It was exactly the same. Only… worse.
It was more.
That crazy, irresistible pull I’d felt around him back then had only grown stronger.
His eyes darkened as his pupils dilated… and I knew he felt it, too. Then his gaze dropped to my lips. He breathed in, his nostrils flaring. His jaw clenched.
Then he turned and walked away. With my bags.
Oh my God.
I just stood there, watching him go, the air between us stretching thinner and thinner the farther he got, until I couldn’t breathe. At all.
I allowed myself two-point-five seconds to freak out. Then I forced some air, shuddering, into my lungs.
Then I went after him.
I caught up only when he stopped to toss my things in the back of a black Escalade parked at the curb, hazard lights flashing. I stood there, awkwardly, waiting for him to turn around, every part of me throbbing with the force of my heartbeat; my lungs as I fought to breathe, my brain as I fought to think, my clit.
My knees were shaking.
No man had ever made my knees shake before.
Well, no other man.
This was not how my body had ever reacted to other men.
And yes, I was aware that deep, deep down, there was still some part of me—maybe larger than I’d like to admit—that was still that skinny, dorky, lonely girl who’d been bullied on the playground. But making my living as a model over the past decade meant I’d grown a thick skin. Very thick. I’d also learned that no matter how I felt inside, the world did not see me as that skinny, dorky girl; that men, in general, found me beautiful. Way more beautiful than I’d ever felt. I still had a hard time reckoning me with those pictures of model-me in designer lingerie, my long brown hair highlighted with caramel and honey, my eyebrows perfectly shaped, my cheekbones and chin all somehow grown in to balance what I’d feared would always be an awkward nose, my full lips and long limbs somehow all working together to create an image that was something far and away from that girl inside. Even so, I’d learned how to carry myself with confidence, how to compete, perform, win and even lose with grace. I’d learned how to keep my cool under intense scrutiny, and mercifully, how to handle rejection. Because the world I lived in, even for beautiful girls, was rife with rejection.
What I’d never learned how to do, apparently, was look Brody Mason in his deep blue eyes and not lose my shit.
Lucky for me, he barely spared me a glance as he slammed the back of the truck shut. “Get in,” he said, disappearing around the driver’s side.
I walked up to the passenger side door as he got in the truck. Then I stood there, in the misting rain, still kind of in shock, just trying to get a handle on all the reactions set off by his sudden presence.
Because how could I still react to him like this? After all this time?
It was like no time had passed at all.
Worse; I knew exactly how long it had been, and according to my body, I had six-and-a-half years without him to make up for. Preferably immediately, nakedly, and repeatedly.
I took a deep breath, fumbled with the door handle and opened the door. “Thank you for the ride,” I managed.
He didn’t smile. He just swiped a hand through his damp hair and stared me down with those intense blue eyes. I started to register how much older he looked than the last time I’d seen him, though his eyes hadn’t changed. Time had been good to him. Very good.
Six-and-a-half years.
It hit me like a kick in the gut, all at once.
It wasn’t something I’d ever allowed myself to fully process: the agony of missing him, of wishing things had gone differently for us. If I did, I’d probably curl up and die, right on the spot. Because how could I live with it?
Now that he was here, though, right in front of me… all my carefully constructed walls, the armor I’d built up over the years against my true feelings, against him, cracked open, and everything came surging into the light. Every moment between us. Every breath I’d taken on this Earth since Brody Mason sauntered into my life.
And it was in those deep blue eyes, that he remembered, too.
He remembered everything.
“Get in,” he repeated, and started up the truck.
I got in.
As we pulled out into traffic he was silent, and I tried to think of something to say to fill the void. It was the perfect time, really, to tell him. The perfect opportunity to explain why I’d left, all those years ago.
I could tell him everything. Just come clean, like I’d told myself I should do… could do. Might do, while I was in town for my brother’s wedding.
Instead, I stared at his handsome profile, afraid to speak. The arch of his brow, his high cheekbone. The strong line of his nose. His square jaw, clean-shaven but slightly shadowed. His stylishly unkempt brown hair. The battered leather of his jacket.
I hadn’t laid eyes on him in years. Not until my brother’s well-meaning fiancée started texting me photos of her and Jesse, and Brody happened to be in some of them. I should’ve deleted those photos, but I didn’t. Instead, I’d gazed at them a thousand times. And now he was here.
So close to me.
I watched his throat move as he swallowed. I watched his knuckles turn white on the steering wheel as the wiper blades beat an angry rhythm against the rain.
I stared at the familiar tattoo on the back of his right hand, a mess of entangled vines that wound around his thumb and wrist and belonged to a small, black rose on his palm. So familiar, like we’d never been apart. How many times had I traced the pattern of those vines with my
