Mason: A Manchester Bad Boys Romance (5 page)

Mason

“So what did she say?”

We were lying in bed, but there was none of the usual crazy sex. Not tonight. Nicole was like a dog with a bone over the Damon thing, him turning up like that out of the blue. I understood - it had been a shock to me too. I knew that Karen wasn’t the best mother in the world, but I hadn’t realised just how unsafe Damon was.

“Not much,” I told her. “It’s hard to talk to her.”

That was the understatement of the century. When Karen had turned up, looking like death warmed up, I’d laid into her. But it was like talking to a wall. She could never see why it was her fault, never admit responsibility. All she had to say on the matter was that she’d left him safe, and he was naughty for running away.

I didn’t want to push it too hard. Karen was a vicious bitch, and I knew she’d take it out on the boy if she felt too hard done to. But Nicole couldn’t see that.

“She’s just scum, Mason. Absolute scum.”

That stung, although I wasn’t sure why. I thought that Karen was scum, too. But somehow, having Nicole say it like that, it felt like an attack on me.

“Am I scum, then?” I said calmly. “I married her, after all.”

I thought of Terry, about how he’d said that Nicole was a posh bird, not one of us. Was that how Nicole saw it, too? She was slumming it with the bad boy, but better than me?

“What?” she said, confused. “You’re not like her. I can hardly even believe that you were ever married to her. The two of you together just doesn’t make sense.”

“How would you even know that? You’ve never met her,” I said.

“Well, of course not, but you’ve described her,” she said hastily. “And besides, you said she wasn’t that bad when you were together. That’s what I don’t get. You turned out out so… normal, and she turned out so badly.”

Normal - that was a joke!

“Is that really how you see me?” I said.

Her face softened, and she took my hand in hers.

“Of course it is,” she said.

“You don’t know,” I said. I was glad the room was dark, so that she couldn’t see the expression on my face. I was… ashamed. Ashamed of who I was, what I’d done. What I might do. She was determined to see me as this paragon of virtue, but I knew better. I was just as bad as Karen, just in a different way.

“So tell me,” she whispered.

“I don’t know why she changed, what happened to her,” I said. “I was away. But I know why I changed.”

“What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath. Should I tell her this? I’d never spoken about with anyone, ever. But I wanted to tell her. I wanted to see her reaction - the disappointment, the disgust. Because then I would know who I was. Once my cards were on the table, Nicole could see me for what I truly was, and this horrible, divided feeling would be over.

“Iraq is what changed me,” I said slowly. I felt her snuggle closer to me, but I didn’t return the gesture. I was staring at the ceiling, lost in the memory.

“Before Iraq, I was the regular, normal guy you think I am. But over there - Jesus, I can barely describe it. It’s like another world. Every day, every moment, you’re waiting. Waiting for the bomb to go off, waiting for the guns to fire. Every single meal is your last meal, every sleep is your last one. All you have, the one thing that holds it all together and keeps you sane, is your unit - your brothers.”

“It reminded me of home, in a way. My best friends growing up were Heath - the boxer - and a guy called Adam. You’ve not met him. The unit is like that. The lads feel like your family. They
are
your family. And one day… one day I fucked up.”

I could feel a tear roll down the side of my face, into my hair, as I lay on my back. I didn’t care. I wasn’t talking to Nicole, now. I wasn’t telling the story. I was confessing.

“There was a woman, running towards us, a local woman. I should have incapacitated her, but I didn’t, because she was young and pretty and that’s not how the world works - your enemies aren’t beautiful women. The bad guys look like bad guys. She threw a grenade, and everyone died. Everyone but me. I shot her in the head, but it was too late. I lay there, concussed, but with barely a scratch on me, while all around me…”

My voice caught in my throat, but I had to carry on.

“All around me my brothers, the men I’d sworn to protect, screamed and died. And I was fine. After that, I promised myself that I would never get involved, never get close to anyone again. Because I’m not enough. I’m not good enough to protect anyone, and keep them safe. And now I have you, and Damon, and you look at me like I’m this awesome guy and I’m not. I’m scum. More than Karen, more than anyone. I murdered someone, and for nothing. All my friends died.”

“Is that what the dreams are about?” she asked quietly.

“How do you know?”

“You toss and turn, crying out in your sleep. I hold you for a while, and then you calm down.”

I was surprised. She’d never mentioned this, and I never remembered it in the morning.

“Yeah, every night,” I said.

“Is it?”

She was right. It had been every night, at first. But lately, things had been getting easier.

“What do you want me to say?” she said. “That you’re right? That you’re some sort of awful person? Because you’re not. I’m not a fucking idiot, Mason. I know the difference between a good person and a bad one.”

She rolled over so that she was on top of me, staring into my eyes, her hands either side of my face. I knew she would feel the wetness of the tears, but I couldn’t look away.

“You are a good man, Mason, and I love you. I’m glad that you told me, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. I love the whole package, regardless of how it came about.”

“I love you too,” I whispered.

“Good. Now shut up and kiss me,” she said.

I did.

Afterwards, she fell asleep in my arms. I lay there, staring up at the same ceiling, but with a new outlook. We’d had sex, but it was different. More emotional. As I’d moved inside her, I’d gazed into her eyes, and it felt like we were bonded together forever. I was in love.

Nicole

Jesus Christ, Nicole…focus!

My mind was all over the place as I drove to the rendezvous with Thompson. On the one hand, I finally had something significant to report. Mason had headed out early, and I was alone in his bed. Missing him, I’d rolled over onto his side, feeling the faint warmth of the sheets, the fresh, clean smell of his body. I’d had lain there, enjoying the sensations. But then…

Like the princess and the pea, I’d noticed a lump in the mattress. It was a handgun. I’d fished it out carefully, using the bedsheets to keep my prints off it. Deadly, fully loaded, and completely illegal. Nobody in Manchester kept a gun under the mattress unless they were involved in some serious shit. It was no army-issue, either. This had been obtained since he got back. On auto-pilot, I’d called Thompson to arrange a meet. This was enough to bring Mason in and interrogate him - offer him a reduced sentence for rolling over on Terry, although I suspected he wouldn’t play ball. He wasn’t the grassing type.

On the other hand, though… It was Mason. My supposed professional detachment was in tatters, ruined in the face of actual hard evidence. The thought of him in the interrogation room, Thompson questioning him in that sarcastic, superior manner… I couldn’t bear it.

I was pulling up outside the bar - of course it was a bar, where else? - and I still had no idea if I was going to tell Thompson what I’d found. What I needed was a friend, somebody to talk to, somebody to help me sort out the whirling thoughts in my head. There was only one person that even came close to that. My mind was made up. I would tell him everything, but off the record, and hope that Gary Thompson was still the man I’d once cared about.

“Nicole, lovely Nicole, light of my life…”

He was even drunker than the last time I had seen him. His wrinkled shirt was at least a day old, if not more.

“Gary, it’s not even lunch time,” I said.

“Don’t give me the nagging wife routine,” he slurred. “You’re not one of them, you’re one of us. You know how it is. We work all hours, so we have to take our leisure where we find it.”

He winked at me, swaying slightly on his chair. It was true, the job had us working round the clock. Where a regular worker would get Friday night off, we often found ourselves making do with a Tuesday morning. But Thompson was on the clock, and his car was parked outside.

“You’ve been taking your leisure, with your new pet criminal,” he continued. A nasty element had crept into his tone. Suddenly I knew that there was no way I could confide my secrets to him, not while he was like this. He’d probably arrest Mason on sight, mowing down god knows how many pedestrians in the process.

“So, what do you want?”

“I just wanted to check in, see if there was any intel from your end,” I said. The one advantage of him being in this state was that he probably wouldn’t realise how unlikely it was that I would demand an urgent meeting, just to check in.

“Not much. Some fucking biker gang are causing trouble for our pal Terry,” he smirked.

“Are we doing anything about it?”

“Nah. Why waste resources? Let the scumbags knock forty shades of shite out of each other, and we’ll just arrest whatever’s left standing.”

“When did you get so cynical?” I said, half to myself.

The Gary Thompson I had known originally, way back when I first joined the force, would never have advocated a stance like that. Crime was crime and criminals were criminals.
Look who’s talking
, I thought ruefully.
Criminals are criminals, unless they’re hot and sexy…

It was more than that, though. Since Mason had opened up about Iraq, about his self-loathing and the burden of blame he carried with him, I was seeing things differently.

“Again with the nagging wife routine!” Thompson cut in. “I don’t need a wife. I had a wife…”

“You’ve had two,” I pointed out.

“And where are they now?” His tone was becoming less aggressive, the self-pity of the drunk overtaking it.

I didn’t reply, although I knew the answer. The first one had left him because she had an affair. Gary was never home, always working, and she’d found a replacement. I wasn’t sure why the second one had left, but it was probably because of me. Word had it that his marriage ended not long after he’d ended our doomed affair.

“This is all we have, Nicole.”

“What is?” He was making no sense.

“The job. You get married… and you don’t realise. The job is your wife, your life. The wife is already the bit on the side before you’ve even begun. Eventually, you have to stop fucking around and be faithful to the job…”

He put his head down on the table. At first I thought he was crying, but a loud snore set me straight. He’d passed out. I used his radio to call for a car to take him back to the station.

As I waited, Gary snoozing peacefully next to me, I thought about what he’d been saying. It was true that the job demanded everything you had. A personal life, leisure time - that all came second. Which meant that husbands, wives, kids, friends and family all came second, too. So many senior officers were divorced, alone. Thompson wasn’t unusual. I’d thought that I’d wanted that life for myself - but as I waited for the squad car, I wasn’t so sure.

A husband and children?
It was difficult not to picture the faces as Mason and Damon, but I brushed the thought aside.
Or lying face down in your own drool at half ten in the morning?

Everything I knew seemed wrong.

Mason

The woman was making me nervous, even though I had no reason to be. Maybe it was the confident way she held herself, the authority she radiated. Maybe it was the way she sat down on my couch like she had every right to be there. Or maybe it was the weight of the gun concealed at my side, silently proclaiming that I wasn’t what she thought I was.

I wished desperately that Nicole was here to help me navigate this conversation, but she wasn’t. Damon sat quietly next to the woman, subdued by the tense atmosphere of officialdom.

“So, Mr O’Donnell, I am releasing Damon into your care on a temporary basis, until a permanent solution can be found. You have the resources to care for him?”

“I- yes, I do.”

“Are you employed?”

“I’m a bouncer.” It was close enough to the truth, and Terry would back me if proof was needed.

“Who will care for Damon while you’re at work?”

“My girlfriend, Nicole,” I answered, hoping it was true. The woman from Social Services had descended out of the blue - Nicole knew nothing about this. Somebody had tipped them off about Karen. The list of suspects there was endless - Karen didn’t exactly tend to make friends and influence people. In careful terms, designed to go over Damon’s head, the woman had intimated that he would stay with me for a week or so. I could apply for custody. If my application was deemed successful by Social Services, Damon would live with me permanently. If not, or if I didn’t want him, he would enter the care system - which meant foster homes and children’s homes. It was rare for a five year old to be adopted. Too old.

I looked at him, the small, quiet boy who looked just like me. Already in his short life he’d suffered too much. It was out of the question that I would abandon him to the system. But winning custody would be difficult, now that Social Services were involved. I would have to prove that I was fit to be a parent, show where my money came from, demonstrate that I could do it. The polyester uniform of the shopping centre security guard beckoned, but suddenly it didn’t seem so bad. Not when I had a reason to do it.

“Very well, Mr O’Donnell. We’ll be in touch,” she said, gathering her things and leaving.

“Do I live here now, Dad?”

“Yes son, you do.”

“Cool. I like it here. It’s always warm.”

Now all I had to do was tell Nicole.

“So, are you applying for custody, then?” she asked.

“I have to. Look at the alternatives…”

She seemed okay about the situation, which was great. I hadn’t doubted her, not really, but when we’d started seeing her I was a single man. Now I was a single dad, and that changed things. With Nicole not having any kids of her own, it could have gone either way. I think she was fond of Damon, though, and certainly he loved her. Watching them together, her reading him a story - it gave me a sense of peace and contentment that I never could have imagined.

“I think you’re doing the right thing,” she said. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“That’s lucky, because I do kind of need your help…”

“Name it. I’ll do anything you want…”

She smiled, and there was a challenge behind the smile. I wanted to rip her clothes off right there and then, but I couldn’t. Not with Damon in the next room. I looked pointedly at the door, raising an eyebrow.

“Five year olds go to bed early,” she said, stroking my thigh. “Until then, what do you need?”

“Some babysitting,” I admitted. “Just for a couple of evenings, until I can get something sorted out.”

“Sorted out like what?”

“You know, a proper babysitter. A paid babysitter.”

“I don’t mind doing it,” she said.

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking advantage, though.”

“You can take advantage of me any time,” she said, her hand moving higher up my thigh. I could feel myself getting hard…

“Dad!” came the shout from the other room, “I can’t find my pyjamas!”

“Duty calls,” I said regretfully, my cock rapidly deflating as I got to my feet. I remembered something.

“There’s a form, for you to fill in. Because you visit regularly and stay over.”

“A form?” she said, sounding alarmed.

“It’s no big deal. Just a background check, to make sure you don’t secretly eat children or anything.” I grinned. “I’ll get the pyjama crisis dealt with, and once he’s all tucked up, we can pick up where we left off…”

When I came back, she was putting her coat on.

“Sorry,” she said, kissing me briefly. “I have to go. My friend called, some sort of emergency. Speak tomorrow?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, nonplussed.

And with that, she was gone.
Strange.
Somehow, I didn’t believe the flimsy excuse - and I hadn’t heard her talking on the phone. So what was it? Her mood had changed when I’d mentioned the form. Was I pushing her too hard? The babysitting, the sudden limitations on when we could have sex, the formality of visiting me - was it all too much? Maybe she felt like I was trying to force her into a mother role. I wasn’t, though. I was prepared to go it alone.

I’ll talk to her tomorrow
, I decided.
Explain that I need her for me, not for Damon.