“Maybe not, but you’re sure as hell penalizing me for it,” he replies. “It sounds to me like you’ve been punishing yourself for it, too, for the past two years.”
“You don’t know me,” I remind him in a deflated whisper.
“And you don’t know me, as you so eloquently stated earlier,” he says, matching my quietness as though afraid of scaring away a skittish animal. “That doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.”
Chapter Six
Brody
I’d been thinking constantly about the way Corinne flinched under my touch since I saw her two days ago. Getting a random call from her colleague at the law office didn’t help. And it had taken me two days to work up the nerve to
actually call her, only to find out she hadn’t actually coerced her friend into giving me her cell number at all.
That realization is a bit of a blow to my ego—Corinne hadn’t wanted me to call her; at least, she’d never admitted it out loud—but the way she’s stammering and using every defense mechanism in the book tells me more than her words ever could.
There’s a part of Corinne that is interested in me. I could see it a few days ago at the office when our hands touched, and I can hear it now in her voice as she halfheartedly denies it.
Now, if she would just get out of her own way, she might realize it, too.
“Fine,” she says defeatedly into the phone. “We can talk for a little bit. Get to know each other.”
Success. “Good, but—”
“But there are topics we don’t bring up, got it?” she adds, cutting me off. “We don’t discuss your brother. At all.”
“We don’t discuss my dickhead brother,” I nod, a smirk playing on my lips as I recline my chair back in front of the fireplace in my living room, swirling the scotch around in my glass. “We also don’t discuss Charlotte. All else is fair game.”
“Sounds fair enough.” A deep sigh is heard through to the phone. “So, where do we begin? This was your idea.”
“By choosing a place and time to meet up,” I say simply. “That’s why I called, Corinne. To ask you if you wanted to get a coffee or something.”
“Or something,” she repeats warily. “I thought you meant we were going to talk right now. On the phone.”
“I prefer to see your pretty face in front of me,” I say, grinning. “Besides, it gets me out of the house, which is kind of nice.”
“You want to go for coffee.” She doesn’t sound sure of this idea at all.
“It’s coffee, Corinne,” I inform her. “Not picking out His and Hers monogrammed towels. Tomorrow, maybe? I have a practice at eleven-thirty, but I could meet up with you afterward. I’m sure my mom wouldn’t have a problem staying with Spencer for an extra hour or two. You could meet me at the arena, if you want.”
She’s silent on the other end of the line, and I’m convinced she’s going to turn me down. “Coffee. Tomorrow. Meeting up at the arena.”
“Say, one o’clock?”
If I’m not mistaken, she’s trying to stifle the frustrated groan that is managing to escape her mouth anyway, but she offers a begrudging “Fine,” which I think surprises us both. “But on one condition, Brody.”
“What’s that, Corinne?”
She pauses. “Don’t make me regret this.”
“Oh, Corinne,” I reply mischievously. “Quite the contrary. I’m going to make you like this.”
***
I end the call shortly after she agrees to see me, mostly because I meant what I said—I want to see her face to face, and I’m really not much of a phone person. With Spencer sleeping in the next room, though, it was the only way I was going to get the chance to talk to her tonight.
And something told me I had to talk to her tonight. No more waiting. I’d almost dialed her number numerous times, and now that I had finally done it and she was going to meet me tomorrow afternoon, somehow, I feel a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
Which is a nice feeling. I could use a little less stress, even just for tonight.