by J. Lynn
A startled gasp left me.
“I think I like this Jillian,” he said as if he were sharing some highly kept secret.
I stared at him, unable to process what that meant.
Brock’s head tilted to the side. “Who is that guy you’re with at the table?”
Jerking back, I about toppled over backward. “I . . . I can’t even believe you’re asking that question.”
His brows furrowed together. “Why? It’s a valid question.”
My eyes widened. “That is so not a valid question.”
Straightening, he leaned against the wall like he had all the time in the world and we weren’t standing outside of the restrooms. “Is he your boyfriend?”
Struck speechless once more, all I could do was stare at him while one part of me wanted to point out it was none of his damn business and the other half wanted to demand to know why he was even asking that question.
I did neither of those things.
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping around him. “I have to get back to my table.”
“Seriously?” He pushed off the wall, wrapping a large hand around my arm, stopping me. “We haven’t seen each other in years and you’re just going to walk away? No hug? No ‘how have you been?’ Nothing?”
“Sounds about right.” I pulled on my arm, and after a few seconds he let go.
He studied me for a moment and the teasing smile faded away into a grim line. “I guess I can’t really blame you.”
Every muscle in my body tensed. This is so wrong. I couldn’t help but think that, because Brock and I . . . we used to be inseparable despite the age difference. It was always us—me chasing after him, tagging along, and clamoring for his attention, and it had always been him letting me chase, including me in everything he did and focusing on me like I was the only person in the world.
Until that night.
Until I realized it had always been me wanting him and him wanting everyone but me.
“No,” I whispered, hating myself a little for what I was saying. “You can’t blame me.”
A muscle flexed in his jaw as he nodded. Heart pounding, I turned around and hurried back to the table without looking behind me. I had no idea how long I’d been gone, but guessing by how everyone was staring at me when I slid into my chair, it had been a little too long.
Avery smiled tentatively at me.
“Is everything okay?” Grady asked, touching my arm.
I started to respond, but before I could, I heard only part of what Cam said, “Holy shit.”
A shadow fell over the table, a shadow that originated directly from behind me. Avery’s eyes widened and her mouth formed a perfect O. The tiny hairs along the back of my neck rose.
No, he didn’t.
He so didn’t follow me back to my table.
Cam was rising from his chair, a look of pure adoration etched into his handsome face. “Holy shit, man. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”
Yep.
He’d followed me to my table.
Looking to my right, I watched Brock clasp Cam’s hand and then they exchanged one of those one-arm man hugs. All I could do was sit there as Brock and Cam spoke to one another. I had no idea what they were saying, and it probably had nothing to do with my hearing. I was concentrating on not standing, picking up my chair and tossing it at Brock.
Then Brock was standing to my right, looking directly at Grady. He held the man’s stare like he used to hold the stares of his opponents during weigh-ins and before the matches, smiling narrowly.
Clearing his throat, Grady removed his hand from my arm.
My hands slipped off the table and fell into my lap.
Brock’s eyes were cold and flat as he extended his arm over my plate. He spoke, but it sounded muffled since he was speaking to my deaf ear.
“Grady Thornton,” I heard from my left, and I realized Brock had introduced himself. Grady’s hand was all but swallowed by Brock’s much larger one. “You know Cam?”
“We’ve met a couple of times.” Brock placed his hand on the back of my chair, the gesture oddly intimate and possessive. “I met him and his lovely wife through Jillian.”
I stared straight ahead, counting under my breath.
“Really?” Curiosity filled Grady’s tone. “How do you two know each other?”
“He works—well, worked for my father,” I answered before Brock could.
“Ah, come on, that’s not the whole story.” Brock chuckled, and I widened my eyes. “We actually grew up together. There’s barely a thing I don’t know about Jilly.”
What in the actual hell of all nine circles of Hell was this?
“And how do you know everyone here?” Brock asked, and since he shifted closer, I could hear him even though it sounded like it was at the end of a tunnel.
Grady’s gaze darted between Brock and me. “I’m a friend of Cam’s. We work together.”
“Interesting,” Brock murmured, still smiling. “You’re coaching soccer now, right?” When Cam nodded, Brock turned back to Grady. “Are you also a coach?”
“No.” Grady sat a little straighter. “I teach chemistry at Shepherd.”
The smile on Brock’s face went up a notch, and I wanted to slip under the table. “A professor? Wow. And how do you know Jillian?”
Oh my God, this was an interrogation.
Grady picked up his bottle as he smiled at me. “We just met, but I think we’re . . . going to be pretty good friends.”
“Good friends?” Brock chuckled, and my hands tightened into fists. “Sounds about right. Anyway,” he said in a way that dripped dismissiveness, “I don’t want to keep you all from your dinner. Just wanted to stop by and say hi. I’ll hit you up later,” Brock said to Cam before focusing on me in that intense way of his that made you feel like there was no one else in the entire world but you.
He tapped the tip of my nose.
I blinked.
Brock grinned. “I’ll see you again soon.”
He then stalked away, drawing attention from nearly every table as he made his way toward the front of the restaurant.
“That was unexpected,” Cam said with a laugh. “You didn’t know Brock was in town?”
I shook my head. My father had to have known Brock would be here, and he hadn’t warned me. Then again, my dad didn’t know what really had gone down between Brock and me. All he knew, all my family believed, was that Brock and I had simply grown apart from one another.
But I could never tell my parents, and I demanded of Brock that he didn’t, because if my father had known why I’d been where I had been and how I . . . how I got hurt, he would’ve straight up murdered Brock. It wouldn’t have mattered that my father treated him like a son or that he’d invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of time in Brock.
Brock would be a dead man.
“You have no idea whose hand you just shook, do you?” Cam laughed again with a shake of his head, sitting back in his chair. “That was Brock ‘The Beast’ Mitchell. God, he’s like, what, Jillian? Heavyweight Champion twice? Then once at Light Heavyweight. Damn.” Cam looked like he was about to pass out. “I can’t believe he’s not fighting anymore. Watching him in the ring was like seeing a damn Titan throwing a punch . . .”
I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable for a thousand different reasons as Cam updated Grady on the awesomeness that was Brock. Someone must’ve said something to me, but I didn’t hear them until I looked up at Avery.
Suddenly, I couldn’t do this.
I didn’t want to do this.
Not with Brock sitting in the same place as me, not after all these years, and all I could think about was that night.
“I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well.” Catching Grady’s startled stare and Avery’s concerned one, I hurriedly picked up my purse. “I have an upset stomach—a sensitive one.”
Oh my God, did I seriously just say that out loud?
I did.
There was no taking tha
Cheeks blood red, I put some cash on the table, more than enough to cover what I had ordered, and rose, mumbling my goodbyes before I speed-walked my way out of the restaurant. It wasn’t until I was sitting in my car, the engine running and my hands gripping the steering wheel, did I realize what Brock had said to me before he sauntered off.
He’d be seeing me again.
Soon.
Chapter 4
Rhage, named after my most favorite brother in all the Black Dagger Brotherhood, stared up at me with the cringe-inducing judgment only a cat could master from where the brown and white-striped little devil was perched.
Which was on my calves.
Sighing, I turned my head and glanced at the clock on my nightstand. It was almost eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning . . . and I was still in bed.
Rhage was probably hungry for fresh kitty food, because whatever was in the bowl now was obviously not good enough for him.
I’d found the guy when he’d just been a kitten, hidden under my car at work one evening during winter. Snow had started to come down, and the poor thing was shivering and hungry. I’d taken him in and pretty much immediately regretted doing so.
The cat, even as a kitten, didn’t like humans eighty percent of the time, including me. He seemed to only tolerate me because I gave him food. He spent most of the time hiding somewhere, waiting patiently for me to walk by and be caught off-guard by his Godzilla blitz attack.
The cat was the devil.
But I sort of loved him anyway, because when he was being nice, that rare twenty percent of the time, he let me cuddle him, and there was nothing better than kitty-cuddles.
“Stop staring at me like that,” I muttered, narrowing my own eyes at possibly the meanest cat in the whole world. “I’m getting up in a few minutes.”
The cat’s ears flattened.
I tipped my head back and sighed again. Sleep had not come easily last night. Brock’s unexpected appearance had tossed me headfirst through a loop. It didn’t help that Avery had called three times to make sure I was fine, not giving up until I answered the phone. Of course, I lied again, claiming it was just an upset stomach. I doubted she believed me, but Avery didn’t know a lot about Brock, as far as I knew. She hadn’t lived where we grew up. So unless she heard something from one of the other girls, then she didn’t know the details.
Groaning, I placed my hands over my eyes. I still couldn’t believe I stood in front of her, in front of Cam and Grady, and basically said I had bowel issues.
God, I shouldn’t be allowed out in public.
Even thinking about it now caused the tips of my ears to burn. So embarrassing.
Based on the way I’d left dinner last night and how I acted, I doubted I’d hear from Grady again. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. If I truly cared or not. We had hit it off, I supposed, and he also didn’t seem bothered by . . . well, anything about me. He was cute and intelligent, but I just didn’t feel anything.
No spark. No catch of the breath. No anticipation or yearning. Nothing.
Looking back, it had been the same with Ben. He was the first guy to be interested in me and actually wanted to have sex with me, and I’d just been so . . . so damn lonely. I just wanted to be wanted, and I stayed with him well past the expiration date on that romance just because I so desperately wanted to feel again.
This was a consequence of reading way too many romance novels, because I wanted what the characters I read about had. The mind-blowing, all-consuming attraction like I had for—
I cut those thoughts off, opening my eyes. I was not going down that road. No way. No how. I’d been doing so good for the . . . for the most part.
Okay. I was kind of lying to myself.
Truth was, there wasn’t a week that went by where I didn’t think about Brock. It used to be not a day would pass. Sometimes even an hour. Making it to a week without wondering if he was happy was a major life improvement, so I wasn’t going to go backward just because he randomly appeared at the restaurant last night.
I’ll see you again soon.
A shiver danced over my skin. What the hell could he mean by that? Unless he was planning to hang around town and make use of the training facility here, there was no reason our paths should cross. Even though he hadn’t mentioned the fact that I would be working for the family business, I wouldn’t be at all shocked if Dad had mentioned it to him.
Knocking a strand of hair off my face, I thought about the first time I’d seen Brock. It had been in the middle of the night and I’d woken from a nightmare. Whatever I’d been dreaming about I couldn’t remember, but I had been thirsty, so I’d left my bedroom.
Cold sweat dotted my forehead as I held onto the railing, quietly creeping down the staircase. Hearing my father’s voice, I stopped a few steps from the bottom. Daddy sounded weird to me, his tone tense, like I sometimes heard him speak to my uncles.
“When’s the last time you ate, boy?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” an unfamiliar voice, filled with hesitation, responded. “The night before last, I think.”
Curious, I tiptoed down to the last step and peered around the wall. I saw my daddy standing in the center of the room, arms folded across his chest. Then I saw a boy several years older than me, sitting on the edge of the couch.
I placed a hand over my mouth when I saw his face. There was a gash on his forehead and a horrible cut under his lip, one that looked angry and raw. An eye was swollen and black.
He looked like one of the men Daddy sometimes fought at work, except Daddy would never fight a kid. Never.
“Is that why you tried to rob me?” Daddy asked, and my eyes widened.
The boy shrugged a shoulder.
“I’m a patient man. I can stand here all night. I can also call the police and have you thrown into jail. Would you like that? Or, you can get to talking and I can get to feeding you. It’s your choice.”
Pressing against the wall, I watched the boy glare up at my daddy mutinously. He was crazy! I would never look at my daddy like that. Several moments passed and he demanded, “Why would you not call the police?”
“I’ve seen you around, hanging outside the Academy for a while. You didn’t look like this last time. You also never tried to rob me before, so I’m figuring something about your situation has changed. That you’re not a bad kid about to embark on a life of crime.”
The boy was quiet again.
“I was once in your position,” my daddy said after a moment. “Having to fight and steal food just to survive. I know what it’s like to try to survive on the streets.”
The boy’s wary eyes closed and he seemed to shudder. “I left home a couple of nights ago. Couldn’t deal with it any longer. My father . . .”
“He do that to your face?”
He didn’t answer, but my daddy seemed to know what that meant, because he barked a bad word I was never supposed to use. Then he knelt in front of the boy, speaking too low for me to hear. I had no idea what he was saying, but then my father spoke louder, “Come on. Let’s see what we have in the kitchen.”
As my father turned, the boy with the bruised face looked up, looked right at the stairway, and saw me. I didn’t understand how, because in a house often filled with voices and people and even when it was silent and nearly empty, no one really saw me.
But this boy did.
I dragged myself out of the memory, shaking the image of the scared and lost boy he’d been, because he wasn’t that boy anymore, just like I wasn’t that girl.
As much as I tried not to learn anything about Brock, it was hard not to know what was going on with him. I could resist the urge to internet stalk him all I wanted, but whenever I visited my family, at some point, someone would inevitably bring him up.
I knew Brock owned a home outside of Philadelphia, not too far from Plymouth Meeting. According to my uncle Julio, he had it built to his specifications, and included a home gym. I assumed his fiancée lived with him there, and I tried not to think about his fiancée.
Mainly because I sort of knew her.
Kristen Morgan.
And she had been there the night he broke my heart and everything changed.
Sucking in a sharp breath that did nothing to ease the burn now traveling up my throat, I pressed my lips together as I stared at the slowly churning ceiling fan.
“I’m not doing this,” I spoke out loud, causing Rhage to squirm on my legs. “I don’t care why he was here last night. It doesn’t affect me anymore. He doesn’t affect me anymore.”
Sounded like a plan.
Deciding it was far past the time to get my butt out of bed, I sat up and reached for Rhage. Just before the tips of my fingers brushed his soft fur, he flew off my legs and darted across my bedroom, running like a pack of wild dogs was chasing him.
I shook my head. “Ass.”
Wondering why the cat even bothered sleeping next to me, I reached for my cellphone. Hitting the screen, I saw I had a missed call from my friend Abby. “Shoot,” I murmured, remembering I’d turned the phone on silent after I’d gotten done talking to Avery last night.
Weeks had passed since I’d last spoken to Abby, and it had been almost a year since I’d seen her. When I headed back home for Thanksgiving, we were going to have to get coffee and catch up. Since she and Colton married a few years back, they’d been in the process of renovating an old, nineteenth -home they’d bought.
There was also a missed call and message from a local number I didn’t recognize. Curious, I hit the message button and waited.
“Hey, Jillian, this is—um—this is Grady. We met last night?” There was an awkward laugh. “Well, of course you probably remember that. Anyway, I hope you don’t get mad, but I finagled your phone number from Avery, because I wanted to know if you’d like to check out that art exhibit I was telling you about. I’m going to be out of town this weekend, but I would love to show it to you when I get back.”
Eyes wide, I stared at my phone in disbelief as Grady rattled off his phone number and then laughed again when he realized I’d have his number because of caller ID. His constant laughing at himself was . . . it was cute.
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