He grunted derisively. “We can’t just go from being strangers to best friends, princess. Doesn’t fucking work that way.”
Princess.
He used to call me that, when we were young. It wasn’t a derogatory term, the way he said it now.
I looked out the window and sniffled a bit. It was the rain making me sniffly. It wasn’t his words that were making my eyes itch and blink, my stomach twist itself in knots.
When had Brody become such an asshole?
Right… Probably around the time I “disappeared.”
I knew that. I knew this was my fault. That I’d treated him badly.
No, not badly. Badly was when you forgot to tip a really decent waiter. Badly was cutting someone off in traffic.
I’d treated Brody horribly.
Horrendously.
I took a breath and looked at him again, watching him pocket his keys and generally ignore me.
“We are not strangers,” I said softly. “We never have been.”
He looked at me briefly. “I don’t know you,” he said, and my heart crushed in on itself.
“If you don’t know me now,” I told him, trying to keep my voice from wavering, “you never did.”
“You’re right. I didn’t.” He started to open his door.
I reached to stop him, catching his leather sleeve, and he stiffened like I had the fucking plague. Those ice-cold eyes locked on mine.
I shrank back in my seat, letting him go. “You don’t need to do this, you know. I can just take a cab to the ferry.”
He slammed the door shut and swore under his breath, an angry muscle ticking in his jaw.
“Let me tell you what I know,” he said, turning to me, his elbow on the steering wheel so his broad shoulders seemed to take up all the space in the cab. “What I know is exactly how fast and how far you can run. What I know for fucking sure is exactly what it does to the people you leave behind when you do, and I am not spending this weekend scraping together a trail of shit when you ruin Jesse’s wedding. So if you wanna hate me for it go ahead and hate me, but if you think you’re going to the ferry, you’ve got another fucking thing coming. You’re doing this my way and that’s all the fuck there is to it.”
Holy shit.
Not only had Brody become much more of an asshole than I remembered… he was kind of scary when he was pissed off. Colder than he used to be; harder. Bigger, too. A lot more muscular; I could tell, even with the leather jacket.
“Unless you want me to arrange to get your ass on a plane out of here right now,” he went on, leaning his big, muscular, pissed-off self into my space, “and we pretend you never landed. Because if anyone finds out you showed your ass in town and then you turned tail and took off, sweetheart, I am not gonna be the one telling Jesse to back off and give you space. You hear me on this? I’m fucking done with covering for you and making excuses for you and waiting for you to get a clue. Your brother loves you and the least you can do is show your face at his motherfucking wedding.”
My gaze dropped away from the accusation in those cold eyes. I studied the muscle ticking in his jaw, the veins standing out on his neck, and realized I’d been wrong. He wasn’t pissed.
He was seething.
And no, this was definitely not going as badly as I feared it might. It was much, much worse.
I felt the burn at the back of my throat, the stinging behind my eyes, but I took a deep, shuddering breath, willing myself not to do this… not to fall apart. Not in front of him. But shit. I totally felt like a teenager.
Maybe because the last time I’d been this close to Brody, I was one.
His hand went to my hip and I heard the click as he released my seatbelt, felt the straps slide over me as he reached across me…. his nose almost bumping mine as he pulled the latch on my door, opening it.
“Get out,” he said.
I didn’t move. Instead, I bit my lip.
I didn’t realize I’d done it until his gaze dropped to my lips, then flicked back up to my eyes. His eyes darkened and a slow, aching minute passed between us.
If he was any other man, I might’ve thought he was turned on.
As it was… he looked kind of disgusted.
The rain pattered down on the truck, encasing us inside, and yeah; it was just like I was eighteen and he was twenty-three all over again, sitting in his truck in the rain—except that day, he wasn’t telling me to leave. He was asking—no, begging me to stay.
But back then, Brody didn’t hate me.
Now…?
I couldn’t blame him for being mad at me. I’d expected things to be difficult between us. I did not expect this.
I did not expect hate.
But it was definitely hatred I saw in his eyes. Pure, ice-cold loathing, with a hefty side of revulsion and resentment.
And Brody Mason hating me? No amount of preparation could’ve helped me with this. Even if I’d told him everything I thought I might tell him, my harrowing confession… I didn’t think he’d hate me. I thought he’d like me less, and that was bad enough—bad enough to keep me gone for six-and-a-half years. I couldn’t even imagine how hard it would be to come crashing down off the pedestal he’d put me on so many years ago… but I knew it wouldn’t feel good. I knew it would be painful.
But this? This was pure hell.
“Are you getting out,” he asked in that stone-cold voice, “or do I have to drag you out?”
Um… no.
That would not be necessary.
Mostly because the thought of him putting his hands on me right now, in any way, was making my clit throb, because apparently, pissed off Brody turned me on about as much as he scared me. Because I
