Brandon: what r u wearing? can i get a hot pic to get me through the day?
I bit my lip, then typed out a quick reply.
Me: r u srsly asking me to sext u before your divorce meeting?
The reply was instantaneous.
Brandon: That might be the only thing that WILL get me through it.
I giggled, then sent one more text.
Me: I'll show u mine if u show me yours.
I put my phone down on my desk and started winding my hair into a loose bun at the crown of my head. Our third-floor apartment was heating up in the summer sun, and we didn't have an air conditioner. That was going to have to change soon.
My phone buzzed again, and when I swiped to reveal the message, I was glad to be sitting down, since the picture Brandon sent made my knees feel like Jell-O. It was selfie shot he'd taken down his be-suited body. He had untucked his white dress shirt and unbuttoned from the bottom, spread aside with his black tie to reveal the washboard abs he knew made me drool. Below, one big hand rested on the front of his pants, grabbing an obvious erection.
I bit my lip and squirmed, suddenly very aware of the fact that I had just been cleared for sex.
My phone vibrated again in my hand.
Brandon: Your turn, Red.
I pushed up from my seat and stood in front of the mirror mounted over the vanity desk. I decided to go for a similar look. I'd show him mine, as I said. I pulled up the bottom of my tank, revealing my own flat stomach and the cut of my hip bones set off by my low-slung joggers. For good measure, I pulled the shirt high enough to reveal the underside of one breast, since I'd forgone a bra for comfort. Then, just because I knew it would torture Brandon, I put my glasses on, bit my bottom lip, and took the picture.
"Crosby!" Eric yelled from the living room. "You coming?"
After checking that I didn't look like a complete alien in my photo, I fixed my shirt and pressed send.
"Keep your pants on," I said as I walked back to the living room. "I'm coming, I'm coming." I set my phone on the table and picked up the study packet Eric had prepared for me. "Ready?
My phone buzzed, and Jared's gaze flickered down to the message clearly displayed on the front.
Brandon: daaaaaaammmmnnn. u know how to tease a guy.
I flushed and snatched the phone off the table.
"Come on, boys," I said, unable to meet Jared's sharp glance. "Let's get to work. This exam isn't going to pass itself."
~
The rest of the afternoon passed easily, and when dinnertime rolled around, Jared happily volunteered to order pizza while we plowed through the rest of the assignments for the week and got a few days ahead on the course readings. I didn't miss the way Jared occasionally peeked curiously every time my phone buzzed, but he didn't say anything more about Brandon, and I had to admit that studying together as a group worked well. At this rate, we'd all pass easily.
Sometime past nine, Jared left with a smile and a "See you tomorrow", since we'd be carpooling with him back to Andover the next morning.
"You're going to have to be careful with that one, Crosby," Eric remarked from the couch as I shut the door.
I turned around with a frown. "What? Why?"
Eric stretched his long arms out across the back of the sofa and gave me a look that basically said, "Seriously?"
I rolled my eyes. "We're just friends."
Eric snorted. "Um, you're his friend. I just carpool. But that guy is definitely looking for something more, and as nice as he seems, he's not the kind of guy who likes to hear no. He looked like he wanted to kill me when I pointed out his mistake on the statute of limitations question."
"He knows about Brandon," I said as I picked up the empty pizza boxes and started breaking them down. "He knows I'm not interested that way."
"Does he?"
I set the flattened boxes on our small kitchen table, then came back to take a seat on the couch next to Eric.
"He does," I said as I started to shuffle together all of the notes I'd taken over the afternoon and evening.
Eric did the same, but sent me a considerable side-eye while doing it.
"He does," I insisted when I stood up with an armful of my books and notes.
"Whatever you say, Cros," Eric said with his usual practiced nonchalance.
"That's rich, considering the studied denial in your love life at the moment."
It hadn't escaped me that since last week, Eric had been in his room every night by ten o'clock, and there had been distinct radio silence from my friend in Chicago.
"I don't know what you are talking about," he said with a sly grin.
I just shook my head and brought my notes into my room. When I came out, Eric was flipping channels on the TV.
"I think we deserve some mind-numbing television," he said. "Westworld? Or the Sox game?"
My phone buzzed in my hand as I sat down. A text from Brandon: another semi-dirty picture of him lying in bed in nothing but his boxer briefs, giving me a look that should have melted my phone.
"A bit of advice," Eric said without even looking at me. "Maybe next week, you can hold off on the sexting with my boss until after study session is over. Might make Jared a little less...um...aware of you."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
Eric turned to me, lolling his blond head against the back of the couch. "Everything shows on your face, Cros. And I do mean everything."
Almost immediately I turned bright red. Eric chuckled and gave me a friendly pat on the knee as he turned back to the TV.
"Don't worry," he said. "It was actually kind of funny watching Jared look like he wanted to vomit every time you got a dirty text."
"You could tell?!" I screeched. "Am I really that bad?"
Eric flipped the channel back to the Sox game, and the blare of Fenway filled the room.
"That last message must have been a doozy," he confirmed with another cheeky grin.
I groaned into my hands. I normally wasn't quite so awful about masking my emotions, but when it came to Brandon, it was looking more and more like a lost cause.
~
Chapter 15
João's wasn't a restaurant I knew, and I ended up getting lost on my way there. I took the B Line to Allston, passing the club where I'd been just last week, but then had to continue walking down Allston Street for several blocks. As the streets became less and less crowded, that feeling came back again––the one like I was being followed. It was hard to shake––you don't grow up as a woman in a large city without knowing that feeling of a stranger on your tail. I wouldn't be able to count the number of times I'd been catcalled or even tracked for multiple blocks by men in New York. Losing a creepy stalker was a survival skill in an urban jungle.
But these days that sense was clearly off. Twice I stopped suddenly and whirled around in the evening twilight, but each time there was no one there, just empty sidewalks disappearing into the dusk.
"You're going crazy, Crosby," I muttered to myself as I turned down another quiet street and finally found the restaurant.
I stood outside for a moment, looking at the place with some skepticism. It was barely discernible as a restaurant, marked only by a small sign in the window and the glass door that had a menu taped to it. I doubled-checked the address Brandon had texted me. This was definitely the place.
The bell that sounded at my entrance rang through the empty room like a siren. A head popped out of a door in the back which I presumed was the kitchen. The man who spotted me looked momentarily surprised at my presence, then his body followed his head as he walked out to welcome me.
"Alô, senhorina," he said in a language I guessed was Portuguese. "You are here for dinner?"
I looked around the restaurant, which was really just a plain white room with clusters of metal tables and chairs scattered around it. It was also empty.
"Um, I think so," I said. "There was supposed to be a reservation. Under Sterling."
"Yes!" the man said, clapp
ing his hands together. "He is in the back table."
I looked around the man to the single occupied table in the far corner, where Brandon was hunched over a few papers, so lost in his work he hadn't even registered my arrival. But as he sensed my presence innately, he looked up and grinned, his smile lighting up the dank room.
"Hey, beautiful!" he glowed as he shuffled his papers to the side and stood up as I walked over.
The papers were a few messy drawings of some kind of contraption. The sight made me smile––for all of his glamorous façade, Brandon was really just a big nerd who liked messing with wires in his spare time.
"You look...wow. As always."
I glanced down at my simple black T-shirt dress and the red slip-on sneakers. Knowing we weren't going anywhere fancy, I'd opted for casual comfort.
"Thanks," I said as I accepted his kiss. "You look good too."
Brandon was dressed as simply as I was in a pair of jeans, a red T-shirt, and his favorite worn Sox hat. I had to smile. For once we looked like an average young couple, not a mismatched pairing of a high-powered CEO and a not-quite-minted lawyer. But the fact that we were in a restaurant that was completely empty on a Friday night wouldn't let me relax completely.
"Um, Brandon?" I asked as we sat down. "You...you did call off the security, didn't you?"
Brandon frowned, clearly confused. "Yeah, of course. Why do you keep asking me that?"
I shrugged and held my arms around my middle. "No reason. You know me, suspicious New Yorker."
If he got a whiff that I was worried, I'd definitely have a security detail following my every move. I really didn't want that. Instead I looked around the restaurant.
"This place is weird. It feels like a front for something."
Brandon blinked at me for a second, then suddenly burst out laughing.
"A front?" he asked with a huge grin. "Christ." He looked around, as if noticing for the first time that we were literally the only customers there. "Yeah, I guess I can see that. But, ah, no, Red. The Brazilian barbecue here is wicked good. I..." He looked a bit sheepish, pulled off his hat and started to worry it between his hands. "It's not a front. I just bought out the place for the night so we wouldn't be watched."
Suddenly the restaurant seemed about three times larger. It was a compliment, in a way, that Brandon would buy a restaurant's entire night's worth of business just to take me out. But it was also a demonstration of the extravagant lengths he was taking to keep me a secret. I clasped my arms over my chest, studied the wrinkles in the dingy white tablecloth, and tried to swallow back the tears rising unbidden.
"Red. What is it?"
I looked up, but still didn't answer. I didn't want to make things harder for him than they had to be.
"It's weird, isn't it?" Brandon asked. He sighed and pushed his hat backwards over his flattened blond curls. "Damn."
I shrugged, knowing I had no talent for hiding my feelings. Brandon's features scrunched with sympathy; the movement made the small lines around his eyes and between his brows show up.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "Miranda just knows too many people. It's either someplace like this or The Martin, where I know for sure I can pay for confidentiality." He looked up, eyes pools of worry. "Would you rather just go back to your place? We don't have to go out."
I sighed and placed my hands on the table. "I'll just be happy when this is all over."
Brandon reached out and covered my hand with his large one. He brushed his fingertip over my oval-shaped nailbeds. "Not long now, Red. We're supposed to be signing the final papers in less than two weeks."
"Let's just eat," I said. I pulled my hands back to my lap.
Brandon studied me for a minute, then suddenly stood up from the table.
"Fuck this," he pronounced as he pulled me up, his accent large and pronounced. "I can do better. And you're not some dirty little secret, you're the love of my fuckin' life."
I glanced around the restaurant, but there was no one there to notice the outburst. Brandon leaned down and stamped a hard kiss on my lips.
"I'm not going to run around like a scared mouse just because Miranda's looking for dirt," he said.
While he tugged me toward the back of the restaurant, Brandon took out his phone, swiped through a few apps, and then pushed the door open into the kitchen. The waiter and the cook (there were apparently only two employees in the entire restaurant) looked up from where they were sharing a cigarette by the window. Our dinners were simmering on the massive stovetop. Admittedly, they did smell delicious.
Brandon slapped several hundred-dollar bills on the counter.
"That's for the food and your trouble," he told them. "St. Mary's up the street runs a soup kitchen on Fridays. I'm sure they'd appreciate the extras."
The waiter reached out cautiously and took the bills while the cook nodded at Brandon's suggestion.
"Sim, of course," he said as he waved us away.
I gave them a grim smile while Brandon opened the back door into an alley. Like a spy, he glanced down both ends of the street before pulling me out to follow toward Allston Street. An unfamiliar Prius pulled up at the curb, and immediately we hopped in.
"Whose car is this?" I asked once we were on our way. I had no idea what was happening, but Brandon seemed to be in charge.
In return I received a massive Cheshire grin. "What?" he said. "You've never heard of Uber?"
I couldn't help but laugh despite the stoic expression of the driver.
"So, what subpar restaurant are we going to instead?" I joked.
Brandon gave me a grim smile back. "Well, the food will be good, I promise you that."
~
Twenty minutes later, after a stop at the grocery store to pick up some flowers and a premade pie, we pulled up in front of a small blue colonial on a quiet street in Somerville. It was the kind of street that reminded me of Flatbush, the neighborhood in Brooklyn where I'd grown up. Close to the city, yet still a street dominated by single-family houses, most of them barred from the sidewalk by chain-linked fences and even a few trees. A couple of lights shone brightly through the windows of the house, which, though small, had obviously been carefully kept up over the years.
The Prius drove off, leaving us standing in front of the small wood fence that bordered the house and a tiny yard that had been planted with rose bushes and azaleas. Brandon took my hand so that I could face him.
"You up for a family dinner?" he asked shyly. "Friday is usually chicken."
I glanced back at the house, full of epiphany. Of course. This was the house where Brandon had lived with his foster parents between the ages of twelve and twenty or so. I had once met Ray Petersen, the crotchety old MIT professor who seemed to view Brandon more as a lost intellectual commodity than a son. I had heard better things about Susan, Brandon's foster mother, but had never had the pleasure of meeting her.
"The chicken?" I asked.
Brandon had once told me a story about Susan's special roasted chicken and how the way Ray, normally a taciturn, emotionless man, looked at her when she made it helped Brandon realize just what he was missing in his own marriage. It was a funny thing to say, but Susan's chicken meant love to Brandon Sterling. So of course, I couldn't wait to taste it.
Brandon just grinned. "If we're lucky. But I'm warning you, Susan isn't going to let up with the questions."
I faced the house with determination, eager to be among people––especially the people who knew Brandon better than anyone else. "Bring on the cross-examination."
Brandon let me up the short walk through a dimly lit yard that was lined with flower beds and hanging baskets on the front porch. One of Petersens definitely had a green thumb, I noted as velvety purple petunias brushed my shoulder.
Brandon knocked on the white front door, and we waited. It was a marked difference from the way I would enter my family's house. If I ever knocked on the front door, Bubbe would probably start wondering if I had been hit in the head.
> "I'm getting it!"
A muffled, gruff voice sounded from within, and we heard the obvious stomps of Brandon's foster father, Ray. Beside me, Brandon's tall form stiffened.
The door swung open.
"What is it? Oh, Bran!"
We were met by the clearly confused face of Ray, who was dressed nearly the same as the night I met him, nearly four months before, in a pair of practical khaki pants and a plaid, slightly threadbare button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He pushed his frameless glasses up his straight nose and surveyed both Brandon and me as if we were potentially here to burn his house down.
"Hi Ray," Brandon said in a tone I recognized from the last time we saw his foster father: resigned and hopeful all at the same time.
Ray glanced at me. "Who's this?"
I reached out a hand. "Skylar Crosby, sir. We met a few months ago in your office."
Ray screwed up his ungroomed white eyebrows, but clearly had no recollection of the event. Brandon took my extended hand and squeezed. I squeezed back, hoping he'd understand that I didn't take offense. Ray Petersen's opinion of me wasn't really the one that counted anyway.
"We were hoping to crash dinner," Brandon said. "We brought dessert. And some beer if you can hide it from Susan."
Ray screwed his face up again in disapproving glare, but stepped aside and took the paper bag containing the six-pack of PBR Brandon had selected. Brandon set the dessert, a chocolate cream pie, on the small entry table next to the door and turned to help me remove my denim jacket after we entered the house. The room opened into a homely living room lined with bookshelves. A small television set was in one corner, and a burgundy couch faced an unlit fireplace.
"Ray! Who is it?"
A woman's voice floated down a hallway, out of which shone a few lights that, if the smell was any indication, clearly led to a kitchen. A few other darkened doors on the right likely led to bathrooms, closets, maybe an office. The woman appeared in the hallway: short and compact with a navy-blue apron tied around her waist. She caught sight of who had just entered her house, and threw her hands up.
Legally Mine (Spitfire Book 2) Page 17