The thought of Nina in my home, amongst my things—it shouldn’t feel so right. Something tells me I can trust her, and maybe that makes me a fool, but the primal need to protect her, to fuck her, keep her close, is overwhelming. I didn’t even use a condom.
What was I thinking?
She is fast becoming my only thought, and that’s a dangerous thing, and the fact I’m about to go shopping on a Saturday in central London should tell me all I need to know on the matter.
I sit in my car, considering where I should go. I know what I need. I just don’t know where to start.
I hesitate as my thumb hovers over the contact. Fuck it. I hit call and put the phone to my ear.
“Mr Lowell?”
“Alice, I need your help.”
Nina
I sit on the sofa scrolling through the channels but not paying any mind to what’s on the screen. It’s becoming clear that I don’t like being in this place alone. Maybe it’s because of the first time I was here, or maybe it’s because it’s so big.
Does Mason feel the same way? Being here alone all the time must be awful. What does he do in his spare time?What do you think, stupid?God, he even told me he has sex ‘regularly’. Who brings that shit up straight after sex? How embarrassing.
After getting fed up with the TV, I start to wander around the penthouse. He told me to make myself at home, but it seems like a rude thing to do.
Boredom wins out in the end, and that’s on him. He shouldn’t make me wait.
The rooms are all beautifully decorated, and I’m sure someone has spent hours making it look magazine-worthy. Yet there isn’t anything personal—no photos on the walls. No mess. You wouldn’t know it’s lived in. Like the kitchen, it’s equipped with top of the range appliances, but they look unused.
I come to the only door left at the end of the hall, the one that sits between the gym room and entertainment room.
The catch clicks as I test the handle, and I feel a wave of excitement rush through me. I feel like I’m doing something wrong when I’m not.
Pushing open the door, I find an office.
It’s smaller than I’d expect in comparison to the other rooms. A desk sits in the centre with shelves lining the entire left wall. Some sit empty, and some are filled with books and photos.
I lift a picture frame and smile wide at the image. Charlie, Elliot, Lance and Mason. They sit on the back of a yacht, legs dangling into the infinite blue ocean that lies calm beneath them as the sun sets in the distance.
All four men are completely different in their individual styles and personalities—all equally as hot—it makes me wonder how they met. Lance, although he seems friendly, still confuses me. He’s made it clear that he is just as unsure of me as I am of him.
Elliot I can’t even take seriously enough to figure out. And Charlie seems to be the most complex of them all. He seems so closed off yet always aware and watching, he shows a soft side towards me and the girls, and it’s not forced or fake when he asks you a question. He genuinely wants to know.
My eyes find Mason in the picture, the only one I want to understand. I feel like I have so much still to learn about him. I have seen his temper, a switch that goes from tender sweet man to dark, brooding beast with little influence. First in his altercation with Joey, then when he came to me at the gym, and last night when he left to see Scar—always so quick on the defence.
Other than his unreasonable, possessive attitude towards me and his need to get his way in every situation so far, I’d say he hides his emotions well. He doesn’t say much with his words. But those moments when we are alone, just the two of us, I see a different man. A tender man.
I drop down into the desk chair and scan the contents. Sat off to the side is another photo, this one of a family, and the resemblance of the father and son is uncanny. I reach for it, smoothing my fingers across the polished frame.
This is Mason’s family. His foundations.
They stand outside of a beautiful sprawling home, a tiny baby in the arms of the mother, a young boy standing at his father’s feet, proud hands placed on his son’s shoulders.
My heart aches as a wave of untamed jealousy floors me.
What I would give to have a dad. A sibling. A mother who loved me more than herself. Mason may have lost his mother at a young age, but if even for just this one day, the day this photo was taken, the look in the woman’s eyes as she looks at her son, her hand rested on her husband’s forearm, a baby in her grasp. Even if for just that one moment they were happy, then he already had more from her than I’ll get in a lifetime from my mother. His father may stand proud—the man of the family—but his mother’s love visibly runs through each one of them like a thread, tying them all together with a simple look, the slightest touch.
Why is this hidden? Is this where he spends all his time? If I had these memories, I’d plaster them all over my home to remind me.
A bittersweet smile comes to my face. Because I do have photos like this one, us on holiday, in the back garden, trips to the zoo. Just not with my biological family.
I put the photo back into place, shutting the office door as I slip out. I grab my phone and go to Mason’s room. I pull open the balcony door and sit down on the lounger, looking out over the city.
