“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 that back, like, in forever.
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.