I sank closer to her until I felt her breath against my mouth, stealing a phantom kiss. I closed my eyes, imagining what it would be like for real, what it’d be like if she were mine.
“Are you still a gigolo?” she asked.
And there it was. Reality.
I pulled back, sucking in a tortured breath. “I’ll always be a gigolo, Reese.”
Her features crumpled. “No.” She shook her head adamantly. “No, I don’t believe that. You can stop. You can—”
“Don’t you get it yet?” I moved back, hating the sudden absence of her body heat even as I craved more space to breathe again. “It doesn’t matter if I stop or not. This stigma, this curse, will never go away. Eighty years from now, people will read my obituary and say, ‘Mason Lowe? Wasn’t he that gigolo?’ God!” I closed my eyes and clutched my hair with both hands. “That even rhymes. They’ll probably make a damn limerick out of me and I’ll become an immortal prostitute.”
Needing to move again, give myself the illusion that I could escape, I started to pace the room.
But Reese caught my arm. “Mason, I don’t care about your reputation. I don’t like your past but I don’t care about that either. All I want to know about is right now. So right now… Are you still having sex with other women?”
I looked at her, debating.
Should I tell her the truth?
If I laid it all out there, told her I couldn’t be with anyone else because all I wanted was her, she might… Fuck, she might accept me a
s I was and fulfill all my fantasies. We might actually end up together. The mere idea made me lightheaded with a want so strong it scared the fucking shit out of me, which immediately made me want to back away, untrusting it, because the vision was too good, too tempting. It could never happen.
Because in reality, we couldn’t be together. She’d just end up hurt.
She let go of my arm as if she knew she wasn’t going to like my answer right before I said, “Well, I think you do care about my reputation. Ethan Riker is pristine white and you agreed to go on a date with him, didn’t you?”
Frustrated annoyance flared in her eyes as she clenched her teeth. “Mason.”
She tried to reach for me again, but I evaded her. “Don’t. It’s fine, okay. I’m not the type to bring home to your parents. I get it.”
“No, you don’t get it! Just shut up for a second.”
When I did, she took a moment to visibly calm herself before meeting my gaze.
“In the library that day,” she said, “you told Dr. Janison you weren’t scheduling any more clients.”
“Jesus,” I groaned. “Do you have elephant ears? You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“Well, I did. And it made me think… I thought you were retiring. But then… Then you came to my apartment and started in about almost getting caught by a husband, and I wasn’t sure anymore.”
I’d said what at her apartment? That must’ve been on the night I’d drank too much. Didn’t matter. The important thing here was that my past fibs were finally catching up with me. I closed my eyes and bowed my head. “I lied about the husband. I haven’t… I haven’t taken a client since…”
“Since when?” she prodded.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, refusing to think about her English professor and the role-play she’d had me act out in that office.
“Yes!” Reese cried. “It does.” When I remained stubbornly quiet, she demanded, “So why did you lie about the husband thing then? What really happened there?”
I cringed, unable to tell her I’d raced over to her place that night because I’d been worried what Patricia might do to her. I didn’t want her worrying in case the landlady was full of hot air.
So I lied again. “Nothing,” I said, glancing away. “I turned down a persistent woman wanting services, and she got nasty, that’s all. She called me… She called me some names. Nothing I hadn’t heard before, but it left me stewing afterward, and I wanted to… I had to… I just needed to see you. I needed to be around someone who didn’t think of me that way.”
When tears filled her eyes, I felt like a cad. “Oh, Mason,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”
Because then you’d know how wrong I really was for you.
I took a step back, guilt nearly suffocating me.