From the loveseat, I hear Mason shift. A quiet rustle of fabric that tells me he’s awake, that he heard everything.
Neither of us speaks.
The silence stretches between us like a wire pulled taut.
“I don’t think I’ll be going back to sleep after that.” Mason’s voice is quiet, measured. The loveseat creaks as he sits up. “Breakfast is served until nine so I’m going to head down.”
Food sounds about as appealing as another phone call from Victoria and I’m dying for a few more hours of sleep.
I roll onto my side, intending to swing my legs off the bed, and my gaze catches on Atticus.
He’s on his back, one arm flung above his head, sheet pooled low across his hips. The early gray light seeping through the curtain gap traces the planes of his chest, the slow rise and fall of his breathing. And below the bunched fabric of the sheet, there is a very obvious, very prominent?—
Oh.
My brain stalls. Just completely locks up, like a computer screen frozen on a loading wheel. I should look away. I know Ishould look away. Any decent, self-respecting person would look away.
I don’t look away.
The sheet does nothing to disguise the shape. It’s justthere, tenting the cotton in a way that leaves absolutely zero room for interpretation. My mouth goes dry. A flush creeps up my neck, spreading across my collarbones, my cheeks, the tips of my ears. Still I don’t move. Don’t blink. Just stare at it like I’ve never encountered the concept of male anatomy before, which—given last night’s bathroom incident with Mason—is demonstrably untrue.
How long do I sit there? Five seconds? Ten? Long enough that the rational part of my brain starts screaming at the rest of me tostop gawking at the man’s erection while he sleeps, you absolute gremlin.
“I’m happy to pull the sheet down,” Atticus mumbles, voice thick with sleep, arm still draped across his eyes, “if you see something you like and want a better look.”
Ice floods my veins.
I’m off the bed so fast my feet tangle in the quilt and I nearly faceplant onto the carpet. My hip clips the nightstand. The dead phone skitters across the wood. I don’t care. Distance. I need distance between me and that bed and whatever the hell just happened to my brain.
“I’m going to breakfast!” The words come out at a pitch only dogs should hear. “Mason, breakfast. Now. Let’s go. Immediately.”
Mason is already on his feet, shoes in hand, expression carefully blank in a way that tells me he saw exactly how long I was staring.
“After you,” he says, holding the door open.
I don’t look back at the bed. I refuse to look back at the bed.
Behind me, Atticus’s low chuckle follows us into the hallway like smoke.
TWELVE
PHOENIX
The Seafoam Inn’sbreakfast spread looks like it was assembled by someone who gave up halfway through.
A single chafing dish holds oatmeal the color and consistency of wallpaper paste. Beside it, a fruit plate features slices of cantaloupe so pale they’re nearly white and strawberries with green shoulders that suggest they were picked approximately six weeks too early. There’s a basket of dinner rolls that have the dense, shiny look of something that came frozen in a bag, a tub of margarine—not butter,margarine—and a coffee carafe that, based on the smell, contains reheated motor oil.
I’ve attended wrap parties catered by food trucks in strip mall parking lots that put this to shame.
“This is worse than I expected,” I whisper to Mason as we stand in the doorway of the dining room, which is really just a parlor with three card tables draped in checkered cloth.
An elderly couple occupies one table, methodically working through bowls of the wallpaper oatmeal with the grim determination of people who survived the Depression. They don’t look up.
Mason steers me to the farthest table and pulls out my chair. I sink into it, still buzzing from what just happened with my mother and Atticus. I let him hang up on her and then I stared at his dick like it was hypnotizing me.
I might actually be losing my mind.
Mason returns from the buffet a minute later with two bowls. Mine contains a scoop of the oatmeal and a sad cluster of fruit. His has a single-serve cup of yogurt, the kind you find in gas station coolers, and a tiny croissant.
