Brody (2 page)

I could have lunged across the table and leveled him for daring to mention my mother, but I knew people were still milling around outside, and I didn’t need any negative publicity. That would give my opponents the impression I was off my game, that my personal problems were consuming me. It was true. But they didn’t need to know that.

“Don’t make excuses for yourself, old man. You were an asshole then, and I have no doubt you still are. People don’t change.”

“You really believe that? That people can’t change?” Shaking his head and looking disappointed, he said, “Then I feel sorry for you. It’s pretty obvious you don’t like yourself very much right now. And if you don’t believe you can turn things around, you must feel pretty hopeless.”

Stunned, I watched him walk out of the room. He didn’t know me. Even when we’d been living under the same roof, he hadn’t taken the time to get to know me, so how did he know I’d never felt more… hopeless?

Riley

When I woke to the sound of someone pounding on my door at two o’clock in the morning, I thought I was dreaming. I lay there, my heart thudding, as I considered my options. I lived in a secure building. Only people with an access code could get in… unless they’d snuck in behind a resident or guest.

I swung my legs over the bed, barely breathing as I tiptoed down the short hallway to the door. I stood on my toes to peer out the peephole. Oh. My. God.
Brody.
What was he doing here? I hadn’t seen or heard from him in months, not since Jaci and Nex’s wedding.

I weighed my options as I peeped through the hole again. He looked… ravaged. There was no other word to describe it. Instead of the suit I was so used to seeing, he was wearing faded jeans, an artfully torn T-shirt, and a backward baseball cap. It took me back to the old Brody… the high school and college athlete I’d fallen in love with.

With the chain still in place, I opened the door a crack. “What the hell are you doing here?” I was suddenly aware of the fact I was wearing a thin white tank top and short black shorts.

“Baby, please. Open the door.” His voice was raspy, and it looked as though he hadn’t shaved in days, which was unusual. Brody was always impeccably dressed and groomed.

Baby?
He had no right to call me that! “Look, if you’re here for a booty call—”

“God, Ri. I’ve never needed you more than I do right now. Please. Don’t turn me away.”

The last time I’d seen him look so broken was the day of his mother’s funeral, when his heart seemed irreparably shattered. With a sigh, I released the chain, knowing I would hate myself for this in the morning.

He threw the door open before slamming it shut as he advanced on me. “Are you alone?”

I suppressed the urge to squeak or scream… something. I’d never seen him like this, and it scared me. I didn’t know what had happened or what he expected of me. “Of course I’m alone. Why?”

“Does that mean…?” He looked down the hall toward the bedroom. “Are you still with the doctor?”

“No, I broke up with him when I got back from Colorado. Why?”

He released a shaky breath as he took another step forward, forcing me to step back. My butt hit the back of an armchair in the living room. Now I had no escape, which scared me even more. Brody had never given me reason to fear him, but it was obvious he was teetering on the edge.

“You’re not seeing anyone else?” His hands curled possessively around my hips, and in spite of my concern, a pulse of heat shot straight to my core. “Tell me you’re not.”

“I’m not, but—”

He silenced me with a hot, demanding kiss while thrusting his hands in my hair to hold my head immobile. My hands were pressed against his chest, but I couldn’t find the strength to push him away. It had been too long since I’d kissed him, since I’d felt his arms around me like this. I’d been dreaming about him, fantasizing about him for months. Now he was here, and I couldn’t bear to push him away.

“What happened?” I asked finally, after stealing a much-needed breath.

He was kissing my neck, making me forget all the reasons this was a bad idea, as he hoisted me up on the edge of the chair. Of their own volition, my legs and arms wrapped around him. His tongue trailed down my neck while he slid the shirt’s thin straps over my shoulders.

“Answer me,” I said.

“My old man came to see me tonight.”

His hands were distracting me, kneading my breasts, so at first I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “Your father came to see you?” He hadn’t seen his father in more than twenty years. I’d never even met the man, though I knew how much Brody hated him. “When? Where?”

“I was in Vegas. I had an event. He showed up after it was over. It was televised—thank God he didn’t show up while the cameras were there.”

I’d never seen him so shaken. His muscular body was practically vibrating.

“Listen to me,” I said, curling my hands around his face, trying to get his attention. “Sex isn’t the answer. If you want to talk about what happened tonight, about what you’re feeling, I’m here to listen. But I told you before, I’m not going to be your booty call anymore. I deserve better than that.” My body was screaming at me that I was a traitor, that I was denying my desires. I needed this. I needed him, but not as much as I valued my self-respect.

“This isn’t about him,” he said, looking stunned that I could even suggest such a thing. “I’m here because I love you. Because I’ve been going crazy without you.”

I love you.
Those words reverberated through my head. It had been so long since I’d heard him say that. I hadn’t realized how much I missed hearing it, how much I craved it… until now.

“You’re not thinking clearly. You—”

“Listen to me,” he whispered fiercely, wrapping his hands around my face, “the only goddamn thing that makes sense in my screwed-up life is the way I feel about you.”

My heart was pounding even harder now than it had been when he knocked at the door. Was he saying he wanted me back? Would I be a fool to believe that this time would be any different than all the others?

“You,” he said, resting his forehead against mine, “are my world. You have been since the second I laid eyes on you in that stupid algebra class we both hated.”

I smiled while my hands slipped to his shoulders. The only good thing that came of that class was meeting Brody.

“Everything makes sense when I’m with you, Ri. Without you, I don’t even know who the hell I am anymore. I don’t know where I belong.”

I wrapped my arms around him, my heart hurting for both of us. I knew seeing his father again after so many years couldn’t have been easy for him, and if he could find some small measure of comfort in my arms, I wanted to help him.

He kissed me gently, deepening the kiss only when I didn’t push him away. “Please, don’t send me away. Not now. Not tonight.”

I hated to think about what tomorrow would bring. He would likely be back out on the road in a day or two, picking up where he left off while I was left to pick up the pieces. Again.

“I told you I can’t do this again,” I said, burying my face in his neck when he pulled me close. I drank in the familiar scent of him, tears stinging my eyes as I reveled in the rightness of being wrapped in his strong arms. “It’s taken me so long to try to get over you.”

“You’re not over me,” he whispered, holding the back of my head as he pressed a kiss to my temple. “You’ll never be over me, just like I’ll never be over you.”

Was he right? I didn’t want to believe it, but I’d been trying to deny it for so long, and my heart still hurt as much today as it had when I’d broken up with him almost three years ago.

“I won’t make you regret it this time, Ri. I promise you.”

“Don’t.” I shook my head, feeling helpless and hopeless and confused. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Not again.”

“Look at me.” He gripped my chin, forcing me to look at him. “Can’t you see what this has been doing to me, trying to live without you? Those days we spent together in Colorado just proved to me how much I need you.”

“If that’s true, why haven’t you reached out to me? You let me believe that you were over me, over us.”

“Never.” He kissed me hard and fast, taking my breath away. “I didn’t call because I didn’t think you wanted me to. I didn’t know if you were still with him, or if you’d accepted his proposal.”

“Why didn’t you ask Jaci or Nex? They could have told you.”

“I was afraid.”

Hearing Brody admit he was afraid of something, anything, was shocking.

“I knew if I found out you’d agreed to marry him, it would just send me deeper into this spiral of depression.”

That word, depression, scared me. I knew the impact it could have on people’s lives. “What are you talking about?”

“Ever since we broke up, I’ve been…” His shoulders shook as he took several deep, soundless breaths. “In a really bad place. I wanted you back so badly, I just didn’t know how to reach you. I didn’t know if I could be the man you needed, and I knew it wasn’t fair to come back to you unless I was.”

I knew he was being sincere. His torment was painfully obvious, especially to someone who knew him as well as I did. “You could have tried to talk to me.”

“Would you have listened?”

I lowered my head, unable to answer him. If he’d shown up at my door before, there was a very real possibility I would have sent him away out of self-preservation. “I don’t know.”

“That’s my point.” He slipped his hand under my hair, his palm resting against my jaw as his eyes held mine. “When we were just sleeping together, I knew it wasn’t what you wanted. It wasn’t enough for you. But I felt like at least I could breathe when you were sleeping in my arms. When I was kissing you, making love to you…” He closed his eyes. “It was the only time I felt alive.”

I’d wanted to hear him say these things then. Not now. Now it was too late. Wasn’t it?

“When you ended it, when you told me there was someone else, a part of me died.” When I shook my head, he said, “I’m serious. A part of me died. I feel like I can’t get it back. I can’t find the guy I used to be. Nothing makes me happy anymore.”

“Not even poker?”

“No.”

I never thought I’d hear those words pass his lips. Poker had always been his reason for waking up. Being the best in the world was the only thing that had been on his radar for years.

“I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t know what I can do to help you.” Before he could respond, I curled my hands around his biceps, pleading with him to understand where I was coming from, what this was doing to me. “I have to protect myself, Brody. You think it’s been easy for me, trying to get over you? It hasn’t. It’s been hell.”

“And doesn’t that tell you something? The fact that you can’t get over me, that I can’t get over you. Doesn’t that tell you that maybe we shouldn’t be apart at all?”

“You’re just here because you had nowhere else to go.” It was harsh, but it was also the truth. “You couldn’t show up on your brothers’ doorsteps and drop a bombshell like this in the middle of the night. So you came here, to me, just like you always do when you need a shoulder to cry on.”

Not that he’d ever literally cried on my shoulder, except when his mother died. But I’d always been his go-to person when he couldn’t talk to his family about something. I was his security blanket, and I didn’t want to be that anymore. Not when that was all I could ever be to him.

“I’m here because there’s nowhere else I wanted to be. There’s no one else I wanted to be with. I paced my hotel room after I saw him. Drinking, swearing, seething. I wanted to knock his door down and beat the shit out of him for walking back into my life like he had the right.”

Sadly, I could imagine Brody doing just that. Especially in his current state. “I’m glad you didn’t do that. You know it would have been a mistake.” I didn’t know anything about his father’s life now or why he’d decided to pay his son a visit, but I knew they couldn’t address their ugly past with more ugliness.

“Yeah, I knew that because I heard your voice telling me it would be. I knew if I acted on impulse, it could eventually get back to you and you’d be disappointed in me. That’s why I didn’t do it.”

I was touched that my opinion still mattered so much to him. “Why don’t I fix us something to drink, and you can tell me about what happened tonight?” He looked longingly at my peaked nipples as I rolled my eyes, shoving against his shoulder so I could slip past him. “Keep right on dreaming, ‘cause that’s not gonna happen.”

I would never tell him how close I’d been to letting that happen. Fortunately, before I’d been able to forget myself, I remembered all the reasons we broke up in the first place.

“Does that mean you’re not going to send me packing tonight?”

“You can stay.” Before he could get any ideas, I added, “In the guest bedroom.”

He sighed, following me into the kitchen. “I guess I can’t complain. I do appreciate you listening, Ri. I could use some advice.”

I set about making two mugs of hot chocolate. Though he teased me about drinking it, I was addicted. Regardless of the temperature, I always ended my day with a hot chocolate with whipped cream. “So tell me what happened with your dad. Why did he come to see you?”

He was leaning over the counter less than a foot away from me, one elbow resting on the smooth, dark surface. “He thought I’d want to know that I have two half-brothers. Can you believe that?”

My hand curled around the flavored pod as I stared at him, trying to imagine what he must be thinking and feeling. I knew how close he and his brothers were. To know that he had two more that he’d never even met…

“Wow,” I said finally. “How old are they?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“I don’t believe that.” Tearing my eyes away from him, I finished my task before going to the fridge for the whipped cream.

“You sure you want to waste that on hot chocolate?” he asked, his eyes trailing up and down my body. “I can think of a lot more fun ways to use it.”

Oh God. It wouldn’t be the first time Brody had used my body as his own personal tasting board. Melted chocolate. Whipped cream. Whisky. He’d poured, drizzled, and sprayed so many concoctions over my body, I was getting short of breath just remembering them. And judging by that wicked look in his intense blue eyes, that had been his intent.