Page 20 of Nowhere to Hide
“Eighteen,” I say. “Surprised you didn’t get carded…”
“Nobody cards a Cross anywhere near Halden.” He laughs. “You’re studying communications?”
“Right.”
“What track?”
“Maybe PR,” I offer. “Or crisis management.”
He nods, satisfied, though he’d have nodded if I’d said taxidermy. “What else is there to know?”
He says it like he thinks he’s already guessed every answer, but I run through it anyway. He already has Rye and the country club, so: father who does corporate law, mother who does… stuff, plus an older brother in politics.
“High school?” he asks.
I’d hoped to avoid that. “Hotchkiss,” I say.
“Hotchkiss,” Mason parrots. “Solid.”
The candle flickers between us. He smiles, and I smile back, and I have the small queasy thought that I have just successfully completed a job interview. An awkward silence stretches between us, but then the wine arrives.
He tastes it, doing the full swirl-and-sniff performance. “Yep, this will do,” he tells the waiter.
More silence, and it’s clear he’s waiting for me to talk. “What about you?” I say. “What are you studying?”
“Business,” he says, like I’ve pressed go on the next obvious topic. “My internship’s locked for next summer. Goldman. The guy who runs the trading desk knows my old man.”
“That’s amazing,” I say, as expected.
“It’s fine,” he says, in a way that makes clear he thinks it’s amazing too, then sips his wine.
I nod, and the burrata arrives, a pile of cheese and torn bread on a wide plate. He cuts it in half and slides the better-looking side onto my plate without asking, which I think is meant to be romantic or chivalrous, and then he keeps talking.
And talking.
Andtalking.
His semester abroad in Lausanne. The boat his family doesn’t really use. The line he’s on this season. His father — a longtime NHL scout, which Mason drops with a shrug like that explains everything — and how the hockey thing is the family business.
He tells the story of Mason Cross like he’s told it a million times. He pauses where the laughs are supposed to go, and I deliver them, careful and soft, the laugh I’ve been practicing for months. He doesn’t stop, right through a second glass and the remains of the burrata.
The only thing that stops him is the door opening.
A brief gust of cold and street noise hits me from behind, and I hear them: a low cluster of male voices and a laugh that carries across the room. I don’t turn my head, but I watch Mason as he raises a hand in greeting.
“There’s my boys,” he says, mildly, like it’s a coincidence they’ve walked in here tonight.
Without asking myself why he’d set up a date at the same place the rest of the team was planning to go, I let my eyes drift over. There are six of them by the host stand, and I see Luca shaking out his coat at the front, and behind him is Rowan.
He hasn’t seen me yet. He’s mid-sentence with Luca, and when Luca says something that makes him laugh, his whole face gives way to it. It’s like the composure I saw at Maple & Main breaks out of hiding and lets something younger loose.
And that undoes me.
It goes straight through me and settles low, a warm ache between my thighs that has nothing to do with the man across the table. I shift against the leather and press my knees together, but it doesn’t do anything to help.
Then he turns, and our eyes meet. It isn’t long, but it lasts longer than is probably fair to Mason. Rowan’s eyes snag on me, and I hold his gaze, because I can’t seem to do anything else right now.
He lifts his chin a quarter inch.Hello.
