help moving on, Mase. I can do that on my own. It’s just until now, I never had a reason to leave it all behind.” My words come out low and breathy while my entire body shakes with anxiety from facing the unknown. I’ve never allowed myself to feel this way before, let alone announce so much about me to someone aloud. I assumed after we met, our lives would carry on as if we were two strangers who once crossed paths. It was barely a few hours of being in his company when I realized how wrong I was. I still can’t comprehend why, or what it is about him, but it doesn’t matter anymore because I can’t ignore it and now, my mind has caught up with my heart, it doesn’t want to ignore it either.

His eyebrows furrow as he searches my eyes for answers I’m not willing to give.

“Trust me when I tell you, Mason, you don’t want to know it all. We all have a story we’ll never tell. This is mine. Just like I know you’ve got one of those too,” I croak out, my voice betraying the emotions I’m trying to keep at bay.

He nods as if he understands and the pressure on my strained heart lifts. It slows, returning to a normal beat.

“I get it. I’ve got shit that’s fucked me up, too. I can’t deny it, you’ve seen it. But you’re right. I don’t like bringing it up. It’s my burden to bear and I won’t put it on anyone else, ‘specially not you.”

I stare at him in awe. I know he’s talking about the night terrors he has, but I savor the moment because in many ways, we are so alike, yet in others, we are worlds apart. We both refuse to give every piece of ourselves over, all in the name of protecting one another from the damage of our pasts. It’s as beautiful as it is heartbreaking, because in the end, it would have the opposite effect. It would expose us and destroy any chance we have at a future.

“You don’t have to tell me. Just remember I’m here for you.” I run my hands down his chest before reluctantly pulling away to dress in pajamas and warm up.

Mason dries off his body and hair, until he sees me pull down my top by the hem, letting it fall into place.

“You like that top?” he asks.

I glance down at my boring New York University oversized t-shirt I’ve had since college and back up again at Mason. My brows bunch together in confusion.

“Well, yeah. I wouldn’t wear it if I didn’t.”

“Better take it off then or I’ll be ripping it off you in about thirty seconds.”

Well, damn, what’s a girl to say that?

Husky voice, sex eyes, Mason in nothing but a towel? I rip my shirt off so damn fast I don’t bother trying to put up a fight. This is one part of my life I am happy to relinquish control.

***

I clench the crisp white sheets of my bed and a loud moan escapes my lips causing Mason to pound into me from behind harder. He is relentless in his assault on my treacherous body and it seems the more vocal I am, the more turned on he becomes. If it’s dirty talk he wants, that I can give him.

“Mmm, that’s it, baby. Harder.” He pushes in impossibly deeper, the motion rocking my body with an otherworldly pleasure. The feel of him inside me, stretching me is euphoric. The need for more tingles in my fingertips. I push back onto Mason’s cock and throw my head back with eyes closed, my mind absorbed by the blissful feeling of Mason’s cock thrusting in and out of me.