Page 9 of Writing Mr. Wrong

MASON

M ason threw open the restaurant door and… it was pouring rain. Not the usual wintry drizzle, but full-on rain. Good thing Gemma brought her umbrella.

Uh, no. You told her to leave it in the car.

He yanked off his jacket and motioned for her to hold it over her head. She pretended not to see him before striding into the downpour.

Gemma was pissed. Because someone told her to leave her umbrella behind. And then told her to take off her coat on a November night. And that had only been the start of it.

What the hell had he been thinking, taking her to Maize? Taking her out at all while he was under this rain cloud of his own?

Except it wasn’t really like that. He could go an entire day without anyone mentioning Denny. A day of being recognized with only smiles and waves.

That’s because he’d been sticking to the safe zone.

Grabbing coffee at his usual shop. Ordering takeout from his usual restaurants.

Hanging out with Jesse. Spending his days at the gym or at a rink.

He’d been gone all last week with back-to-back away games, and once he was out of Vancouver, no one gave a shit what he’d done to Denny.

Hell, away from Vancouver, he was hardly recognized.

A little work—okay, a hell of a lot of work, dodging and ducking—and he’d been able to keep his life running smoothly despite the Denny fallout. Then he lost his mind and dragged Gemma into the eye of the storm.

Also, what just happened with Camille had nothing to do with Denny. Yeah, one-and-done was totally his dating life, and everyone knew it. But then, sometimes, when he tried to leave afterward, it… didn’t go well.

“That was good, right, Mace?” she’d said.

“Sure. Yeah. It was great. Thanks for—”

“We should do it again sometime.”

“Uh…” How the hell did you say no to that without sounding like a total asshole?

“How about next weekend?” she’d said.

“I…” Fuck. “I don’t date during the season. You know how it is. I need to focus.”

He’d love to say past dates had never confronted him in public, but yeah, it happened. Terrance insisted the incidents only bolstered Mason’s rep.

Everyone loves a bad boy.

Except he wasn’t trying to be a bad boy, and he didn’t like the idea that being one meant he could get away with hurting people.

As for the kid who refused to serve him, Mason couldn’t be sure that had been about Denny either. Hockey fans either loved Mason or loved to hate him.

He’d royally fucked up. He’d wanted to treat Gemma to a perfect date. He’d wanted to apologize—in his own way—for what happened in high school. And he’d wanted to impress her. That was the quiet part. He wanted to get her attention.

Well, he’d gotten it, hadn’t he?

Now they were running through the rain, Mason waving for a cab, too distracted to have called the driver while they were still in the damn restaurant.

Was that a cab with its light on? Please be—

“Hey, Mace!” someone yelled.

Mason peered into the night, sluicing rain from his face. A kid, maybe twenty, was barreling down on Mason with his buddies in tow, all four teetering as if their Friday night had gotten off to a very early start.

“Mace!” the lead guy bellowed, though he was less than five feet away. “This one’s for Denny.”

Mason saw the guy swing and raised his arm to block it just as Gemma leapt between them. Mason yanked her out of the way, but the guy’s punch still struck a glancing blow on her cheek, spinning her off her feet.

Mason caught her, sweeping her up and over his arms.

“Shit,” one of the other young men said, dragging his friend back. “We’re sorry, ma’am. He’s had too much to drink. Are you okay?”

Gemma wriggled to get down. “I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t fine, was she? She’d nearly gotten clocked jumping in to defend him… against something he didn’t deserve to be defended against.

Gemma obviously hadn’t known about the Denny problem, and he hadn’t told her. He’d pushed and pushed until she agreed to go out with him… while withholding vital information she should have had before making that decision.

He grabbed the taxi door handle, yanked it open, and bundled her inside.

“Go home, Gem,” he mumbled, his cheeks heating with rising shame as he pulled bills from his wallet.

“Wait.” She held the door. “You’re coming with me, right?”

“I think I’ve done enough damage tonight.”

He emptied every bill in his wallet, still mumbling—about her getting home safe, being careful, ordering in dinner, getting whatever she wanted. Then he shut the door, hunched his shoulders against the rain, and strode off into the night.

GEMMA

Gemma sat in the taxi and stared at the money strewn across her lap. She could only imagine what the taxi driver thought about this woman in his back seat wearing a clingy dress and covered in money. Well, at least it was fifties and hundreds.

Gemma wasn’t sure whether she should laugh or spit nails.

Neither, because it wasn’t funny and it wasn’t an insult.

Oh, it could feel insulting. Mason had dumped her in a taxi and taken off, which would seem like an asshole move…

if she hadn’t seen his expression, his face flushed, eyes unable to meet hers.

As the taxi idled at the curb, she watched Mason through the rain-smeared window. He still had his jacket off, his wine-soaked linen shirt plastered to him as he jogged across the road and headed into what looked like a bar.

“Miss?” the driver said. “Where to?”

“Just… around the block, please.”

His brows shot up, but he only shrugged. Clearly she had enough money to pay the fare. That made her the boss.

The driver pulled into traffic, heavy now as the light changed.

Gemma should go home. Mark this down in her journal as, quite possibly, her worst date ever, and use it for one of those scenes where the heroine goes out with the wrong guy and realizes he’s the wrong guy after a disastrous evening.

Except…

Oh hell. She kept seeing Mason’s face. His expression after the server refused to wait on their table. After Camille threw the wine at him. Then when the drunk frat boy took a swing, the genuine horror in Mason’s eyes, as if she’d been knocked out cold.

After what happened in high school, Gemma had ruthlessly revised her memories of Mason.

That guy she got to know in private, considerate and funny and even vulnerable?

He didn’t exist in real life. She must have constructed a silly schoolgirl fantasy of the superstar asshole jock who could be an absolute sweetheart in private, with the “right” girl.

After the kiss, he’d reminded her who he really was.

The kind of guy who’d make out with you behind the school, let his friends spread the rumor that he’d done it on a dare, and then ghost you after a few mumbled words that did not include “I’m sorry. ”

Twenty years of holding fast to that edited image of Mason Moretti, and then she met him again, and there was the boy she’d known, peeking through again. The boy who could be considerate, funny, and yes, vulnerable.

She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that could erase the images.

Edit them again. Forget those bits and remember the guy who hopped into the hired car so it’d seem as if they were arriving together instead of actually picking her up.

The guy who wanted her to walk in the freezing cold to look good for photos.

The guy who put her umbrella back in the car—a car that was no longer around because they didn’t even get to eat dinner before an angry mob came for him.

What had the drunken college kid said? Something about “Denny”? The name rang a bell, but she couldn’t place it. Maybe another woman Mason had dated? The frat boy’s friend or sister?

Even if the altercation hadn’t been about a woman, there was no denying that the incident with Camille was clearly Mason’s fault. So Gemma shouldn’t feel bad for him.

And yet…

What would it be like to be Mason Moretti, one of the city’s most recognizable faces?

Her mind slid back to high school, in the aftermath of that kiss, when one of Gemma’s friends had commiserated as if Gemma had been holding a lottery ticket that was off by one number.

“Can you imagine what it would be like to actually date Mason Moretti? I should be glad he messed up, or you wouldn’t have been hanging out with me anymore.”

In high school, it wasn’t uncommon for out-crowd kids to fantasize about being part of the in crowd.

For Gemma, that was like contemplating a pretty dress that wouldn’t suit her.

In those brief moments when the possibility of a relationship with Mason had dangled before her, she’d considered that, too… and came to the same conclusion.

What she’d wanted was the private Mason. Her fantasy wasn’t going to hockey games and having him skate past and blow her a kiss. Her fantasy was a secret relationship, one only the two of them knew about, where she greedily got private Mason entirely to herself.

Public Mason came with too many complications.

Like going out to dinner, having the server refuse to serve you, an ex dumping a drink on you, and a drunken lout throwing a punch at you.

Proof that she should return Mason Moretti to the high school memory trunk and go home.

Instead, she leaned over the seat and said, “Can you drive back and drop me off at the pub across the road?”

“The one where your date went?”

She nodded.

The driver glanced in the mirror at her. “That was the Mace, yes? From hockey?”

“Yes.”

“He is a fine player. An excellent player. It seems like he is not having a very good night.”

“He’s not,” she said softly. “He’s really not.”