Hitman's Secret Baby: A Bad Boy Romance (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen
Taryn

I didn’t hear from Mason again all week.

He’d warned me that contact could be dangerous. If he was ever being watched, or if someone got a hold of his phone and he’d forgotten to wipe it clean, he could implicate me in everything he was doing.

I had barely slept since the morning he left, his marks on my body still new and tingling. I tried to go about my days like usual: opening up the diner, losing myself in the customers, heading to Justin’s every evening to spend time with Daisy…

But, like an incessant mantra, Mason stayed firmly in my head.

Hearing nothing was a torment, even though I understood it didn’t automatically mean bad news.

I started to wish I’d never suggested this whole plan.

But then what? Ethan would’ve been killed, maybe even Anna. I didn’t put the wheels of this in motion, but that didn’t mean I could help feeling responsible for each and every turn.

I didn’t even know where Mason was. I didn’t know what he was doing, if he was in danger.

I’d never even gotten to introduce him to his child, and while it had seemed safer before, now it just felt cruel.

“If anything…
happens
to him,” Anna choked, “at least Daisy won’t have to miss him. At least you won’t have to explain what happened to Daddy all over again.”

As usual, the sun was relentless, and we sat in Ethan and Anna’s garden under a wide umbrella, cold lemonade sweating on the table. Even this felt fraudulent; Mason was out there saving us, and we were sat here drinking lemonade.

“I know,” I sighed. “I just keep doubting
everything
.”

“There’s nothing we can do, Taryn. Not without putting him in danger, or screwing up the plan, or bringing hellfire down on all of us.”

“So we just have to wait.” Bitterly, I scoffed. “Great.”

“That isn’t our world,” Anna pointed out miserably. For such a beautiful day, we sure were darkening up the place.

Ethan and Anna’s garden was as gorgeous as the house. It stretched for yards, surrounded by tall, trimmed hedges, thick willows, and cherry blossoms. The lawn was immaculate. I should’ve brought Daisy to play, but we were all too anxious and if she saw that, she’d have so many questions I didn’t know how to answer.

Anna went on. “Mason knows what he’s doing. He’ll be okay.”

I wasn’t so sure. The way he’d said goodbye… it had seemed so permanent, and not just like he was leaving by choice. He knew more about his chances of success than I did and even he seemed to have doubts he’d be walking away from Carl Monroe unscathed.

Anna squinted past me and I turned to see Ethan crossing the yard. He took a chair, kissing her on the cheek, and for a second I envied their quiet domesticity.

But even they didn’t have the promise of a future right now. It was something we all had in common.

“What if he fails?” Ethan asked. Nervous tension ran through every line of his body; normally such a sweet and laid back guy, he was barely recognizable now. There were dark circles under his and Anna’s eyes, and most likely my own if I dared to inspect my pale reflection long enough.

None of us had been getting much sleep. I wondered if Mason had been sleeping.

“He won’t,” Anna said firmly.

“But—”

“Ethan!”

“I think we need to talk about it,” I interrupted, wishing I didn’t have to be the one to say it. I didn’t even want to think it. “We need to be practical here.”

Anna’s face twisted. “
God
.”

“There’s only one thing we could do,” Ethan said decisively. “We’d have to get out of the city for a while. Hell, maybe even the state. You too, Taryn.”

“How?” I asked, honored that he’d included me in this. I knew he looked at me like a sister, but it was nice to know how much he truly considered me family.

“The private airstrip my father used to use is only a twenty-minute drive. I’ll have to charter a flight. We should all have a bag packed, just in case.”

The way Ethan said
father
was laced with disgust. It had always been there, too, I’d just never noticed it before. How blind I’d been. That man had ruined all of our lives, his legacy consisting of us, sat here, terrified for our family.

“Wow, you’ve already thought about this, huh?” I asked, impressed at his forward planning. He was a businessman after all.

“I think Mason will do everything he can,” he assured Anna. “But I know the kind of men he’s dealing with here. They’re the kind of men I was surrounded by as a kid. They’re nothing but roaches.”

“So that’s it? We just flee from our homes like fugitives?” Anna asked hoarsely.

“It’s just to give us some time to work out what to do next, until I can get the appropriate protection involved.” Ethan cupped her cheek. “At least we’ll still be alive to do all that.”

Anna sighed, leaning her head into his hand. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“I know, honey.”

I looked away from their private moment. It reminded me again how much I wanted to hear from Mason, my head filled with all the things I should’ve told him before he left.

Would I get another opportunity to correct that mistake?

I hated this so much.

“When you say the appropriate protection…” I said, trailing off.

“The authorities.” Ethan looked uncomfortable. “And if not, there are other people who can protect us.”

“More shady characters,” I drawled, and Ethan nodded. “Our life is the fucking
Godfather
.”

It got a laugh out of him. “As long as we’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

He sounded like Mason when he said that. It’s how I felt, too, because if Mason had taught me anything, it was that people were capable of the worst things imaginable.

I knew I’d do anything to keep the ones I loved safe.

Anna picked up her lemonade glass to make an announcement. “You know what? I think this needs vodka.”

I couldn’t have agreed more, and she quickly ducked into the house to fetch a bottle and top us up.

If we were to be pessimists, we could at least be drunk pessimists.

We talked into the late afternoon, moving on from hopeless plans and schemes to memories and nostalgia. It’d been a while since the three of us had done this, and I’d missed it.

As the sun was setting, my phone started to ring.

“It’s Mason,” I told Anna and Ethan, scooping it up off the table and standing so abruptly my chair fell over backwards.

“Hey,” he said, and I felt my eyes sting, the soft buzz of a few alcoholic drinks and the low hum of his voice playing havoc on my senses.

“Mason,” I breathed. “God, Mason, are you okay?”

He chuckled quietly. “I’m fine. You really gotta stop worrying about me.”

The word escaped me before I could get a grip on it: “Never.”

“Look, I can’t talk for long; I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Where are you?” I caught Anna’s eager gaze. “Are you safe?”

“I’m in my hotel room and yeah, I’m pretty certain I’ve stayed incognito. I planted a few false sightings back where you are for good measure.”

I sighed, telling Anna, “He’s safe.”

“You’re with my sister?” Mason asked, and I told him the affirmative. “Can I speak to her?”

I passed the phone to Anna and ran a hand through my hair, pacing back and forth across a small patch of the lawn as they talked. Mason had her laughing in minutes, and I felt a watery smile tug at my mouth. The sun was starting to set behind the white walls of the house, the day cooling, and I felt so extraordinarily light that I only just realized how shitty I’d been feeling.

It was like I’d been carrying a weighted backpack around with me; my whole body ached with relief.

Anna told Mason, “Come back home, big brother,” before she handed the phone back to me with a smile.

I took it, walking away from the table and into the shadow of a weeping willow. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.”

His voice, again, had the most incredible effect on me. I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of it after this.

“How’s it going out there?” I asked softly, leaning my back against the rough bark of the willow.

“Tomorrow night it’ll all be over.”

It was
really
happening; my heart constricted in my chest. This wasn’t just like some action movie where the good guys won and the bad guys went up in flames, where people got shot and blown up left and right but still hobbled along to the happy ending. Tomorrow some real shit was going to go down and Mason was going to be right in the middle of it.

In real life, people died.

“What odds do you give yourself?” I asked, trying to make it sound like a joke and failing horribly.

“Oh, a hundred percent,” he said cockily. “I got this, babe.”

I laughed. “Babe.”

“I don’t even know where that came from.”

“I don’t hate it,” I said around a helpless grin. There was no way he couldn’t hear it in my voice. Despite everything, he was still keeping his good humor.

“I’ll call you again tomorrow night, okay?”

That felt like the end of the conversation and I couldn’t bear it. “Wait. Don’t go. Just… not yet.”

“About that,” he said cryptically, and then he went silent so long my heart started to pound.

“Mason?”

“What if—” I heard the click in his throat as he swallowed. “What if, after cleaning up the mess around here, I came back?”

“Came back here?”

“Yeah.”

“Came back
home
?” I asked hoarsely, hardly daring to believe what he meant.

“It was my home once,” he said softly. “I kinda want to see if it can be again.”

“You don’t have to ask my permission for that, Mason.”

He huffed an impatient sigh and I almost burst out laughing, awe and disbelief making me hysterical. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“And you already know I think it’s a great idea.” I tipped my head back, still grinning like a loon. “It was
my
damn idea.”

“Taryn.” His voice sounded suddenly intent, so full of promise, and I knew before he even started to speak again what he was about to say. “I lo…”

“No,” I said quickly, my heart in my throat. “Don’t say it, not now.”

“What?”

“You can tell me when you get home.”

He breathed a laugh, light as air. “Okay.”

“And I can say it back.”

“
Fuck
. Okay.”

“You are coming home, Mason,” I repeated, all the confidence I could muster pushed into that one sentence. Nothing seemed more important to say right now, not even the
L
word.

“I am,” he said, like he almost believed it. Maybe even like I’d made him believe it. “I’m gonna go now.”

I wanted to argue again but I knew he was right. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

“Bye, babe.”

That helpless grin came over me again as the call cut out. My elation warred with my anxiety, and I slumped against the tree feeling at odds with myself. To hear Mason was coming back, to me, to our family—it was almost worse. To have a future so close only to know it could be ripped away in the course of one night.

I wanted, more than anything, for Daisy to meet her father.

I looked up as Anna came across the yard and under the shade of the willow branches. “You okay?”

“A little better.”

She nodded, seeming to agree. “Nauseous?”

I laughed. “Yeah, that too.”

At least I knew the nausea wasn’t anything to do with pregnancy this time.

“He’ll be back,” Anna said confidently. I hadn’t seen her so sure of anything up until this point. Perhaps it was simply a conscious decision to be positive: if we kept saying it, to ourselves, to each other, then we could make it true.

“I know I won’t be sleeping tonight,” I told her.

“You can stay here if you want,” Anna offered. “This is your home as much as it’s mine.”

The word
home
sent a streak of warmth through me. “Thanks, Anna. I really appreciate it.”

“We’ll get through this, no matter what happens.”

I had to cling to that. I knew that wherever Mason was, he was clinging to it too. It gave us a connection, a feeling of solidarity. Even though we were miles apart, I felt like we were close in spirit.

Anna took my hand and pulled me back to the table, pouring me another hefty slosh of vodka.

Maybe if I had enough, I’d pass right out and sleep through the entire thing.