Page 64 of Legally Yours

“Well, we could go with Boo Radley, if you want, but I figured you’d prefer the narrator.”

“All right, all right, your turn,” I said as I shoved against his shoulder. “Favorite movie.”

“You’re not gonna guess?”

I didn’t respond, just gave him a look that hopefully told him he’d better answer, or I’d push him into the harbor. Brandon popped the last of his cannoli into his mouth and took an agonizingly long time to chew and swallow. He opened his lips as if he were going to answer, and then lifted his coffee cup instead.

“Oh my God!” I cried, tossing my now-empty cup at him.

He laughed as it fell onto the pavement, then scooped it up and tossed it into a nearby receptacle along with his trash. “You are way too much fun to rile up, Red.”

Brandon grabbed my hand and tucked me comfortably under his shoulder again with my arm wrapped around his waist. I eagerly burrowed into the space, inhaling Brandon’s scent with something close to ecstasy while his big form shielded me from the icy breeze coming off the water.

“It’sGoodfellas, by the way,” he said. “I’m a sucker for Scorsese. I almost guessed that for you too, actually, since it takes place in Brooklyn.”

“East Brooklyn,” I corrected him almost automatically. “Yeah, it’s a good movie.” I didn’t want to tell him that Scorsese’s film was a little too close to home to be enjoyable, considering my dad’s involvement with people like that.

We walked for a bit in comfortable silence. Usually when a lull in conversation hit, I wondered if my date was bored or what he might be thinking—it was often the first thing that turned me off. But with Brandon, it didn’t seem to matter if we were talking or not. The comfortable grip of his hand on my shoulder and the way he occasionally rested his nose in my hair made me feel at ease without a single word. Why he felt like he had to shower me with extravagant gifts was beyond me. His company was the best thing he could offer.

“Sometimes it’s hard to believe that so many legendary things happened here,” I remarked as we passed a sign marking the Paul Revere Trail.

A group of tourists posed for pictures beside it, and Brandon nodded at them pleasantly, though his arm around my shoulder tightened.

“Well, that’s why Boston is the greatest city in the world,” he said.

I snorted. “I think that’s my line.”

Brandon smiled, then stopped walking. “Hold on a second.”

Before I could stop him, he swiped a bit of stray ricotta from my cheek before sucking it off his finger. I stared at him, half disgusted, half aroused.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” I said, in response to which I received another toothy grin.

“Oh, believe me, Red, there are a lot of things I wouldn’t mind licking off you,” Brandon said as he nuzzled his mouth against my ear, nipping my earlobe in a way that sent shivers down my spine. “I think you taste best of all, though.”

The flush that ran up my neck was immediate, as was the sudden bolt of desire in my belly.

“Well, fair’s fair, Mr. Sterling,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. His hand had drifted down my arm, and I toyed with his fingers. “I should probably get a taste of you sometime soon too, don’t you think?”

One side of his face quirked up into that sly half smile. He leaned in again, so I could feel his warm breath against my neck, and growled into my ear, “Anytime, Red. Any. Time.”

It was becoming clear that I wasn’t going to be able to play this game very well with him. He would always out-fluster me. So instead, I took the coward’s way out and changed the subject. We walked by Faneuil Hall and back up to the cobbled streets of Haymarket as we chatted amiably about our lives, retelling small stories from our experiences at school and the different careers we’d had. Brandon was curious when I told him about my decision to leave investment banking for a career in law—in that way, our choices were quite similar.

“Why didn’t you ever leave Boston to play the market in New York?” I wondered. “Later, I mean. After you had started Ventures.”

“Boston’s my home,” Brandon said as he kicked a can out of our way.

“Do you ever go back to your old neighborhood?”

He pressed his lips together, but shook his head. “Not—not really. Sometimes I might check on some old friends of my mother’s, the ones who used to look in on me before I lived with the Petersens. But that’s it.”

He said it so casually that I might have missed the reference to his upbringing. Like most people who had had a shitty early life, Brandon tended to talk around the hard facts of his childhood rather than recall them directly. I didn’t want to push him to say more than he wanted—I understood the desire to keep some things firmly in the past. But I also didn’t want to hide the fact that I knew things he thought I didn’t.

“But honestly,” Brandon continued without noticing my tension as we crossed the street, “most people I knew back then don’t even live there anymore, and the ones that still do don’t want to see me.”

I frowned. “Why’s that?”

“Probably because they think I should have come back when my ma got out of jail.”

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