Page 2 of Unmasking You (Hidden Hearts #1)

Chapter 1

Jamie

When the past and present collide, it’s never a good thing, especially when it means locking lips with your school bully. And to make it worse—you like it.

I shake my head, rubbing my tired eyes, and lean back on the chair. I’m too old to be spending my nights solving coding issues, but that’s what I’m good at—and what makes me rich—so I’m not stopping anytime soon.

Usually, coding keeps me so busy I can’t think about my life, or what’s missing in it. But with Shane Campbell’s face appearing in my mind’s eye every few minutes, bringing with it the rage that follows soon after, I’m constantly distracted. So much so that what I’m doing is taking me days rather than hours.

I’m expecting a call soon from Alexi, my best friend and partner in this venture. When it comes, I’ll have to spill the beans about something I’ve been able to keep out of our conversations for the last two months. Not because he hasn’t tried to make me talk, but because I haven’t had the time to process everything that happened at the ball. Not yet.

I look at the black and green screen, willing the machine to give me answers, but it just stares back at me without giving me any clues. The lines go blurry when I try to refocus on it, and I close my eyes again to give them some rest.

My mind goes immediately back to the moments I want to forget.

The last couple of months have been a nightmare. Nothing is working, and I’m not concentrating enough to get the job done. I have a contract to respect, or rather my company has a contract to respect, and this app I’m working on should have been ready for testing two weeks ago. Instead, I’m still pulling all-nighters because my brain can’t focus enough to produce.

Fucking Shane Campbell.

Two months and I still can’t forget his lips on mine or his hands on my body.

What do I have to do to purge my mind of those feelings? He doesn’t deserve them. Not a single one. He deserves my hatred, and that’s what I should be feeling for him. What I feel for him.

Why did I ever choose to go to that ball? I’m a magician when I need to avoid those kinds of situations. I had so many reasons not to be there. I could have wired the money and been done with it. Or sent Alexi… I giggle. He would have complained about being restricted in a suit more than I did. Instead, I went to the ball, dressed like a penguin, convinced a mask could hide everything I am—and was.

I want to scream my frustration, but then the final moments of that evening filter into my mind. The shoving until Shane was sitting on his arse on the ground. The joy I felt in that moment, for the small revenge I got.

For the first time in my life, I came close to actually hitting someone. Only respect for myself and my abhorrence of violence stopped me from kicking and punching him. I loved how shocked his face was when he hit the floor, and even more when I was looming over him, as if no one had ever had the chance to loom over Shane Campbell before I did. I loved it even more when I removed my mask and shouted my name close to his face, reminding him of who I was.

So close our lips nearly touched .

Oh, for all the gay deities… I’m back thinking about him and savouring his taste on my lips.

What the heck is wrong with me?

I should kick myself in the head so that I get some sleep and maybe wake up with a brain that actually functions.

The familiar sound of paws hitting the floor makes my lips turn up, and I open my eyes and turn my head to welcome the recent addition to the family. I love the smile and the feeling her presence gives me. My little queen.

With her long white coat, two small black-as-the-night eyes, and a red ribbon adorning her small face, she appears at the bedroom door. She looks at me, and after a wag of her tail, she goes on, sniffing everything in the room, almost as if she’s looking for another scent so she can claim ownership of the place.

“Queen Lizzie.” My smile gets bigger when she raises her nose, like a real queen, and continues ignoring me as if I’m not worthy of her attention.

She replies with something that’s a mix of a bark and a quack.

My smile deepens. “Darling, come here.” I try coaxing her with my sweet words, but she ignores me once again.

It could be because I smell. When work absorbs all my attention, I even forget to shower. I couldn’t ignore her barking, though, or her nips at my ankles to demand attention when she needed to eat. I ignored her when she wanted to go out, and now she’s doing the same to me.

“Come on. Let’s get something to eat,” I say to my little lady when my stomach rumbles.

She doesn’t ignore me this time. Instead, she comes closer and presses her head against my hand.

“Oh, now you like me, girl.” As I stand, the tiredness I felt before is nothing compared to what it is now that I’m no longer sitting. I need food and sleep.

I open the fridge, and my thoughts go back to Shane and all the reasons I have to hate him. My fridge is full of high-end meals for one from Waitrose and half-empty bottles of sauce because I don’t want them to go off before I can get through them.

I could eat out or order in, but that’s even sadder because people would know how pathetic my life is and how lonely I am. Notwithstanding the money I have and the himbos I could buy with it. I’ve never been one for that, and even if I was once, it had been pulled out of me with kicks and punches.

I’m in a vicious cycle I can’t seem to shake myself out of.

“Ruby, where are you when I need you the most?” I say to the empty room.

“I was very busy making the most of my honeymoon.”

I spin around with a scream, hand on my heart to avoid it coming out of my chest, and if not for the fridge door keeping me upright, I would have ended up on my arse. When I get a glimpse of Ruby’s suggestive face, I’m reminded of the wicked things I wish I was doing but I’m not.

You know why. I ignore the thought. I don’t want to go there… ever. Instead, I concentrate on my bestie.

“Stop doing that,” I say with a stern face, that morphs into a smile before we embrace as if we haven’t seen each other in a long, long time, instead of just the two weeks she was having fun between the sheets with her new husband. Second honeymoon, they called it.

“How are you?”

“Messed up.”

“I’m sorry, babe. With all the men walking the planet, you just had to find him in your path.”

“Just my luck,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

“When are we going to kick his backside?”

“Don’t tempt me. But we both know he would probably kick mine.” I glance at her, surprised by her new behaviour. “Since when is it backside and not arse ?”

“Since I’ve married a rich-as-fuck man,” she says, looking at the tall man who walks in behind her.

“Babe, I married you for that faulty mouth of yours.” Her husband laughs as he wraps his arms around her waist.

“I love you too, babe,” Ruby says to her handsome husband, making me more than a little jealous inside.

“I’m very happy for you two, but please, don’t rub it in.”

“Okay, I’ll leave you to it,” Ruby’s husband announces. “I have things to take care of in the office.”

“Bye baby,” Ruby says to him while planting a heated kiss on his lips.

How good would it be to have someone love me that much? As if it’s ever going to happen for me. I only meet people like Shane, and my last encounter with him really opened my eyes and crushed my dreams of someday meeting a unicorn. One who could have helped me forget my past. Someone to give me a chance to see the future I’d imagined so many times before it was taken away from me.

I pull things out of the fridge and place them on the counter. I need to keep busy, and baking is what helps me calm down.

“What are you doing?” Ruby’s voice penetrates the fog of doubt eating at my soul.

“Baking.”

“Oh, babe.”

Her voice nearly breaks me, but I concentrate on whatever I have in front of me and lose myself in the familiar steps that will soothe me, at least for a while.

I shake my head, knowing she’ll understand I’m not ready to talk and just need to work through my feelings.

“Tell me about your honeymoon. I want every detail.” As she opens her mouth, I stop her because I know she shares too much. “While your other half is hot, I’m not interested in your bedroom activities.”

“So, my honeymoon?”

I listen with one ear while she talks about the island they spent two months on. Jealousy rears its ugly head when she talks about how much Liam took care of her. It disappears, though, when I glance at her and spot her beautiful face sparkling with joy. She deserves that. She deserves to have a man who’s wrapped around her little finger.

And what do you deserve?

“Then we had sex while suspended from the ceiling.”

“What?” I look up in shock from my mixing bowl to find Ruby smirking at me.

“You know, swinging back and forth”

“Haha.” I poke my tongue out at her. “While I’m curious to know how you two did it, I don’t want to have that image in my head.”

“We had sex on every surface of the house we were staying in, but we haven’t mastered swinging from a ceiling yet. I’ll send you a video when we do.” She winks at me, and I have to laugh at her antics.

Her antics and foul-mouthed language have been my salvation. If it wasn’t for her, I would probably still be licking my wounds instead of running a multi-million dollar company. She was the one who befriended me and pulled me out of the shell I’d tucked myself into so I didn’t have to suffer more than I already had. She wouldn’t take no for an answer and slowly—very slowly—brought me back. First, out of my room and then out into the open, spending time in the garden, and then from there, we become inseparable.

She didn’t care who I was, who I loved, and she never asked what had happened to me. She ignored everything, even me, and with her bold personality, faulty mouth, and beautiful soul, gave me my life back. Or at least one I could live with.

“When you two master it, I’ll be the first in line to watch it. Of course, I’ll be skipping all the hetero sex since it’s not my thing.”

“We need to find you a partner so you can try mastering acrobatic sex all on your own.”

I push away the thought that I’m never going to find anyone and instead tell her that if I can overcome the past, I’m going to overcome the scars I have left and build a life for myself. The life I’ve dreamt of. The life I deserve.

“Let’s do that,” I agree, and I laugh when her eyes widen, surprised by my willingness to do something I’ve never done before. Maybe meeting Shane Campbell wasn’t all bad.

The only thing I have to make sure of is not seeing him again. What are the chances, anyway? It took us ten years to meet again. I’m going to make sure it will be an eternity until the next time.