A million, at least.
That tattoo, just one of the many things about Brody—the many small details that made him him—that I’d tried to forget over the years. But I hadn’t forgotten. I knew I hadn’t. And despite all my preparation for this moment, I wasn’t prepared at all.
I wasn’t ready.
Would I ever really have been ready for this?
Maybe I was totally kidding myself to think I’d ever be able to face him, those blue eyes staring me down, and come clean.
Maybe I’d just always be dirty and there was nothing I could do about it.
I looked out the window. “It’s raining,” I said. Yeah. Brilliant. But since I was a total chickenshit, I was going with it.
“Seven years,” he said. I looked over at him, but he didn’t look at me. “Seven fucking years, and all the times I’ve tried to talk to you and you shut me out, and now that’s all you’ve got to say? It’s fucking raining? It’s January. It’s Vancouver. Where you were fucking born. So yes, it’s raining, like it always does in January. What the fuck else do you want me to say about it?”
Okay…
So much for my Canadians-love-talking-about-the-weather theory.
I was judging by the number of F-bombs in that little tirade that he was pissed. At me.
Not that I hadn’t expected him to be a little mad. Among other things.
But the fact that he obviously was mad just proved that he still cared, right?
“Six-and-a-half years,” I said.
“What?”
“It’s been… six-and-a-half years,” I repeated, my voice fading, “since we… saw each other.”
He said nothing.
It’s just because he cares, I told myself. And he probably won’t be the only one who gives you attitude this weekend, so get used to it.
But I couldn’t get used to it. I had no experience with mature, pissed-off Brody. I’d barely been able to deal with the Brody I used to know. Young, wild, too gorgeous for common sense and angry at the world.
At all the world… except me.
We took a turn to the right, continuing back into the airport, and I struggled to get my bearings; it had been years since I’d been here, but this was definitely not the way to the ferry terminal.
“Where are we going?”
“To your brother’s wedding.”
“But… I’m supposed to meet Roni at the ferry.”
He shot me a look that could only be described as scathing. Come to think of it, it was the first time he’d looked at me since I got in the truck. “And I’m supposed to trust you not to skip out on the dinner tonight, or the wedding tomorrow? You’re already missing the rehearsal.”
Oh.
Jesus.
That’s what this was about?
He didn’t pick me up at the airport because he wanted to see me?
I studied his angry profile and it all became so clear.
No. He didn’t want to see me.
He’d only come to get me because my brother, the big rock star, had asked him to drive out here in the rain and deal with me. Brody was one of my brother’s best friends, so why not? Worse; Brody managed my brother’s mega-successful rock band, Dirty, so this was probably some sort of business deal. Like somewhere in his contract, my brother had snuck in a clause that it was Brody’s responsibility to deal with all the most tedious bullshit in his life, up to and including escorting his little sister to his wedding so she wouldn’t bail.
Definitely something my brother would do.
Well, if they had a contract. In their many years of working together, Brody and the band had never had a written contract between them. Because that’s just the kind of friends they were. A verbal deal, then.
You deal with Jessa. I’ll owe you one later.
“It’s really none of your business,” I told him, “if I go to my brother’s wedding or not.” And it wasn’t. Brody wasn’t my manager—much as he’d wanted to be, back when I was writing music with the band… but that was neither here nor there. He wasn’t the boss of me either, any more than my brother was.
Yeah, try telling either of them that.
Whatever. This was ridiculous. Offensive, actually, that they both seemed to think I needed some kind of chaperone for this event. That they were treating me like I was still a fucking teenager.
Yes, I’d screwed up six-and-a-half years ago—and okay, every day since then—but today was a new day, right?
“Jesse is my business,” Brody ground out. “Literally. If you skip out on his wedding or any of the other romantic bullshit Katie has planned for the next forty-eight hours, that shit will not fly.”
We made a sharp turn into the small parking area in front of the Flying Beaver, a little restaurant and bar on the water where the floatplanes docked, and panic started to rise. This whole thing was spinning way, way out of control. Because apparently I was about to be trapped in a very small plane with a very pissed off Brody for the next couple of hours, and he didn’t even want to be here.
“I told Jesse I’d take the ferry to the island. He was going to have a car meet me—”
“Yeah, well, you’re late.” He parked us at the curb and cut the engine, popping off his seatbelt.
“I was at a shoot, Brody. It ran late. I couldn’t just bail in the middle of—”
“Do not say my name.”
I blinked at him.
What?
“Go ahead and say and do whatever the fuck you’re gonna do,” he said, “but you do not get to say my name.” When I just gaped at him, he turned to me and leaned in, so close I could see the silvery-gray flecks around his pupils, and said in a low voice, “You wanted it, I’m giving it to you. Exactly what you’ve been asking for the last six-and-a-half years with a whole fuckload of silence. Consider me dead to you.”
I stared at him, speechless. At the lines of repressed rage on his handsome face; the coldness in those dark blue eyes.
“You’re… you’re angry with me,”
