“Um, I just—I had somewhere I needed to be.” His eyes barely held Aiden’s for more than a few seconds before darting over to me, and over to where Aiden’s hand rested on my shoulder. He blinked a couple times and seemed to clear whatever he’d been thinking about. “What are the two of you up to?”
I couldn’t respond to him even if I’d wanted to tell him what I was doing here with Aiden. My mouth had gone dry, and I had to keep my hands clasped so I wouldn’t reach out toward him. I had a soul-deep yearning to be closer to him, and I knew the second I stepped into his arms I would feel like I was exactly where I was meant to be again. I’d been craving that feeling ever since we’d separated in Kinlee’s entryway, and being this close to him for the second time since then was making it practically impossible to stay away.
“We grabbed some dinner, and now we’re going over to get coffee before I take her home.”
Which means date. Brody knows I’m on a date with Aiden. Obviously, as if seeing us out like this wasn’t enough of a hint. But I hated that he knew, and I hated that I hated that. Brody’s eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second as he stared at Aiden, and his forehead tightened when his eyes met mine again. I would have given anything to know what he was thinking about in that moment. Because I needed him to crush the hope I had that he didn’t look happy about the fact that I was standing here with Aiden’s arm around me. I knew he couldn’t care, but I was making myself believe that he did. And that wasn’t going to help in getting me to stop thinking about him.
“Well, uh, I’ll let you get back to that. It was good seeing you again, KC. Aiden,” he grunted by way of closing the conversation. And with one last look from Aiden to me, he took off toward a dark Expedition parked at the sidewalk.
My body automatically took a step in the same direction, but Aiden started walking us toward the coffee shop again. I exhaled roughly when the sense of loss hit me.
It’s official. There’s something wrong with me. These are not normal feelings to have for someone I don’t even know. It’s not normal to crave and obsess over a man I’ve only had a five-minute conversation with. Aiden removed his arm when we got to the door of the shop, and I turned to look at the dark SUV just sitting there. The need to catch another glimpse of him, or at least hear his voice again, was so strong that I could feel this energy working its way from my chest to my arms, as if calling me to him.
“KC?”
“Huh?” My head snapped back to look at Aiden and his patient smile. I tried to feel something, anything, for the man standing in front of me. But there was nothing. My entire body was now buzzing, and somehow I knew Brody’s eyes were on me, and that knowledge sent a welcome shiver up my spine.
Aiden’s smile faltered when he noticed how distracted I was. “Did you still want coffee or did you want me to take you home now?”
“Of course, I do,” I assured him. “Let’s go in.”
When I stole a glance at the street, the Expedition was gone.
Brody
May 13, 2015
WHAT ARE YOU doing? What the fuck are you doing? I tapped my thumbs on the steering wheel of the Expedition and looked out the windshield toward the shop. It was early Monday morning, it had been two days that felt like a damn week since I’d seen her, and I felt like I was going crazy.
Casey—or KC, as I’d found out—had consumed my every thought over the last week, waking and sleeping. I knew I should forget about her and the weird moments we shared, but I couldn’t. And now here I was sitting in front of her bakery. I’d reminded myself thousands of times over the last week that I was married, that I couldn’t think of her the way I had been . . . but then I saw her on Thursday, and again on Saturday, and Saturday was what broke me. I wanted to rip Aiden’s arm off her. An unwelcome amount of jealousy and pain surged through me when I saw them walking together, and I knew then that my attempts to forget about her were futile.
The fact that it pained me at all to see her with someone else irritated me to no end as I went over everything a dozen times yesterday. But as the day wore on, I realized that what I felt for KC, as strange as it might be, was something I’d never known and something I knew I’d never experience again.
I was prepared to live with that knowledge and never act on it. I don’t know if it was the fact that Tate would have been five last week, or that Olivia came home trashed from her parents’ last night telling me that because I only make fifty thousand a year I’m a worthless piece of shit she keeps around for laughs, but I decided then that I couldn’t keep living my miserable life when there was a woman who made me feel more alive than I had in the last five years with just one look. And before I knew what I was doing, I found myself in front of her store this morning.
I shifted down in my seat as my sister-in-law came bouncing out of the bakery and over to the shop she owned with her mom, unlocked the door, and went inside. My eyes shot back over to the bakery, and even though I knew I shouldn’t, there was no talking myself out of what I was about to do.
A little bell chimed overhead when the door to the bakery opened and shut, and I heard her voice from the back of the shop. Her accent wasn’t as heavy as I remembered it, but God the sound still pinned me to the floor. “What’d you forget, Lee?”
“Uh . . . not Kinlee,” a thin guy standing behind the pastry case called out before eyeing me curiously.
KC came through a swinging door with a black apron on, covered with smudges of what I assumed was flour and cake batter. Her dark hair was pulled back, and a few loose strands had fallen in her face. She looked more incredible every time I saw her.
“Brody,” she whispered and set down a tray of cookies and puffs.
That was the first time I’d heard her say my name, and a million different things flashed through my mind. I wanted her to say it again, I wanted to hear her moan it as I had her body underneath mine, and I wanted to have her whisper it in the dark as we got to know each other on every other level, not just the intimate one.
“Well, hello, Brody,” the guy said, and KC made a face before waving him toward the door she’d just come through.
“I have
this, Andy.”
Andy and KC seemed to have a short, silent conversation before Andy rolled his eyes and walked to the back. KC stared at the swinging door for a second before turning around. Her body was facing me, but her eyes darted around the bakery—looking anywhere but at me.
I didn’t know how to start this conversation. I hadn’t planned this out. I’d just known I needed to talk to her about what was happening between us. I needed confirmation that I wasn’t the only one who was slowly going insane over this—this—whatever this was. “I need to know what this is,” I finally blurted out.
No “Hi,” no “How are you.” I just went past all the small talk . . . went past everything a normal man and woman would talk about . . . and threw out the issue I’d probably been deluding myself into thinking both of us had been plagued by the past week.