by Elise Faber
“Brent.”
“Darlin’,” I warned.
“I’m an asshole.”
“I need to go.” I twisted away from her hold, yanked open the door.
“I shouldn’t have made that joke about—”
“No. It was what any sane woman would say when that much was dropped on her on a first date,” I said, somehow managing to keep the words level, even though the Can’t. Not right. Not good enough. mantra continued to pound in my ears. I took the stairs at a near sprint, felt my back seize in a way it hadn’t in more than a year, but I pushed through the pain and continued hauling ass to my car.
Especially when I heard heels clicking along the concrete behind me.
I yanked at my car door and threw myself inside.
More pain, shooting down my spine, burning through my right leg, just like it had for months after I’d first been injured.
Fucking deserved it, too. Deserved to feel this shitty.
Couldn’t save my men.
Couldn’t save my best friend.
Didn’t even know how to please a woman.
Except, Iris had seemed pretty pleased on the couch, hadn’t she?
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, pushing the button to start my car, deliberately not looking when the knocking came on my window, when the slightly muffled, “Brent. Wait,” penetrated the glass.
I needed to get the fuck out. I’d needed to leave ten minutes before. Fuck, ten days before. If I’d never started down this path, then I could have saved myself this pain.
Another knock.
More of me deliberately keeping my gaze forward.
I reached for the gear shift, put the engine in drive, and got the fuck out of there.
I made the mistake of looking in the rearview just before I turned the corner, and seeing Iris there on the sidewalk, looking so fucking gorgeous in that sexy dress, those heels I wanted her to wear as I plunged into her wet heat, just made the hurts that had escaped the Pandora’s Box in my heart sting even more.
Failure.
Not good.
Absolutely undeserving of anything that special.
I forced my gaze forward, concentrating with every ounce of my being on driving safely home. It was far from easy, especially with the pain lancing through my skull.
But I made it, parked, and was able to stumble up the few steps to my rental.
Inside the door, I dropped to the floor, resting my head back against the wooden panel, letting my eyes slide closed. Everything hurt, but I couldn’t discern if it was from my back spasming, my old injury flaring to life, or if it felt like I’d just ripped my heart out, offering it up to Iris, and realizing as I held the beating organ in my hand, that it was wholly unworthy of her.
Dramatic.
Still, I expected to find a gaping hole in my chest when I glanced down.
When I didn’t, I slid forward, stretching out flat on the floor to ease the strain on my back muscles and stared up at the ceiling.
My cell buzzed.
Or rather, it had been buzzing pretty much constantly since I drove away from Iris’s curb.
I painfully extracted it from my pocket, lifted it up to my face and glanced at the screen. It was loaded with texts from Iris.
Fucking hell.
A few swipes and taps had her number blocked, had the texts deleted.
It was better that way. A clean state. Over and done.
Except as I dropped my phone next to me and closed my eyes, riding out the muscle spasms, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was what I wanted.
Then I remembered that the world had shown me often enough that what I wanted didn’t matter in the least.
“Hey, Kace,” I said into my boss’s voicemail early the next morning. “I hate to bail on you, but I seriously tweaked my back. I won’t be able to make it in tonight. Sorry, man.”
The words weren’t enough to actually encompass all that I was feeling.
But they did enough.
He knew about my injury, wouldn’t question it.
Which was good because my back was hurting. It was just that the hurt was minimal when compared to everything else—my neck was stiff and I could barely turn it side-to-side, my right leg was riddled with knots, my shoulder throbbed along with my pulse, and the muscles in my back were so tightly contracted that just pushing out of bed to take a piss that morning had been agony.
And that said nothing of making it to my bed the night before.
Or the way my insides felt flayed open and exposed to the elements.
“Fuck,” I said, still unable to believe that I’d told Iris what I had, but also that telling her had stirred up so much shit in my soul. I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t ashamed of being a virgin, that I didn’t have anything to be ashamed about, and yet . . . I felt shame.
I was twenty-eight. I’d served two tours in Afghanistan, had shot and killed people, had survived a blast that killed my friends, including my best friend, had managed to relearn how to walk when that hadn’t been guaranteed, worked a job where I stood on my feet, where I lifted heavy shit, where I reached and bent and stretched—all of which had definitely been things my doctors had told me I’d probably never be able to do again.
And it all came down to sticking my dick in someone’s vagina.
Pathetic.
I meant me. Not the fact that I hadn’t slept with anyone, that life had dealt me some blows and tricky circumstances and it just hadn’t happened. It wasn’t even a religious requirement any longer, since I was no longer a parishioner in my parent’s church. In fact, I hadn’t been for years. Not since I left my small town in Alabama for two years in the middle Middle East, not since I’d seen too much shit to think of the world in such black and white terms then had returned home to have my heart shredded and my parents pass away within a month of one another.
A lot of the comfort of religion disappeared when I couldn’t find the answer to why bad shit happened to good people, or at least, not something more than God has a plan.
I couldn’t.
It hurt too much, and I’d left that part of my life behind when I’d returned for my second tour.
Then the deaths. My injury.
And still when it came down to it, I was embarrassed that I hadn’t had sex. I almost wished it was something I was holding on to, something I viewed as precious, as valuable, rather than something I just wanted to be done with.
But instead of valuable, it was just this heavy ass burden I was desperate to be rid of.
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Fuck, Iris had looked so playful then, so expectant that I was teasing her, but all too quickly the horror had come, and then the pity.
I’d spent too long in the V.A. tolerating help and pity to deal with more, especially about something that concerned my sex life. And yet, I wasn’t pissed at her. I was pissed at myself, pissed that I’d reacted like it was a shameful secret and then pissed that I hadn’t been able to hold it together for a date before finding a way out of there with my dignity intact.
Instead—
“Ugh!” I groaned. “Enough.”
I couldn’t keep going in these mental circles.
It was clearly over with Iris. She’d been horrified, rightfully since I’d all but shouted my truth at her. She’d looked on me with pity and clearly didn’t want to take on a twenty-eight-year-old virgin.
That was fine.
It would be fine.
“Definitely fine,” I said, carefully shifting in bed so I could put my pillow over my face. Maybe I’d accidentally asphyxiate myself with excess carbon dioxide and I’d forget all that I’d told Iris. Maybe I could pretend I dreamed it and then think up something better than screaming, “I’m a virgin!” thirty seconds after she’d come on my tongue.
Maybe—
I fell asleep to a constant, repeating pattern of maybes circling through my mind.
But none of those maybes brought me any closer to dispelli
ng the tornado of shame swirling there, of ridding myself of the tenterhooks of my past, my failures, my hopes for the present and future. Because they’d all collided into something that just wouldn’t pan out.
I’d known that.
I’d yearned for a partner, had hoped it could be Iris because she was incredible.
But that wasn’t to be.
It couldn’t be.
Ten
Iris
So, it turned out that searching my family room for my underwear was a uniquely embarrassing experience.
“Though,” I muttered, tugging my purse strap over my shoulder and girding my loins. “Not as embarrassing as revealing something to the person you were dating, the one you were supposedly building some sort of a meaningful relationship with, and having said person laugh in your face and make a tactless comment.”
So. Fucking. Terrible.
That terrible being me as a person.
I’d texted Brent no less than twenty times, had called him at least a half dozen, and I probably would have kept on texting and calling and pestering if not for the fact that midnight had come and gone. I’d already been an asshole. I didn’t need to keep bugging him into the wee hours of the night.
So, I’d called off the cellular assault, had put on my rattiest sweats and a holey sweatshirt, and I had baked into said wee hours.
Which meant I’d had a good start on orders before I even headed to work.
It also meant that I had baked a giant platter of brownies in a pathetic attempt at an apology. Bribery, causing a sugar crash, I was willing to take any and all steps if it might mean that Brent would just hear out my apology.
I didn’t even have grandiose plans of him giving me another shot.
I’d been a total ass and didn’t deserve another shot.
But he deserved an apology.
Which was why I was carting my platter of brownies down the sidewalk to Bobby’s, already dreading the conversation that was going to take place, but knowing it had to anyway. I also knew that this was probably going to be the beginning of the end of my time in the cool bar and that my proffered advanced copies of Brooke’s books were certainly going to be rescinded.
Well-deserved.
God, I wasn’t used to being the asshole.
That was Frank’s job.
I’d paused outside the door to Bobby’s, feet halting even as the self-flagellating continued, but because I was lost in thought, I didn’t see Brooke until she was almost on top of me.
“Oh!” I jumped, nearly upending the platter.
“Hey, Iris,” she said, smiling with her backpack hanging on one shoulder. “You coming in to hang out?”
“I . . .”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence because the door opened in front of me, and I had to dance back, had to act fast to keep the platter of goodies safe.
“Shit, sorry,” Kace muttered, taking it from me and holding the door for both Brooke and me to enter. “Didn’t see you there.”
“Probably shouldn’t have been standing behind the door,” I said.
Kace smiled at me. “I probably should look before throwing them open.”
“Yo!”
Kace and I glanced up, or rather over at Brooke, who was tapping her foot impatiently.
“Yeah, baby?” Kace asked, closing the distance between him and his woman, slipping an arm around her waist and tugging her close. “Is that jealousy I hear in your tone?”
I snorted, the idea was so preposterous. Not only was Brooke fucking gorgeous, but Kace was madly in love with her.
“No,” Brooke said and glanced around Kace to smile at me. “No offense, Iris. It’s just that I trust my man.” A light punch to Kace’s arm. “But mostly, I’m impatient because that looks like chocolate underneath that plastic wrap, and now that I’ve had some of Iris’s delicious baked goods, I’m not going to pass up another chance.”
“Brownies,” I said in confirmation. “Double chocolate fudge with peanut butter swirls.”
Brooke moaned and extended her arms in supplication. “Thank you, oh gracious and kind Baking Goddess. I needed something fattening and filled with chocolate to get me through these edits.” She made a grab for the platter, which Kace lifted slightly so it was out of reach. “And anyway, I think that Brent would have something to say about that, if I was jealous. Which I’m not. Especially when I just need choc—”
“Brent’s not in,” Kace said, brushing his lips across Brooke’s before glancing over at me and lifting a brow. “Hurt his back last night, apparently?”
I bit my lip, nodded.
He’d hurt more than his back.
Fuck, I needed to get out of here. I patted my pockets like my phone was ringing. “Oh,” I said, lying through my teeth when I glanced at the screen. “That’s my employee calling. Go ahead with the brownies. I’ll join you so long as he hasn’t caught anything on fire.”
Brooke laughed.
Kace’s other brow lifted.
I turned deliberately to the door, putting my cell to my ear, and saying, “Hello?” to absolutely no one as I pushed out through it. I kept the charade up as I moved past the windows. Then I dropped it, right along with dropping the hope I’d been clinging to that I could make things right.
“I’m doing this,” I muttered. “I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do and he deserves an apology. So, suck it up, Iris Hannigan.”
I was outside the door at Bobby’s again, another platter of baked goods—snickerdoodles—in my hands, though this time, I’d carefully kept out of reach of the door’s swing.
See? I learned.
Part of me couldn’t believe I was here. I’d spent most of my walk home the previous day, most of the morning at work, continuing to reprimand myself for being a jerk.
But around two in the afternoon, I’d realized I needed to stop.
No, I hadn’t done the right thing.
No, I hadn’t handled myself properly, any more than I’d handled Brent’s feelings with care. But . . . I’d made a mistake. I’d thought he was joking and misread the situation, which was clearly a sensitive, triggering issue for him.
I’d done wrong.
So, I needed to make it right.
First step of that was snickerdoodles. I made a lot of good things, but I thought that perhaps, my snickerdoodles were the best of all. Slightly crunchy edges, fluffy center, perfectly even coating of cinnamon and sugar.
They were the ideal olive branch.
Perhaps even more so than brownies.
“Right,” I said with a firm nod, shifting my burden and pulling open the door.
I slipped through the front room, usually filled with boisterous college-aged co-eds, heading for the space in the back. The quieter, chill hangout space I’d stumbled upon during my first visit was where Brooke had her spot, where Kace and Brent worked the bar.
It was nearly seven, and I slipped through the opening into the back, quickly spotting Kace and the tats swirling over his forearms. He was leaning over the bar, and I watched as he deposited a soda on a coaster next to Brooke then a kiss on the top of her head.
She barely noticed, her fingers were moving so rapidly on her keyboard, and I hesitated just a few feet into the room, not wanting to interrupt her flow.
Instead, I shifted to Brent’s end of the bar, eyes searching and . . . not finding him. Rather than seeing my sexy, Idris Elba look-alike with the smile that made my knees melt and my heart skip a beat, a tiny and I meant tiny woman stood in his spot. She was maybe five feet, and that was a definite maybe, but I could feel her confidence even from across the bar.
Small but mighty.
She glanced up, saw me, smiled, and set down the rack of glasses that I knew were heavy enough to strain even the muscles of Brent and Kace. But she didn’t look strained, not in the least. In fact, she looked utterly self-assured in a way that was envious. She came over. “Need something to drink?”
Shit.
“Oh�
�I’m—no—I’m—” I shook my head, sucked in a breath, and tried again. “Sorry. I’m actually just looking for Brent.”
Curiosity in her dark brown eyes. “He’s not in tonight.”
Was his back still bothering him? Or was he avoiding me?
Probably both.
“Oh.” I mean, I knew that. He wasn’t there, and she was working his side. “I just—”
“Anabelle, this is Iris,” Kace said. “She and Brent are dating. Anything she wants to drink is on the house.”
“No, I couldn’t—”
“Got it,” Anabelle said. “Nice to meet you. What are you drinking?”
“I—um—”
Kace’s head tilted to the side. “You good?”
“Yeah, I haven’t talked to Brent today, didn’t realize his back was still hurting.” Not a lie. Not a lie. “I should go . . . um . . . check on him?”
Yes, I was having trouble forming sentences. Yes, I’d said the last phrased like a question. No, I wasn’t above beating a hasty retreat to save face at this juncture. Which was better than the alternative. Namely, me blurting out that I wasn’t dating Brent because I was a giant screw-up and—
Go.
I spun then realized I might as well leave the cookies, because if I didn’t, I would probably eat them all and end up too big for my clothes.
And still feeling like an asshole.
“Here,” I blurted, shoving the platter onto the bar. “Snickerdoodles. Enjoy.”
Then I spun again, starting toward the exit.
“Brent chose a strange one,” I heard Anabelle say. “A good one, I think, based on the sheer volume of baked goods on this plate, but still a strange one.”
“If she keeps bringing cookies like these, she can be as strange as she wants,” Kace said, and at the door to the hall, I peeked over my shoulder to see he had already peeled back the plastic wrap and was shoving snickerdoodles in his mouth like it was his last day on Earth.
A group of giggling women pushed past me at that moment, one declaring in a loud voice, “Heather, you will not get me drunk tonight. I have to go home and—”