Freeze Frame

by Mia Watts

  Her sculpted eyebrows winged in black perfection above clear gray eyes and her nose was smallish over full pink lips and pointed chin. Young. That’s what she looked like. She looked young for forty-five. And harmless.

  Not harmless though. She’d made a decision and ruined his life. He’d have been happy growing up with one parent, even if she’d been young and inexperienced. They could have learned the ropes together. He’d have protected her, stood by her, worked to help support her when he got old enough.

  Yet here was proof that even at birth, he hadn’t been worth the effort. It was something he’d been fighting against his whole life. Rejecting it in some places where he could stand up for himself even if he didn’t know when it was a lost cause. This woman had started it all.

  “There’s something I know about you that Dill doesn’t, Mom.” Sage said, finding it eerie to hear his voice out loud when all of time and sound had otherwise stopped.

  There were things that needed saying, so he continued. “You had to know where I was. You had to know who I was all these years. Foster care never revoked your rights to see me or have me back. You might have fooled the Harpers, but you don’t fool me.”

  He circled her again. “Sure, I disappeared off the court records at eighteen, but I disappeared from the foster home a lot sooner than that. Is that why you wanted to run the DNA tests? To make sure it was me? Why? Why when you had all my life to find me, does it matter now? Is it because of this?” he snarled, holding up one of her bright pink flyers.

  “Is it because I do or don’t fit the platform you’re running on? Are you staging a long lost family reunion with me or hoping I’ll disappear? I owe you nothing,” he spat.

  Seeing her, hurt. Seeing the ghost of a smile as she clutched her leather portfolio to her chest, in mid conversation with the young man who stood poised to enter her office, hurt. It hurt worse when he’d found pictures of himself in the top drawer of her desk. The ten or so pictures had spanned his entire life.

  “I wanted you, Mom.” His words broke. “You were supposed to want me, too.”

  “…reports as soon as—How did you get in here?” The young man from the door swept inside.

  Carla spun around, shock written on her face as she held the portfolio tighter. Her gaze swept him, saw him standing over her desk with the photos in his hands. “What are you doing here?”

  With a wry twist of his lips, he quoted the line from a torn nursery book he remembered. “Are you my mommy?”

  “I’m calling security,” the indignant man threatened.

  Mason lifted his brows. “Do you really want him to do that?”

  “No,” Carla said, calmly. “Jenson, it’s okay. I know this man.” She smiled warmly at the sputtering sap. “Can you give us some privacy?”

  “You have a press conference.”

  “Not for another hour, at least,” she said.

  He looked between Carla and Mason, shot Mason a warning glare. “I’ll be right outside.”

  “Thank you, Jenson.”

  He waited until the door closed. “You didn’t need a DNA test.”

  He held up the fistful of pictures and dropped them on her desk. He saw her glance nervously at the open drawer before meeting his eyes.

  “I had to be sure.”

  “Are you?” he asked.

  “You didn’t have tattoos the last time I saw you.”

  “It just wasn’t this one.” He ran a hand over the claw. “When was the last time you saw me, because I don’t remember ever seeing you.”

  She glanced away for a fraction of a second. It was enough to know she wasn’t as calm and collected as she appeared.

  “You were twelve. You got transferred out of the Dolman’s house, and I signed a guardianship paper.”

  “Didn’t bother to say, hi.”

  “Of course not. You didn’t know who I was anyway,” she shot back, defensively.

  “Whose fault is that?”

  “I suppose it’s mine,” she answered.

  “You suppose it’s—Jesus, you can’t take responsibility for dropping your kid into the system even now, can you? I’d have done anything for you. Anything.”

  “Except disappear.”

  It stung like a slap. Bile rose up in his throat. “That’s what you wanted,” he said, quietly.

  “It’s what has to happen. I can’t be a human rights advocate with something like this hanging over my head. You’ve gone your whole life not knowing me from anyone else. Is it really any different if you just disappear now? I can pay you. A lot. I’m doing really well for myself,” she offered, hurriedly walking to her desk.

  She put down her portfolio and motioned toward him. “If you let me get in there, I’ll write you a check right now.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” he muttered.

  His throat burned and a strange sense of surrealism fell like a veil over him. He’d imagined any number of possibilities for the moment he met her. There’d been tears and hugs, apologies and pleas that she’d wanted to come to him but something horrific had kept her away. There was none of that. She openly admitted to the choice, to casting him adrift to chance and strangers and legal systems that might work for some, but hadn’t done a damn thing for him.

  “I don’t want your money,” he bit out.

  “Of course you do. Your equipment was destroyed and your home was ransacked. You don’t have a car, and you’ve got no money to your name. It’ll be a fresh start. Think of it like payback for all the years I should have been supporting you,” she scoffed.

  His fingers curled into a fist at his side. “I said, I don’t want your money.”

  Exasperated, she put her hands on her hips and looked up at him. “Then what do you want? An invitation to holiday dinners?” she laughed at her joke. “Oh, I know, how about a lullaby and promises I’ll never keep?”

  “That would be a start.”

  “That would be ridiculous,” she countered. “I gave you an education in the way the world works. Other people live fantasy lives filled with lies and superficial trinkets. It’s a mockery of what’s real, of what you learn when life gets down and dirty. It may not be pretty or give you happy thoughts, but I gave you personal strength and character. What I gave you has no price. What I gave you comes from a deep well of worth within yourself. What I gave you, Mason, was more honest than any other mother could have done for her child. I did that. Me.”

  “You are one selfish, twisted, fucked up bitch. God help anyone who thinks your brand of mothering is an improvement to human rights.”

  Carla cocked her hand back and slapped him across the face. His cheek burned like fire, but the veil was shattered.

  “Thank you,” he said, meaning it. “I needed that. You did teach me one thing. You suck as a mother and as a human being. I’ve met some people lately that band together as a unit, who are crazy and odd and goddamn it, they would never do what you’ve done to me.” And he’d just walked out of Dill’s life, giving it all up.

  No fucking way.

  Mason strode through her office. He was going back, and if he had to get on his knees and beg Dill to take him back, he’d do it. Because he knew now more than ever what true love was, and it wasn’t wishful thinking about a mother who’d never wanted him in the first place. It wasn’t throwing your heart into the wind and watching it drift off, never to land.

  No, it was frozen in time and space with the one who held it, whether or not the clock kept ticking and whether or not trials came up to challenge it. It stuck by you when you fought it, and it kept loving you when you stubbornly said no, because it couldn’t help but love. Once it was kindled, it kept burning and it could burn in the depths of cooling coals, or it could blaze against the summer sky, insatiable when all the elements fed it.

  Dill had been feeding it alone, using the twigs Mason had given him. Well, that was over now. Mason would chop the goddamn forest down and pile it on top of whatever remained of Dill’s affection.

 
Mason didn’t want anything to do with Carla Leon. She could rot in hell for all he cared. She’d hoped he’d disappear. Well, today was her lucky day. He wouldn’t be like his mother, who looked the chance for family in the eye and walked away. He absolutely refused to inherit that trait.

  All or nothing. He wanted Dill.

  “Wait,” she yelled.

  “I think I’ve waited for you long enough. I have a man waiting on me, who loves me, and I’m not going to disappoint him like you disappoint me.”

  “My running mate knows about you. He dug through my personal history and found out about you. It will destroy me.”

  He paused at the door. “I’d say you made that grave yourself.”

  “I just need you to disappear. I had to be sure it was you before I sent you away.”

  That made no sense. “Why?”

  “Because they said you were dead.”

  “Who said?”

  “The Johnsons reported your death five years ago. The State gave them money to handle the burial arrangements.”

  He’d met Diego at the Johnsons. It has been the last home he’d known before he’d joined the gang and runaway. Diego had followed. Losing Diego still hurt. They’d hated the Johnsons. It didn’t surprise Mason in the least that the Johnsons been part of a scam against the State.

  “You’re running mate dug this up and found out it was a lie, huh? Now he’s using your bad parenting against you. I say, good for him.”

  “Tom just wants to ruin me. I’ve worked hard to get where I am. If you disappear I can bury the DNA and argue against it,” she pleaded.

  “Why get DNA in the first place?”

  “To see if what he said was true.”

  “Then why have me followed after my life was put at risk?” he asked.

  She looked away again. Her lips curved downward but it lasted a flash of a second. “I was worried.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, taking Dill’s favorite retort.

  He paced back toward her, watching her body language, watching her gaze slip and return, watching the way she dropped a protective hand onto the desk surface above the drawer he’d opened.

  He leaned on her desk, one hand brushing her phone recklessly as he stared her down.

  “You fucking bitch,” he proclaimed, suddenly understanding. “You wanted to know the minute I was killed. You had the DNA and knew who I was. You hired thugs to kill me and you wanted Harper Security to report back when your case had to close because I’d been murdered. It would all look legal. It would all look like a grieving mother who’d gone in search of her long lost son, only to find him too late.”

  She swallowed. “Of course not.”

  “You killed my brother. Diego is dead because of you.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” she protested.

  “No, but the orders to hire someone or the record of payment is in that drawer. That’s why you keep looking at it. You’re afraid I’ll find the link. Guess what, mother, I found it.”

  “You can’t prove anything. Most of the documents have been shredded.”

  “How efficient of Jenson.”

  “He doesn’t know,” she defended.

  He hung his head for a moment. “Tell you what. You can call off your dogs. I’ll disappear on one condition.” He met her gaze again with one of calm.

  “I didn’t want to hurt you. Not really.”

  “You won’t have to. Your hands will be clean. Just tell me who my father is and I’ll get out of your hair. You’ll never hear from me again.”

  Carla’s face fell. “I was fifteen, Mason, he was married.” She scribbled a name and some information down on a piece of paper. “His name was Juan Alejandro Romero. He was my guidance counselor through the neighborhood youth program. He and his family were killed in a drive by shooting last year in that same neighborhood.”

  Mason felt a strange calm. He remembered the news story. He’d look up the details later, but it closed a book on the questions he might have had for the man.

  Juan. My dad’s name was Juan. Mason had always suspected his heritage had been Hispanic. He felt a sense of peace in confirming it.

  “You’ll go away now?” she asked him, hopefully.

  “Yeah, I’m gone. Don’t sweat it.” He lifted his hand off the desk, smiling to himself when Jenson came running in. Mason passed the pale man.

  “Ms. Leon, the police are coming,” he announced.

  “How?”

  “The office. We heard everything on the intercom.”

  After that, Mason walked a little faster. He had a boyfriend to fall all over. Some making up and making out to do, if Dill wasn’t too pissed to let him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dill got to Carla’s office building as three police cars, lights flashing, screeched to a halt outside.

  He killed her. Oh, fuck, Mason skinned her after all.

  Mason walked out of the building as the police rushed by. He looked at them with mild disinterest then kept going, his glance taking in the street and settling on Dill. The breath squeezed out of Dill’s lungs with the look of utter burning possession on Mason’s face.

  “Dill?”

  “Mason. Did you kill her?” He grabbed the other man in a bear hug. “Tell me you didn’t kill her.”

  Mason laughed, held him tightly. “I didn’t kill her.”

  Dill sank in his unexpected embrace. “Thank God.”

  “How’d you know I’d be here?”

  “It was the only place which made sense.” Dill pulled away to study Mason’s face. “You said good-bye.”

  “I said a lot of things I wish I could take back. I… I don’t know where to start, but I gotta start somewhere. I love you. God, I love you. It’s not too late is it?”

  The hope, the fear, the uncertainty in his eyes melted Dill’s heart into a thick, throbbing puddle. Or maybe it was the thick, throbbing cocks lining each other as their bodies pressed together on the sidewalk for all to witness, that had Dill confused. Either way, there was thick and throbbing going on, and Dill didn’t want it to stop.

  “Come home with me,” Dill murmured.

  “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

  “I still have the hotel room,” Dill offered, thinking of the closest place he could get to. At least, that one was within walking distance.

  “Hotel sounds good.”

  Mason grabbed his hand and dragged him at a fast pace. Dill laughed, ignoring the strange looks they got as they raced for the hotel. The elevator closed and Mason attacked him with kisses.

  “Slow down,” Dill complained.

  Mason’s answer was to grab Dill’s cock through his jeans and squeeze. Dill moaned against his lips. The doors dinged arrival and Dill shoved Mason off, pushing him backward out the car, then dodging under Mason’s arm when he moved to hold him. Dill jogged to their door and got the key card in as Mason barreled into his back. They stumbled into the room together.

  Mason kicked the door closed, stalking Dill to the veranda. “Out here?” Mason teased.

  Dill shot him a look of challenge, he hoped. It must have worked because Mason pushed him up against the low wall, pinning their hips together as he nuzzled Dill’s ear. Excited nerves thrilled to life. Goose flesh rose on Dill’s neck and arms. His cock throbbed with anticipation, and as Mason’s hot, moist mouth closed on the side of his neck, Dill couldn’t stop the strangled groan that spilled from his open mouth.

  “I don’t know what’s come over you, but I hope to God it never goes away,” Dill confessed.

  “It won’t. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now there’s nothing that’s going to keep me from giving you head.” Mason sank to his knees, making quick work of Dill’s jeans and underwear. “Hello, gorgeous,” he murmured to Dill’s cock.

  He looked down the length of his body to see Mason take his first lick on Dill’s balls. Dill gripped the veranda wall, letting the rim hold his hips forward for Mason’s attentions. He heard a gasp and jerked his head over t
o see a pretty lady watching, flushed and fascinated. She walked to the side of her veranda closest to them and leaned to get a better look. Dill didn’t care. He kind of liked it. And she sure as hell seemed to enjoy the view.

  He lost all track of her when Mason’s mouth closed on his tip and slowly sucked him deeper until Mason’s nose nestled in the short hairs at the base of Dill’s cock, and his throat lovingly hugged his length with a swallow.

  “Oh, God, Mason. Don’t ever stop.”

  Mason pushed a hand up Dill’s body, moving his shirt out of the way and exposing his chest to cool air. Dill pulled off his shirt, both for his benefit and for the woman’s. Then he leaned, bowing his back. Mason came off his penis to help him out of his pants and Dill spread his legs when his cock slid easily in and out of Mason’s mouth.

  He heard feminine panting and he looked over to see that the pretty blonde had slipped a hand inside her blouse and was furiously plucking her nipple while the other one, though out of sight behind the wall, rubbed in time with Mason’s ministrations.

  Dill found himself smiling. He didn’t care what she was doing, but damn if it wasn’t flattering. He grabbed Mason’s head, no longer leaning back as his body spiraled in on itself. “Yeah, like that. Ungh—Mason, oh God, Mason. I feel it. Oh God, I’m coming.”

  Mason flicked his tongue sharply on the tender under-spot of Dill’s head, let his teeth lightly graze the top on each withdraw. When the tip of his tongue pushed into Dill’s slit, he lost it. Thrusting deep into Mason’s mouth, Dill came with a shout, his cry sounding like triumph and joy in one long drawn out bellow of gratitude.

  Dill pulled Mason to his feet, immediately kissing him. He loved the taste of himself on Mason, even though he’d swallowed.

  “I don’t think she came yet,” Mason murmured, tipping his head to their hotel neighbor.

  Looking over, he could see her furiously trying to pleasure herself with growing frustration. Dill decided to help her out a little. He grabbed Mason’s t-shirt at the collar and ripped it off his body.

  “Damn that’s hot,” Mason approved.