Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Beau
The dining room at my parents’ estate could’ve doubled as a meat locker.
I sat at one end of the mahogany table that could comfortably seat fourteen, and I could see my breath when I exhaled. My mother, perched at the opposite end like a blonde icicle in Talbots, sipped her green tea with the serene expression of someone who found hypothermia “invigorating.”
My father sat between us, hidden behind the Wall Street Journal.
This was breakfast at the Thatcher household: three people, forty feet of table, and enough emotional distance to qualify as a demilitarized zone.
“More coffee, Mr. Beau?” Gracie appeared at my elbow, coffeepot in hand, her face carved from ancient stone and infinite patience.
“Please.”
She poured with the steady hand of someone who’d been doing this since the Roosevelt administration, which—given that Gracie had to be pushing eighty if she was a day—wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility.
Her uniform was crisp and black, her silver hair pulled into a bun so tight it could’ve been classified as a weapon.
“Thank you, Gracie,” my mother said without looking up from her yogurt parfait, which she was eating with surgical precision—with exactly twelve almonds, no more, no less.
Gracie’s left eyebrow twitched.
That twitch was Gracie-speak for ‘You’re welcome, Your Majesty, may I also polish your crown while I’m at it?’ I’d spent my entire childhood learning to decode Gracie’s facial expressions, and I was fluent.
“Darling,” my mother said, finally deigning to look at me, “you seem distracted this morning. Is something wrong at work?”
“No.” The word came out too clipped.
My father lowered his newspaper exactly two inches, just enough to peer at me over the top. “That’s the voice of a man whose day is already ruined, and it’s only seven-thirty. What happened? Someone steal your parking spot on your first day?”
“Nobody stole my parking spot.”
“Lose a case?”
“I just started.”
“Get assigned to work with an idiot?”
Try my high school nemesis, who grew up to look like a Calvin Klein model and still makes me want to punch walls.
“Everything is fine,” I muttered.
Gracie, refilling my father’s coffee, rolled her eyes so hard I was concerned they’d get stuck. The message was clear: Sure, honey. And I’m the Queen of Windsor Farms.
“Well, you look tired,” my mother observed, tilting her head like an elegant bird examining a worm. “Are you getting enough sleep? You know how important rest is for cognitive function. Your father never sleeps more than five hours a night, and look what happened to him.”
“I’m sitting right here, Claudia.”
“Yes, dear. I’m aware.”
My father rattled his newspaper with the aggressive energy of a man who’d been married for thirty-five years and had exactly thirty-five years’ worth of grievances stored up.
“If you’re tired, Beau, it’s probably because you’re staying up too late doing whatever it is your generation does.
TikTok. Instagram. Cryptocurrency. All of it nonsense. ”
“I don’t do TikTok.”
“That’s the one where people dance, isn’t it?” Mother asked.
“Among other things.”
“Ridiculous.” Dad turned the page of his newspaper loudly.
My mother set down her spoon with the delicate precision of someone defusing a bomb. “Howard, Beau is thirty-two years old. I don’t think he’s staying up late doing TikTok dances.”
“You never know with his generation.”
“I’m an attorney, Dad. Not an influencer.”
“Is there a difference anymore?” He lowered the paper. “Everyone’s got a brand these days. You probably have a LinkedIn.”
“Having a LinkedIn is standard professional practice.”
“In my day, we called that a résumé.“
Gracie, clearing my mother’s plate, made a sound that could’ve been a cough or could’ve been the verbal equivalent of throwing her hands in the air. Her face remained perfectly neutral, but her eyes said Lord, give me strength.
I had to look down at my eggs to hide my grin.
“Anyway,” my mother continued, clearly determined to drag this conversation across the finish line, “if something is bothering you at work, darling, you know you can tell us. Your father has connections all over Richmond. He could make a phone call—”
“Mom, no.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Please don’t make phone calls on my behalf.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“Claudia,” my father interjected, not looking up, “the boy is thirty-two. Let him handle his own problems. If he gets fired, he can move back in here and you can fuss over him all you want.”
“I’m not getting fired.”
“Not with that attitude.”
My mother sighed. “Howard, you’re not helping.”
“I wasn’t trying to help. I was making an observation.”
“Your observations are rarely constructive.” Mother’s lips pressed into a straight line.
“And yet I keep making them.”
Gracie, now at the sideboard arranging fresh fruit, closed her eyes briefly in what I could only describe as a silent prayer for patience. When she opened them, she glanced at me, and for just a second, her expression softened into something almost conspiratorial.
We survive, that look said. Somehow, we survive.
I finished my coffee in three gulps and stood. “I need to get to the office.”
“So early?” My mother frowned. “It’s not even eight.”
“Big case. Lots to do.”
“Will you be home for dinner?”
“Probably not.”
“Beau—”
“I’ll text you, okay?” I rounded the table and kissed her cheek, then clapped my father on the shoulder. “Try not to kill each other while I’m gone.”
“No promises,” my father muttered.
Gracie followed me to the front door, moving with the slow inevitability of a glacier.
“Rough night?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“Boy trouble?”
I nearly tripped over my own feet. “What?”
“You heard me.” She held my coat open, waiting.
“You’ve got that look. Same look your father had when he first met your mother—like someone hit him in the head with a brick and he’s still trying to figure out which way is up.
” Gracie had figured out I was gay before anyone else. Hell, before I even knew.
“I don’t have boy trouble.”
“Mm-hmm.” She helped me into my coat, tugging the collar straight with a firm hand.
“Gracie—”
“Go to work, Mr. Beau.” She patted my shoulder, and for just a second, her face softened into something almost affectionate. Then she turned and shuffled back toward the kitchen, leaving me standing in the foyer feeling oddly exposed.
I walked out into the frosty morning air, climbed into my Mercedes, and sat there for a moment, hands on the steering wheel, staring at the sprawling lawn and the house that had never quite felt like home.
Four more days and I’d be in my new condo, with my own thermostat, my own space, and no one asking if I had “boy trouble.”
* * *
I was late.
Not disastrously late—just five minutes—but for someone who prided himself on being early to everything, five minutes felt like a moral failing.
I’d barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Mason’s face: that perfect jawline, those cold blue eyes, the way his throat worked when he swallowed. I’d replayed our confrontation in my office about a thousand times, analyzing every word, every look, every subtle shift in his expression.
Do you ever think about me, Mason?
And for just a second, I’d seen it—the crack in his armor, the flash of something raw and hungry before he’d slammed the walls back up.
He’d definitely thought about me.
The realization had kept me awake until three in the morning, staring at my ceiling and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do with that information. Now, racing through the HRB lobby at 8:04 AM, I was paying the price.
“Morning, Mario,” I called, barely slowing down.
“Running late, Mr. Thatcher?” Mario grinned from behind his desk. “Not a good look on day two.”
“Traffic,” I lied, already jabbing the elevator button.
The elevator took a thousand years. When the doors finally opened on the nineteenth floor, I speed-walked through the office, nodding at paralegals and associates who were already deep into their workday. Lisa looked up from her desk as I passed, eyebrows raised.
“Cutting it close,” she winked.
“I know, I know.”
“Mason’s already in his office. And he looks thrilled.“
“Of course he does.”
I made it to Mason’s office slightly out of breath and knocked once before pushing through the door.
Mason sat behind his desk, perfectly composed, reviewing a document with a red pen. He didn’t look up.
“You’re late,” he said.
I glanced at my watch. “By six minutes.”
“Still late.” He made a note on the page, his handwriting precise and angular. “I said eight o’clock.”
“Good morning to you too, sunshine.”
That got his attention. His eyes snapped up, and for a second I saw it again—that flash of something underneath the ice. Annoyance, probably.
“This is a professional environment, Thatcher. If I say eight, I mean eight.”
“Noted.” I dropped into the chair across from his desk, deliberately casual. “Traffic was a nightmare. You know how Franklin Street gets.”
“I’ve lived in Richmond my entire life. I’m familiar with the traffic patterns.”
“Then you understand why I’m late.”
“I understand that you don’t respect other people’s time.”
I opened my mouth to fire back—something about him having a stick up his ass—but before I could, the door opened behind me.
“Good morning, boys.”
We both straightened immediately, like students caught passing notes in class.
Patsy Hollingsworth swept into the office, carrying a leather folio and radiating that particular brand of Southern grace that could make you feel both welcomed and gently scolded at the same time.
“Mrs. Hollingsworth,” Mason stood, like the ass-kisser he was. “Good morning.”
“Patsy,” she corrected gently. “How many times do I have to tell you, Mason? We’re colleagues.”
“Yes, ma’am.”