The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(77)

“I can’t answer that.”

She looked down at her hands and didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Your arrest,” she said. “I read about it. The paper said you were sentenced to twenty-five-to-life. With no chance for early parole. How can you even be here, Nick? How can you be out?”

“It was a bad bust,” he said. “They had to release me.”

“Bad bust meaning you weren’t there that night? Or bad bust meaning—”

“I didn’t kill anybody, Lauren.”

It was the truth, Mason thought. For that night, at least, it was the truth. I wasn’t a killer.

Not then.

Never mind the men I’ve killed since I became a “free” man.

“The other man who was killed that night,” she said, “trying to get away . . .”

“A friend of mine.”

She could see it in his eyes. How much it still hurt him.

“I’m just trying to understand,” she said. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“I’ll never put you in danger,” he said. He wanted to believe it.

“I don’t think you can promise that, Nick. Not the way you live.”

It was her biggest fear, that he was involved in something terrible. Something she could never understand or accept. He hadn’t said one thing yet to make her believe anything else.

“Whatever you think we can have,” she said, “it won’t work. You know that, right?”

“I want to be with you, Lauren. I don’t know how else to say it. This other thing in my life . . . I’m trying to get out of it. Every single day.”

He didn’t know how he’d ever do it, but he would keep watching, and waiting, and somehow he would find a way to get his life back.

“Can you do that? Will you ever be out?”

“I don’t know.”

It was the truth. He had no idea how long it would take. Or how much his freedom would cost him if it ever came.

“Because if you could . . .” she said. “I mean, if you really could—”

Mason reached out and touched her hand before she could finish. He knew he was asking for too much from her. Being with him would be signing the same kind of contract that he had with Cole. With no chance to read the words. No idea what would happen from one moment to the next.

He had no right to ask her to live a life like that. Like his.

He took a leash from the rack and opened up the gate. Max came out into the center of the store just long enough for Mason to hook the leash to his collar. He opened the door and led the dog out into the rain. When he was half a block away, he heard the footsteps behind him.

He turned and looked at her face, already wet from the rain.

He put his arms around her and kissed her right there on the sidewalk. They walked up Grant Street together, with Max on the leash beside them. By the time they got to the town house, all three of them were soaked.

Mason took Lauren into his bedroom and they took off their wet clothes.

“I need you to be honest with me,” she said as she touched his chest. “You don’t have to tell me anything you can’t tell me. But no more lies.”

He nodded his head once. Then he lifted her up in the air with both arms and put her down on the bed. They wrapped themselves together and it was better than the first time, because it wasn’t about five years of hunger waiting to be released. It was about being together and wanting to make it last.

? ? ?

Lauren woke up first. The sun was coming in through the windows of Mason’s bedroom. The storm clouds were gone. She lay there for a while, watching him sleep. Then she got up and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.

Diana came down the stairs. She was dressed for work. Dark suit, a white shirt today. Her hair pinned up.

“Good morning,” Diana said with that same careful, cold edge in her voice just like the first time the two women had met. With a hundred other things left unsaid.

Lauren watched her pick up her black leather bag, then head for the stairs. There would be no breakfast, no conversation. Not even another word. Then she heard Diana’s BMW starting, the garage door opening and closing, the car accelerating down the street.

We don’t have to be sorority sisters, Lauren thought, but as long as you still live here . . . it’s just another complication. One more thing to be worked around if we’re going to make this work.

Maybe I’m fooling myself. This whole thing is impossible.

But then Nick was there in the kitchen with her. He came up behind her and wrapped his arms tight around her waist.

We have to try, she said to herself. Somewhere in the middle of this crazy mess, we have to try to find a real life.

? ? ?

They spent the rest of the day together, walking down to North Avenue Beach and the outdoor hamburger stand at Castaways, the restaurant that was built to look like a big blue steamboat. One more piece of classic Chicago, and for one fleeting moment, it made Mason think that maybe this city was big enough, and good enough, to find a new life in.

And maybe even find a way to include Adriana in his life. Bring his daughter to this same beach, on another day, just as perfect as this one. Watch her swim and then wrap her up in a towel. Sit on the sand and watch the sun go down over the lake. He still had the soccer games twice a week. Still keeping that part of his life separate. And safe. But if I ever find a way to get my life back, he said to himself, I can have more.