Page 99 of Off Plan
I didn’t talk about this stuff atall. Even my family only knew the bare bones of the story. There was areasonfor that—no one liked to be reminded they’d been a fucking idiot. But there was something about Mason’s bright eyes and the quiet room, the slivers of sunshine peeking through the curtains and the way his fingers smoothed down the back of my neck—gentling me again—that made it feel okay.
I propped my chin on my hands just above his breastbone.
“I told you my stepdad got me the job at an oil company in Texas, right? It was a whole thing Neil worked out with his buddy Paul back when I was in high school, and Paul came through. He was the head of the whole Texas division, and he treated me like a second son.” I bit my lip. “Thadwas his first son. He was a lawyer for the same company.”
“Ah.” Mason’s fingers didn’t stop their stroking. “Was he cute?”
I nodded. “Had a chin dimple like Henry Cavill.”
He whistled appreciatively. “This does nothing for me, mind you, but I get the appeal.”
“Uh-huh. I had a crush on him the first moment I met him, but office gossip said he had quite a reputation with the ladies, so I figured that was that. Then Paul invited me to the family ranch for dinner, and Thad took me on a tour of the grounds… And he blew me against the door of the pool house.” My lips twisted. “Thus proving that every porn has some basis in reality.”
“Shit,” Mason said ruefully. “So many things about the way you first thought of me make sense now.”
“Yeah, but that’s onme, Mason. You’ve never been like him.” I tweaked his nipple with my thumb, just to ground us both in the here and now. “I figured out pretty fast that you’re honest.”
“I try to be.”
“Whereas Thad got off on the lies,” I admitted. “At the time, I didn’t get that. I’d been out in college, but quietly. My mom and Neil very much hoped it was just a phase—still do, I think—so I was used to not talking about my sexuality. When things started with Thad, it seemed natural to not flaunt it. I was twenty-two and he was ten years older than me, and the shit he said—that I made him weak, that I was too hard to resist, that I tempted him—I thought it was all compliments. It wasn’t until a lot later that I realized how fucked-up it was. In the moment, I thought it wasfunthat he’d ignore me all day at work, or when his parents had me over for barbecues, and then show up at my apartment at night. It was a game. A competition to hide from the idiots we worked with.”
“I get it,” Mason said. “A little bit taboo, a little bit the two of you against the world.” His fingers carded through my hair, and something inside me settled.
I hated this story. The idiot in this story wasn’t the person I wanted to be. But it didn’t seem to faze Mason in the slightest, and that helped me keep going. To tell him the whole fucked-up thing.
“Thad said it wouldn’t be like that forever, though. Once he got a promotion, he’d come out. We talked about the kind of house we wanted to live in, and how many kids we wanted to adopt. He told me he loved me. And I believed him.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Mason sighed, and his hands clenched my hair. The light from outside grew dimmer, and I figured if Beale’s Universe was real, it appreciated some good mood lighting.
“But then he got the promotion. And he didn’t come out. Hecouldn’t. Not yet. His dad was still in charge of the division, you know? We’d both lose our jobs. We just needed to plan better. Save up. His dad would be retiring in a year, two at the most. We could hold out that long, right? I loved him that much, right?”
I winced. “I went on a site visit a few months later, and when I came back, I heard Paul had made a company-wide announcement that Thad was engaged to Misty Bowles, his high school sweetheart.”
“Baby.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want sympathy or pity, and he needed to hear this part so he’dreallyunderstand who he was sleeping with.
“I called it off. I did. Told him we weredone.But he came over that night and I…fuck. I just wanted to believe him so badly. He said Misty meant nothing. He planned to break it off before the wedding, he just had to play the game a little longer. I want to tell you I saw through it, but… I didn’t. I was so fuckingnaive. I told Thad I was gonna talk to his dad. He liked me, right? He wouldn’t love that Thad was gay, but he’d accept it eventually. I wouldn’t let Thad talk me out of it.”
I kept my eyes on the center of Mason’s chest, where I traced a random pattern with my fingertip. Outside, I could hear the wind picking up, sending raindrops skittering against the windowpane.
“That night, Thad didn’t show up, but a bunch of his buddies did. They beat the crap out of me. Broke two ribs. Then they went to Paul Chambers and told their lies to him and to the police.” I shrugged. “Paul came to see me in the hospital, and I… There’s no way he actually believed what I was accused of, you know? Not a chance. But it didn’t matter. Everyone else believed what he told them to believe, including my mom and Neil.” I shrugged again. “So I called my dad for the first time inyears. And for once in my life, he stepped up. He brought me here.”
Mason’s voice was unbearably kind. “Then he left you, too.”
“Well, no. He died,” I corrected. “Heart attack.”
“As a wiseass once told me, ‘Potato, potahto, really.’” He sat up and rolled us over so we were sideways across the bed and he was on top, and then he pressed a hundred tiny kisses onto my cheeks, my lips, and my chest.
“I don’t need pity, Mason.”
Mason snorted. “I’m not pitying you, I’m fucking pissed for you. That shouldneverhave happened. And if those guys ever come to Whispering Key, I will kick their asses. In medical school they teach us ways to kill a man without leaving a mark.”
I snorted and felt my mouth stretch into a smile that shouldn’t have been possible with the air in the room as heavy as it was. “Is that so?”
“Hell, no,” he admitted. “But I watched a lot of WrestleMania when I was a kid and I could figure something out.”
I laughed out loud and curled my abs so I could lift up to kiss him.