The Price of Mason (Forbidden Men 10)

“Indefinitely?” she cried, glancing at me over his shoulder. “What the hell does that mean?”

She tried to approach me, determination clear in her eyes, but her husband grabbed her arm and manually tugged her around to the passenger side, opening her door for her and depositing her inside. His gaze turned my way as he shut the door. The longing I saw made me turn away.

“What was that about?” Mac asked as they drove off.

I let my gaze wander after the departing Acura and shrugged. “They wanted me to chauffeur them around town this weekend, I think.”

Mac snorted out a derisive laugh and shook his head. “Rich people a

re so weird.”

I nodded, even though I kind of wanted to say everyone was weird. But a group exited the restaurant then, wanting to pick up their vehicles, so both Mac and I were pulled back into work.

When I returned home an hour later, Reese’s car was still parked out front. My heart started to thump hard in my chest.

Dammit, Mom. Why weren’t you home yet? I was supposed to avoid this girl for her own good. I was nothing but bad for her. The only thing I excelled at was being people’s dirty little secret.

I eased in the back door, hoping maybe she was asleep in the front room and I could slip into my bedroom without her realizing I was there. But as soon as I shut the door behind me, her laugh drifted down the hall, followed by Sarah’s.

God. My two favorite sounds in the world.

Unable to help myself, I followed the laughter until I stopped just outside Sarah’s room, where I pressed my hand to the wall next to the open door and bowed my head, simply listening. Reese was reading Harry Potter. My lips twitched up into a smile as she put an inflection in her voice, trying to capture the mood of the scene.

“‘…Things I want to know the truth about,’” she read, only to change her voice for a new character. “‘The truth.’ Dumbledore sighed. ‘It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should, therefore, be treated with great caution.’”

They’d nearly reached the end of the story, I realized. I’d been reading it to Sarah on the nights when Reese didn’t babysit and I didn’t have to work. And last night, I’d read ahead and finished the entire book after Sarah had fallen asleep on me. But the white queen had just knocked Ron out flat during the live chess match. I wasn’t sure how the heck Sarah had been able to fall asleep during a tense moment like that; I’d been hooked and ended up reaching the end less than an hour later.

“What does that mean?” Sarah interrupted Reese’s reading to ask.

Reese paused. “What? That the truth is both beautiful and terrible and should be treated with caution?”

Curious how she would answer, I cocked my head to the side to hear her response.

“Well,” she started, pausing only to let out a long, thoughtful sigh. “I guess the truth is beautiful because it’s pure and undiluted. There’s no lie or deception in it. It’s full of enlightenment, telling you everything you didn’t know before. And knowledge is pretty spectacular, right?”

When she paused, I had to guess she was waiting to receive a sign of understanding from my sister. Then she went on.

“But… The truth doesn’t sugarcoat anything. It won’t only show you the good stuff. Truth is everything, good and bad. And sometimes learning those bad parts can shake you…right down to your core. It can leave you forever changed, not always in a good way. So instead of springing the whole truth on a person all at once—bad parts and all—you’ll sometimes either conceal it, waiting until you think they can handle it, or you reveal it in a gentle way that doesn’t hurt them. Does that make sense?”

Hell, yes. It made more sense than I wanted it to. There’s no way I could ever tell her anything like my appointment I’d had months ago with the couple I’d run into tonight. There was no way she’d ever be able to handle an undiluted truth like that. She’d never look at me the same again.

But it also made me realize Reese was honestly the only person I’d ever given even some of my truths to. I’d never actually talked about my secret occupation with anyone before her. My clients knew, of course. But I’d never opened up with any of them and actually discussed my side of the job or mentioned why I did what I did.

Suddenly the line in that kid’s book meant even more to me. You couldn’t trust just anyone with your truth. They would see all of you, the good and the bad. It was scary as shit to show someone important to you all your flaws. What if seeing your imperfections scared them off? Or what if they stuck around, only to use your confessions as a weapon against you. They could slaughter you with your own truth.

Patricia had done that to me. She’d found out what was most important to me, she’d found out my weaknesses, and she had attacked repeatedly until I felt like the stunted shell I was now.

So yeah, you definitely had to be careful with who you trusted.

But for some reason, I had trusted Reese with bits of my truth. After surviving Patricia’s numerous manipulations, why the hell had I risked that? How had I known Reese wouldn’t abuse my confidence? What the hell had I been thinking? I could’ve repulsed her and chased her off. She could’ve turned on me and exposed me to the world. She could’ve pointed and called me the sick, repulsive bastard I felt like I was. She could’ve slaughtered me.

Except she’d done none of that. She’d taken it all in, absorbed it, and still accepted me for a mess of a soul that I was.

“That’s deep,” Sarah said from inside her room.

Reese laughed with that laugh I loved, jarring me back to the present where she now inhabited my world and made me feel more alive than I had in years. It might be dangerous for her to associate with me, but hell, I couldn’t regret meeting her or spending the time with her that I’d gotten.

“Oh, my precious Sarah,” she sighed in delight, “I cannot wait until you finish the entire series. Dumbledore is chock-full of one-liners that are so deep you could spend years just thinking about each one and all the different meanings they have. One of my favorites is from the third book. He said, ‘Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.’ Whenever I’m feeling down, I just remember that line, and I think of something bright and happy that lightens the pain until it doesn’t hurt quite so much anymore. You see, the light is inside you, not anywhere else. No one else can really make you happy but you. You just have to remember to turn on that place inside you that makes you glow and you’ll make it through any hard time that comes at you.”