At least I’m feeling something.

Mason pushed up onto his hands, watching her with cautious eyes, and her skin goosebumped at his close analysis. Or maybe it was the removal of his heat. She tried to meet his gaze and smile; she failed. I can’t pretend everything is back to normal.

He slowly moved off and turned her onto her side, facing away from him, spooning her close to his chest. His skin felt like fire against her back. His mouth was close to her ear. “I think sleep would be a good thing right now. We can talk all we want tomorrow.”

Sleep helped everything. “I love you, Mason. I’m sorry—”

“Stop apologizing for your sister.”

She swallowed. I’m not. It’s for me.

“You’re human. And you’ve experienced more than anyone should today. It’ll look different tomorrow.” He leaned closer and kissed along her jawline. “I’ll hold you tight tonight. And every night after. We don’t need to rush through anything right now.”

She exhaled and relaxed a degree, letting his heat seep through her skin and into her core.

“I love you, too, Special Agent McLane.”

28

He checked the pasta. It needed more time. He kept one eye on the clock as he stirred the sauce and listened for his mother’s footsteps on the stairs. She’d come home from work and immediately headed upstairs to change. His job was to have dinner on the table at exactly six P.M.

Dinner would be late.

He prayed she’d take extra time upstairs, but he knew she stuck to a routine. He had exactly two more minutes to get everything on the table. The places were set, the water and her wine were poured, and the bread was covered with a towel in the center of the table. He transferred the sauce to the floral serving dish and placed it on a hot pad near her wineglass.

He checked the pasta again. Still way too chewy.

Sweat broke under his arms. Perhaps he should have chosen the angel hair instead of the regular spaghetti; the cooking time was shorter. No. He knew she hated angel hair. His father had always wanted the angel hair, but once he was taken away, his mother never cooked it again. A lone box still sat in the back of a cupboard. He’d considered throwing it out, but she got angry if food was wasted. So it stayed. A constant reminder of his father’s absence.

His father had ended up in prison. He hadn’t been allowed to attend the trial, but his mother had gone every day. She’d sworn to her son that his father would be back and railed at the system that was unfairly persecuting her husband. Until the trial was over.

Suddenly his mother became a different woman. She bought new clothing, her hair changed, she wore makeup and got a new job. She went out with people from work and talked about moving to a new state.

He didn’t understand.

His father had been unfairly ripped away from their home and sentenced to a decade in prison, but his mother acted as if she had a new life. She ordered him around, assigning him the tasks that had always been her job. Laundry, cleaning, cooking. He was busy from the moment he got home from high school until he went to bed. She simply went to her job and then came home to enjoy the fruits of his labor and point out everything he’d done wrong.

“The plates need to face the same way in the dishwasher or else they won’t get clean.”

“You put too many items in the washing machine. Run them again.”

She yelled. All the time. According to her he did nothing right. What did she expect? He’d never cooked or cleaned. That was women’s work.

Dad would have understood. A decade without him was going to last forever. He didn’t understand how a man could be locked up for something he’d hardly done. But he’d seen the newspaper article. A female judge had looked at his mother’s history of trips to the hospital and blamed his father for every last one. The cops had claimed his father assaulted them twice in jail while awaiting trial. The female judge had strung several sentences together, unfairly locking up his father for a long period.

After that the power in the home had shifted. He no longer had time to listen to music or game. His mother had turned him into the wife, while she went to work, bossing more men around. She’d landed a management position in retail sales. A favor from the husband of one of her girlfriends. He’d even heard her tell someone on the phone that she’d been shocked to receive it with her few years of experience. “But it’s like the position was made for me. It feels natural for me and I’m good at it. It’s like I never left the industry.”

His friends harassed him about his new chores. “He has to wear his apron tonight. He can’t make it to the football game.”

He’d tried to talk to her about it. She’d sat at the table after dinner one night, a cigarette in her hand and the wine he’d poured her in the other hand. The table messy with the dishes he was expected to clean up. He’d told her he missed his friends and felt it was unfair that he did all the work. She’d blown up.

“You bitch about cleaning some dishes? Do you know how many years I served your father? He had no idea how women were to be treated. Women first, Son. Always. Show your manners and treat them like queens, and you’ll never be sorry. Your father was clueless. He saw me as his property and never even gave me a credit card. He counted out money into my hand every Sunday night. That was my money for the week. I was expected to buy groceries, gas, and clothes for you and me out of that. If something went wrong, I was expected to make do with what he gave me. He was a control freak and stuck in a different era.”