“Are you interested in that, too?”
When her teeth scrape against her plush lower lip, a groan escapes from me and I drag her closer until my mouth can settle on hers. It only takes one sweep of my tongue across the seam of her lips before she’s opening. The kiss itself is fleeting. There and gone before I can fully sink into it.
It’s a struggle not to take more and consume every drop of her.
To demand everything.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes cloud as she searches my gaze. “It wasn’t all that long ago you could barely tolerate my presence. Suddenly that’s changed, and I still don’t understand the reason for it.”
It's so tempting to come clean, but I know if I told her the truth, she’d hate me even more for pretending to be someone I’m not. She’d realize that I encouraged her to share personal pieces of herself that she never would have revealed otherwise.
“Brooke—”
She cuts me off. “Last night you claimed to have wanted to kiss me for a while. Is that true?” Again, her gaze searches mine. “Or was it just a line you fed me in an attempt to get into my pants?”
I wince as her tone turns steely and can’t blame her for being skeptical of my motives.
“It wasn’t a lie. I meant every word.”
When I lapse into silence, she raises her brows, urging me to continue.
Even though it’s a risk, I give her a small piece of the truth. “I wanted to kiss you the entire time you were with Andrew.”
She stills before slowly shaking her head. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. It’s the truth.”
“But you’ve always been such an asshole.” She swallows thickly, and the delicate muscles in her throat constrict. “Right from the beginning, before you ever had a chance to get to know me. I never understood what I did to warrant such hatred.”
“You didn’t do a damn thing,” I say gruffly. Revealing the truth is so much harder than I thought it would be. The pain that flickers across her face is like a dagger through my heart. Maybe I don’t deserve her forgiveness. “It was just easier to keep my distance if you hated me.”
Air hisses from her lungs. “Are you being serious?”
Unfortunately, I am.
23
BROOKE
No…that’s just not possible.
There’s no way I heard him correctly.
I shake my head to clear the growing buzzing sound before squeezing my eyes tightly closed to find my bearings.
It takes a few moments before I’m finally able to wrap my lips around the words. “So let me get this straight,” I whisper, “you treated me like shit because you actually…liked me?” Disbelief threads its way through my voice.
When he doesn’t immediately answer my forced-out question, I open my eyes, only to find him staring with a stricken expression. The silver metal of his lip ring glints in the early morning sunlight, momentarily distracting me from our conversation.
“Yeah,” he finally mutters, “that would be the gist of it.”
Heat burns the backs of my eyelids as my mind tumbles over the last eighteen months and all the nasty swipes he took. There were so many times when I was left reeling, feeling like shit, or humiliated in front of our friends and his teammates.
I’ve wracked my brain, trying to figure out what I’d done to deserve his treatment. And now I find out that it’s because he had feelings?
Not in a million years would I have suspected that reason.
I blink out of those thoughts when he gently sweeps his thumb across the fragile skin beneath my eye. I don’t realize tears are leaking until the blunt pad comes away with wetness.
“I know there’s nothing I can say or do to take away the pain I’ve caused,” he whispers before pulling me closer and kissing away the moisture that continues to trek down my cheeks. “I was a prick, and my behavior was immature. I tried to protect myself at your expense, and it was wrong.”
“I just…” I shake my head, unsure how to respond.
Sorrow fills his eyes as he nods. “I get it and don’t blame you for wanting to be cautious. I haven’t given you any reason to trust me.” His gaze burns brightly into mine. “But I will.”
What I hate more than anything is the tiny kernel deep inside that desperately wants to believe his motives are sincere.
And I hate that. I wish I could stomp it out.
Life would be so much easier if his apology had no effect on me. If I could tell him to take his stupid explanation and shove it right up his ass before slamming out of the car and stalking away. But the words refuse to be summoned. My body remains frozen in place. I can only stare, searching his dark eyes for the truth as morning sunlight pours over us.
My mind tumbles over all our previous interactions. Even when Crosby was being an asshole, there was always something brewing beneath the surface. A combustible energy that threatened to explode.