Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Jo?o"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.

"Al?, 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, clapping 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 fa?ade, 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.

"Brandon!" she cried and raced down the hallway.

Close up, Susan Petersen looked a lot younger than her husband, although some of it might have just been their personalities. With his bright white hair, stodgy glasses, and stooped posture, Ray looked to be well over seventy, maybe even seventy-five. Susan, on the other hand, had an appearance of youth that couldn"t just be erased by time alone. Her skin, a tawny color that belied years in the garden, and shoulder-length wavy hair that was still more light-brown than gray, made her look no more than her mid-to-late fifties. She would have strongly resembled a sparrow, chirping down the hall and around her family, had it not been for the clear blue eyes that matched her foster son"s. Ray Petersen might have held his foster son at arm"s length, but Brandon was clearly the apple of Susan"s eye. I was thrilled to see it.

"You," she said fondly as she grabbed Brandon around the middle with a warm embrace.

Brandon smiled and pressed a kiss into Susan"s mussed hair, but I could see the mirth in his eyes as he hugged his foster mother. That is, until he looked to Ray, who was staring grimly at the two of them.

"Are you finished?" Ray asked.

I frowned. What a grump.

Susan stepped back, but continued to pat Brandon over the arms and shoulders, even reaching up on her tiptoes to fix his hair where it stuck out from under his backwards bill.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "This is such a surprise!" Then her warm yet sharp glance turned to me, as if she had just realized I was there. "And who do we have here, Bran?"

Brandon turned to me with a grin and pulled me in front of him.

"Susan," he said as he set his hands on my shoulders. "I want you to meet someone really special. This is Skylar Crosby, my girlfriend."

Susan quirked her eyebrows at Brandon, then looked at me with open curiosity.

"Girlfriend?" she repeated with obvious awe. Her infectious grin transformed her face. "Well, well, well. It"s very nice to meet you, Skylar. My, you are a lovely little thing, aren"t you? Look at all that beautiful hair! Ray, could you imagine if these two had kids? Beautiful, just beautiful."

Blue eyes or green?

I pushed the guilt away and focused on the situation at hand. "It"s lovely to meet you as well, Mrs. Petersen," I said.

I reached out to shake her hand, but she pulled me in for a tight hug instead.

"Does your wife know you"ve got a "girlfriend"?" Ray asked behind us.

Brandon jerked his head to his foster father. "Really?"

Ray crossed his arms. "Does this one know about the mess you"re in right now, Bran? Trying to divorce a woman who won"t have it?"

I blinked between them and noticed immediately the way that Susan"s spritely demeanor shuttered when her husband spoke.

"Ray," she hissed. "No need to throw that wet blanket on the evening!"

"She knows everything," Brandon said evenly. "And she also knows that it"s almost over."

"I"ve heard that before," Ray grumbled before turning down the hall. "Well, come on then," he called to the three of us. "Chicken"s on the table and getting cold. Hopefully we"ll have enough."

"Oh, hush," Susan said as she shepherded Brandon and me to follow Ray. "There"s plenty," she assured me as we turned into the kitchen.

She wasn"t lying. Along with a massive roasted chicken, there was a large bowl of buttery mashed potatoes and a salad that would have obviously fed a lot more than just her and Ray. If I hadn"t known better, I would have thought that Susan was expecting us. But when I saw her beaming at Brandon, I realized that his tendency to prepare for visitors who might stop by wasn"t unique; it was a learned trait from the woman who helped raise him.

"This looks amazing, Mrs. Petersen," I said truthfully as she set out two extra plates and silverware around the small kitchen table. It was the kind of spread that would rival Bubbe"s Sunday brunches.

"Oh, honey, you call me Susan," she said with a wink. "We"re casual around here. And help yourself before Brandon eats it all up."

"I"m not that bad anymore," Brandon protested even as he spooned a mountain of potatoes onto his plate.

"No, you"re not," Susan agreed. "Used to be you"d eat everything at the table plus whatever I had left in the fridge." She looked pointedly at me. "If the two of you have kids, you"ll have to have a separate savings account for this one"s son."

My stomach immediately clenched again at the second mention of kids, so I focused on unfolding my napkin across my lap.

"Susan!" Brandon chided as he caught my strained expression. "I"d appreciate it if you didn"t scare Skylar off."

"Brandon, you"ve met my grandmother," I said. "This is nothing."

Brandon conceded the fact, and started serving everyone chicken.

"So, you"ve met Skylar"s family too?" Susan asked innocently, although she didn"t bother to mask her clear interest. "Are you from Boston too, dear?"

I shook my head as I accepted a chicken wing onto my plate. "No, New York. Brooklyn, actually."

"And what brought you up here?"

"Skylar just finished law school at Harvard," Brandon said proudly.

"And is that how the two of you met?" Susan asked, blinking between the two of us. "At a Harvard event?"

Brandon glanced at me and grinned. "No. We met by chance one snowy night. Skylar got trapped in my house in a storm. It was kismet."

The heat in his eyes caused my heart to thump just a bit louder. Susan blinked cheerily between the two of us, the dimples in her cheeks growing deeper. Ray just took a bite of his chicken and looked bored until Susan elbowed him in the ribs.

"Ow!" he cried, rubbing his side irritably.

"Do you remember what it was like to be in love like this?" Susan asked still beaming at us. "Just look at them."

Ray did, but his look was more of a glower. Brandon caught it and set his fork down on his plate.

"Why don"t you just spit it out, Ray?" he said.

Ray mirrored his foster son by setting his fork down on the table too. "All right, then, I will. This is ridiculous. You"re getting involved with this young woman when you"ve got a whole host of things to clean up in your own life, most of which I have to read about in the gossip columns. It"s embarrassing."

"You read the gossip columns, Ray?" Brandon teased with a raised brow. "That is embarrassing."

"That"s not what I meant!" Ray barked. "The point is that I"d like to know when you"re going to get your act together and make something real of yourself."

I balked. What the hell was going on? Brandon, for his part, just rubbed a tired hand over his face and groaned.

"And, there it is," he said. "That"s right. I"ve accomplished exactly nothing my life. You know, besides building two of the most successful businesses in New England."

Brandon slouched in his chair and laid a heavy arm on the back of my seat. I had a clear vision of what he must have been like as a teenager, going head to head with Ray on a nightly basis. Susan just took a bite of chicken and chewed it for a very long time.

"See, this has always been your problem, Bran––" Ray started.

"Here we go," Brandon said under his breath as he sat up again to eat.

"That"s right, and I won"t stop saying it. You think that money means the same thing as real accomplishments. You took that brain of yours and capitalized on it, getting embroiled with that ridiculous family along the way, instead of making real contributions to the world like I know you"re capable of."

Ray finished his diatribe and bent to keep eating while Susan just looked on sadly.

"It"s a waste," Ray mumbled through a mouthful of potatoes. "Always has been."

Brandon exhaled forcefully out of his nose, while Susan bit her lip sympathetically, clearly having watched this exchange countless times before. I, however, hadn"t, and it was infuriating.

"But he does make real contributions!" I burst out.

All three other heads at the table swiveled toward me. A flush immediately bloomed across my face, and I took a deep breath. This wasn"t how I"d wanted to play the first meeting with Brandon"s parents, but I couldn"t sit by silently.

"I"m sorry," I continued, trying my hardest to ignore Ray"s hard stare.

He was formidable in his own way, but I"d also been raised by Bubbe, not to mention having grown up in New York City and attending the most rigorous law school in the world. I could handle a few hard looks, and I could dish them out too.

"I just can"t sit by and let you call Brandon a waste," I said.

"Skylar," Brandon said, reaching for my hand under the table. "You don"t have to do this."

"Yes, I do," I told him, and caught an approving glance from Susan. I turned back to Ray. "Do you know what Brandon does for this city? He uses his money, his time, for so much good. His firm basically fully funds an entire pro-bono center at Harvard for low-income families. He gives away millions of dollars every year to charities, including an outreach program that scouts gifted kids like him from disadvantaged neighborhoods and gives them access to the kind of educational experiences he got from you two. And then, of course, there"s his lab."

Ray frowned, but perked up visibly. "Lab? What lab."

I turned to Brandon, who seemed to be trying his hardest to melt his large form into the floor. His features, tinged pink, were set in stone. I couldn"t tell if he was pleased, embarrassed, or angry. Maybe a bit of all three.

"He should know," I said to him.

Brandon waved a hand around the table. "You"re on a roll," he said, refusing to meet my eyes like an embarrassed teenager. "By all means, keep going."

"Brandon, you hush. You"ve found someone who"s proud of you," Susan said as she beamed at me. "And I, for one, enjoy hearing all of this, since you don"t tell me a thing about it. Continue, dear."

So I did, with a grim glance at Brandon, whose expression I still couldn"t read. "Okay, well, he has this workshop on the top floor of his house." I turned back to Ray, who looked utterly confounded by this revelation. "You"d probably love it, Dr. Petersen. He makes these...I don"t even know what to call them. Contraptions. Inventions. Amazing things he could sell, but he doesn"t, because he"s just interested in building them for the sake of building. Brandon, you should show him those drawings in your bag."

I took a deep breath. Brandon sad nothing, but his hand squeezed mine tightly and didn"t let go. Okay, that was a good sign.

"Whatever you want to say about him, you can"t call him a waste, Dr. Petersen. Your son––"

I tripped over the word, not sure if I should say that or not to a man who had never fully adopted Brandon. But the word fit. Ray Petersen was the closest thing to a father that Brandon had ever had.

"Brandon," I clarified, "is one of the most brilliant, accomplished, contributing people I have ever met, by any standard. And that"s all there is to it."

I finally looked up to the stone-still man next to me. Brandon"s expression had barely moved, but now his eyes glowed, glittering, cerulean jewels of gratitude.

"Thank you," he mouthed silently.

I just smiled back. Then we both turned to Ray and Susan, who were staring at us with mutually dumbfounded expressions, although Susan"s had more than a tinge of pride in it as well.

"Well," she said finally. "I guess that is that. Brandon, you hold on to this one. And I hope you can show her the same kind of support she"s giving you."

Brandon kissed me lightly on the forehead. "Oh, I plan to," he said, although his eyes never left mine.

He bent again to his food. With a quick glance to Ray and Susan, I did the same, willing the insistent flush to fade from my cheeks. Sometimes I really hated my Irish blood.

"And what does Miranda say...about...this?" Ray finally broke in again, pointing a long finger at me.

Brandon set his fork back on his plate. Mid-bite, Susan followed suit.

"This is a person, not an object on a goddamn shelf, Ray," he said, nostrils flaring. "So you can start by speaking to her with the respect she is afforded therein."

"Cut the lawyer speak, Bran. You know what I"m talking about."

"Well, to start, it"s none of Miranda"s damn business. We"ve been legally separated for over three years. She doesn"t get to dictate my personal life anymore."

"Hasn"t stopped her before," Ray put in.

"Well, I"m stopping her now," Brandon snapped. "Besides...sometimes you can"t control when you fall in love. Isn"t that right, Ray?"

I couldn"t quite suppress the smile and the warm feeling his words caused in my chest. Ray opened his mouth, then shut it tightly while Susan gave him a sly smile.

"I see," was all he said before taking a mouthful of potatoes.

"Anyway, Skylar is only one of the reasons I wanted to come by tonight," Brandon said before another awkward lull hit the table. "I have some news. And I wanted to share it with the three people who are most important to me."

All of us looked up curiously. This was new to me too.

Brandon took a deep breath. "I"ve been approached by some DNC representatives. They"ve asked me to run for office next year. For Mayor of Boston."

Susan raised both hands to her mouth in surprise, dropping her fork on her plate with a clink. Ray, of course, only had a hard stare as he processed the news. I, however, felt like I couldn"t move. Mayor? Right now Brandon looked more like an off-duty construction worker than one of the most influential people in Boston.

"Oh," Susan said, eyes clearly gleaming with pride. "Oh, my. My Brandon? Mayor?" She looked to Ray, grabbing excitedly at his shirt sleeve. "You know what will happen, don"t you? He"ll win––just look at those dimples. And soon it"s going to be the White House."

"What"s driving this?" Ray asked pointedly. "Where is this coming from?"

I turned to Brandon. These were questions I also had.

Brandon swallowed his food and took a breath. "Well, it"s like you said, Ray," he said. "I want to do more than just stockpile money. They asked, and the timing seems right."

"How can the timing be right when you"re in the middle of a divorce?" Ray demanded. "And what about your companies? Are you going to run them and the city at the same time? Or will you be one of those politicians who doesn"t care about obvious conflicts of interest?"

I raised an eyebrow. Also valid questions.

Brandon exhaled again through his nose. "Well, to start, I haven"t actually decided to do it, and if I do, I won"t be announcing anything immediately. And as for the businesses, well, I"d step away from the firm if I decided to run, and I"m in the process of divesting from Ventures anyway just to settle things with Miranda."

"What?" I finally found my voice, clogged as it was in shock.

For someone worth as much as Brandon, divestiture was an insane idea. It would require the liquidation of his shares in Ventures––essentially selling his business to the highest bidder. Depending on how long he took to do it (and he likely would not have long if he was trying to settle the divorce soon), he would take an enormous personal loss. Hundreds of millions, potentially.

He squeezed my hand, then looked back to Ray and Susan. "Look, I"ve been asked, but I haven"t answered. Because the truth is, this would affect all of you. The press will be interested in where I came from and who I spend my time with. So, I won"t do this without your support. All of you."

The three of us blinked at him, unsure of what to say. Brandon, to his credit, sat like a statue, waiting patiently for our responses.

Finally, Ray cleared his throat. "If it"s what you want...I suppose we support you. Is that right, Sue?"

Beside him, Susan broke into a wide smile. "Of course, Bran. Oh! I"m so proud!"

Brandon grinned at her, then looked down at me carefully. "What do you think?" he asked quietly.

For once, I wasn"t blushing when the table"s attention was on me. Instead, I felt numb, like my skin had lost all color. This was massive news, and I had no idea how to process it. We were just starting to find our footing again. What was I supposed to say?

"I don"t know," I said softly. "I need to think about it."

Brandon nodded sympathetically. "Okay, that"s fair." Then he turned to Susan. "All right then. I believe we brought some dessert if anyone"s ready."

"Of course!" Susan said, bouncing up from her chair. "It"s time to celebrate!"

I offered a weak smile, but my insides felt like sawdust. Celebrate...was this news worth the celebration? I didn"t know. I hoped so.

~