Page 11 of Writing Mr. Wrong

GEMMA

G emma stared down at Mason, passed out on the sofa.

At least it was his sofa. He’d wanted to drop her off at her apartment, but she’d been afraid he’d fall asleep in the taxi, so she’d insisted on taking him back to his condo.

Then she had to help him up the stairs. Also had to help him find his key, only to discover that there was no key but a numeric keypad, to which his muddled brain couldn’t remember the code.

Fortunately, Mason wasn’t one for complicated codes, and with some prodding, he recalled that it was his birth year plus his jersey number. If only he could remember either…

Since they shared a birth year, that one was easy. She thought twelve was his jersey number, but double-checked online and was correct.

Get the condo door open. Help him inside. Turn on a light. Ah, a sofa. Okay, so just get him to sit for a moment and rest before she left—

The moment his ass hit the sofa, he passed out.

He wasn’t lying down. Wasn’t sitting either. He was slumped, head lolling forward, one leg bent, the other outstretched, his whole body canted to one side.

“That really doesn’t look comfortable, Mason.”

She got a snore in response. With a sigh, she took his hands.

“Come on, big guy, let’s get you to bed.”

Another snore.

Gemma bent and slung one of his arms over her shoulders. “Okay, on the count of three. One, two—”

His snore cut her off.

She stepped back and crossed her arms. “I have never had so much trouble getting a guy into bed. I might take this personally, you know.”

His head lolled back in another, deeper snore.

“I will get you in bed,” she said. “But first, it might help if I knew where the bedroom was.”

She looked around. She’d turned on one light in the hall. There was a dark shape that looked lamp-like, and she headed for it and then stopped as she looked out the window and gave a low whistle.

“Damn, Moretti. You have a view .”

Of the ocean, no less, his building towering over smaller ones between here and the coast. The Pacific stretched out straight ahead, with the trees of Stanley Park off to the right, and then stars and a half-moon above.

Gemma’s apartment also had a view. Of the neighboring building. If she craned her neck just so, she could see the sky. No stars, though. She was too deep into the light pollution for that.

Gemma decided the lamp could stay off so she could keep the view. She opened the blinds fully, and that was enough light to let her see inside the condo. Ahead was the kitchen. To her left was a hall, which presumably led to the bedroom.

She headed that way. The first door opened into a bathroom… with a shower room. Not a shower stall. A shower room . Plus a soaking tub.

“I hate you, Mason,” she called over her shoulder. “Just for the record.”

Her apartment bathroom had what was supposed to be a shower stall but was more like a shower booth, without enough room to even turn around. It’d been over a year since she’d had a bath.

With a sigh, she shut the door to bathing nirvana and moved to the next one, opening it into what looked like a bedroom. She flicked on a light and…

And she was staring at a motorcycle. In the middle of a room bigger than her apartment bedroom. That was the only thing in there. His damned motorcycle.

“Hate you, Mason,” she called over her shoulder. “Hate. You.”

One more door, which had to be the bedroom.

She flicked on the light to be sure. Yep, definitely the bedroom.

It was twice the size of the motorcycle room and held a bed that had to be bigger than a king.

The bed was unmade, crisp white sheets folded and crumpled, as if he’d just rolled out of them.

She scowled over her shoulder in Mason’s general direction.

What the hell was he thinking, leaving his bed unmade like that?

He could have a perfectly innocent houseguest, who’d only tried to help his drunk ass home, open this door, see that bed, and be powerless against the images rising from it, of Mason, sprawled naked—

She gave her head a quick shake.

Damn him. Someone had to teach the guy to make his bed. This just wasn’t playing fair.

She was joking—kind of—but she was pretty sure most women who saw this bed also got to see sprawled-naked Mason, so it wasn’t a tease. Just a preview of things to come.

Things that were not for the likes of Gemma.

There’d been a moment tonight, walking up to the restaurant, cameras flashing, Mason’s hand on her back, when she’d felt like his date.

As if someone seeing those photos could believe she’d really been there with Mason Moretti, Gemma in her sexy dress and heels, her on-point makeup, and her hair just so.

Now she pictured Camille, and she could laugh at her delusion.

Her mind drifted, and the dimly lit bedroom swirled into a high school hall that smelled of Axe body spray and BO. Locker doors clanging. Someone whooping. Gemma striding to her locker, navigating upstream through the crowd.

A voice whispered as it passed, “Meet me behind the school.”

She looked up sharply to see Mason still moving, turning back to say, “I’ve got something to show you.”

She arched her brows at him, but he’d already disappeared, the flow dovetailing to carry him along, lest he strain himself with effort before the next game.

The “next game” would be field hockey finals tonight. It was only three days before exams. Only three days before high school passed into the rearview mirror of Gemma’s life.

And how did she feel about that?

She wasn’t one of those kids for whom high school would be the best years of her life.

It hadn’t been the worst years either. For Gemma, high school simply existed.

Much like grade school. Bigger and better things lay ahead, and she couldn’t wait to get to them, starting with her acceptance to UBC’s English program.

Gemma dreamed of an MFA, but from what she knew of the UBC program, they wouldn’t exactly welcome her genre of choice.

Maybe she could tough it out and write CanLit for a year to glean whatever knowledge the professors could impart.

Or maybe she’d skip the MFA and stick to a master’s in English, with a minor in creative writing.

Then it would be on to her PhD and a career as an English prof writing romance on the side.

She swapped out her textbooks for the ones she needed to take home, and then she chatted with friends before heading to the rear doors.

There was never any question of not meeting Mason.

While she felt perfectly fine telling him no—a social transgression that would put most of her classmates into a state of cardiac arrest—if she didn’t plan to meet him, she’d have said so.

Gemma didn’t play games, and she was past the stage of thwarting Mason for the sake of proving she wasn’t one of his sycophants. He’d gotten that message months ago.

She headed out back to find him leaning against the wall, oh so casual. She rolled her eyes. Such a freaking poseur, even when she was the only one around to appreciate it.

“This is the second time a guy summoned me behind the school to show me something,” she said as she walked over. “The first time was in third grade.”

“Yeah, that was me, too.”

She laughed and shook her head. It took a moment for him to laugh, almost as if…

Wait. That hadn’t been Mason, had it?

In grade school, she’d been his reading buddy and they’d talked sometimes.

A lot of times, if she thought about it, that memory faded as if by yet more edits.

Yes, they’d talked quite a bit, at least until they reached the age where girls and boys started noticing each other for different reasons.

Someone—had it been Ashley?—had snarked at Gemma for “chasing” Mason—and even though it’d almost always been Mason seeking Gemma out, Gemma had started avoiding him, not wanting to be one of the many girls already fawning over him.

But back to third grade… There’d been a “kissing bug” going around at school, where kids were asking others behind the school and then kissing them.

A boy had asked to meet her behind the school to show her something, and she’d figured he wanted a kiss and, well, she’d been curious, too.

But instead he showed her some kind of weird insect, and she got the feeling he’d been planning to kiss her but chickened out, and she hadn’t been sure how she felt about that. Relieved? Disappointed?

That had been Mason.

Before she could comment, he was leading her behind the high school. Out front, the great divide was taking place, students splitting into dual streams—the “haves” heading for the parking lot and the “have-nots” for the buses.

Gemma had a hand-me-down car from Grandpa Thomas, but she never drove it to school, because if she did, she’d be expected to stuff it full of friends, and it’d end up being a longer drive than busing. So she pretended her parents wouldn’t let her take her car. The monsters.

Gemma’s family was what Dad called “comfortably middle-class” meaning they had a three-bedroom house with a yard and enough money to insure that hand-me-down car for Gemma.

Mason did not have a car. His family lived in an apartment, and any extra money went to a private hockey coach, which Gemma thought proved how much his parents must love him…

until Mason said his dad called those lessons his retirement plan.

Mason was their great hope, their only child, expected to do amazing things and repay their investment.

While Mason might not have a car, that didn’t mean he took the bus like a commoner.

Kids vied to chauffeur him, even if it meant arriving early for his practices or staying late for his games.

Being Mason Moretti meant you rose above categories like “have” and “have-not” or even “popular” and “unpopular.” Mason existed in a stratosphere of his own, which was always hard to reconcile at moments like this, following him as he loped along the back of the school.

Mason found what he was looking for—a recessed pair of steel doors that provided extra privacy. There he pulled a folded white sheet from his pocket and held it out, grinning like a little kid passing her a secret note.

She unfolded it, and then she was grinning, too. “You got a B plus in English? That’s amazing.”

“I have a B plus going into the exam, but I think I can hold it at a B. And it’s not even inflated for the newspaper work. I actually earned this.” He waved the paper. “My last essay was an A minus and the one before that was a B plus. Thanks to you.”

“I only coached you. I didn’t write them.”

“Which makes it even better, right? My first B in English.”

He grinned, and it was his real grin, so bright she couldn’t look away.

She wanted to hug him. He’d worked damn hard for that grade, and he hadn’t needed to.

He’d been promised a passing grade for his work at the newspaper.

But he’d gone further, and now he was grinning like he’d scored the Stanley Cup winning goal, and she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and—

Mason kissed her. It happened so fast she wasn’t quite sure how it happened. It was just a quick kiss, a little awkward from his having to bend over so far, and when he pulled back, his cheeks flamed and he mumbled what sounded like an apology.

“Was that a thank-you kiss?” she said.

His cheeks burned even brighter. “No, no. I just… I…” Another kind of grin sparked, this one a little bit devilish. “I wanted to do that. Been wanting to do it for a long time.”

She reached up, taking hold of the front of his shirt in both hands. “And is that what you had in mind? It was very… quick. Not that I’m stamina-shaming.”

He let out a whoosh of a laugh. “Oh, I can go longer than that.”

“Can you?”

His eyes danced. “Are you calling me out, Gemma Stanton? If you want a longer kiss, you could just ask.”

She pulled herself up on her tiptoes, hands wrapping more in his shirt. “Could I?”

He nodded mutely, a strange expression in his eyes.

“Hmm. Okay.” She let go of his shirt. “I’ll remember that for next time.”

There was a split-second pause, as if he really thought she was going to walk away. Then he caught her grin and grabbed her, and the next thing she knew, she was clear off her feet, her back against the wall, his hands on her ass boosting her as he kissed her, and holy shit , the boy could kiss.

Her first thought was Damn you, Mason .

She would admit she’d been curious about what it’d be like to kiss him. If she was being perfectly honest, she’d hoped to be disappointed. That would mean she’d never have traitorous thoughts about his lips and hands on her again.

Instead, it was like touching a flame just to see what it felt like, and being engulfed in an inferno of “holy shit !” Which is not what she wanted, and at the same time, it was exactly what she wanted.

His lips on hers, his tongue tasting hers, the heat and fire of him devouring her.

His hands on her ass, fingers digging in, but staying there, making no move to do anything else or go anywhere else and—

“Mace!”

Gemma pulled back as the voice echoed around them. Then another called, “Yo! Mace! Game time!”

“Ignore them,” Mason whispered as his mouth found hers again.

“Mason!” someone shouted. “I saw you come back here!”

Mason kept kissing her, but all she could imagine was his friends stumbling on them. She reached for his hands and gently peeled them away as she whispered, “You have a game.”

He glared in the direction of his friends, who were still calling him.

“Go on,” Gemma said, giving him a little push. “It’s the finals, and you’re the star.”

He made a face. Then he bent to kiss her forehead. “Tomorrow, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She gave him a quick hug, and when she stepped back, Mason jogged out from the recessed doors.

“What were you doing back there?” one of his friends said.

“Taking a piss.”

Gemma rolled her eyes. Boys. She waited until they were gone, and then she slid out and took off before she missed the bus.