Chapter 3 Brooks
Brooks
Three Months Ago
This was a mistake.
I knew it from the second I pulled out of the driveway, when I rolled through not one, but two stop signs during the fifteen-minute drive over to the bar, and then again when I parked across the street and just sat there, staring through the windshield like some creep with poor judgment and even worse impulse control.
That was what Dani Bernal did to me.
I hadn’t heard from her in nearly a month, not since my pathetic attempt at sparking conversation about Anne Hathaway movies, like some high-school boy. She had no idea how many times I had drafted a text to her over the past few weeks, all of which I had promptly deleted.
Type, pause, insert emoji, rethink emoji, backspace, backspace, backspace.
Every fucking time.
But when she texted me? The second her name lit up my phone, all reasoning went out the window.
One minute, I was watching Below Deck: Mediterranean—my latest guilty pleasure, “brain rot” show—and eating vegan chicken tenders, and the next, I was speeding down the hill.
All because she texted.
It was official: I had it bad. For a woman twelve years younger than I was, no less.
Fuck, maybe I am a creep.
There was no other way to explain loitering outside the only bar in Rose City on New Year’s Eve—my least favorite holiday—like a fucking idiot, freezing my fucking balls off, all because I hadn’t thought things through long enough to grab a real fucking coat.
I should’ve waited in the fucking car.
But when the door to the bar opened and I saw her, my entire body went up in flames. She stared at me like she had seen a ghost. Gorgeous green eyes blinking rapidly, pouty lips agape. Blood rushed straight to my cock when I remembered the delicious things she could do with those lips.
Cheers and music filtered through the bar windows. “Sounds like one hell of a party.”
She straightened. “What are you doing here?”
“You texted me.”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t think you would just—”
She waved her arms wildly, gesturing toward my body. I bit back a smile when she zeroed in on my crotch.
“And yet, here I am,” I said, stepping closer to her.
She looked good. Too good.
Her jet-black hair had grown out since we had last seen each other, enough for the teal-colored ends to tickle the roses inked on her neck, just below her ear.
Dani changed her hair more often than most people changed their bedsheets, which honestly said more about the general population’s lack of hygiene, but that wasn’t the point.
The woman was allergic to blending in. It was impossible not to notice her.
I rubbed the back of my neck, trying—and failing—not to focus on her perfect tits pressing against the fabric of her top. There was no way she was wearing a bra. Talk about freeing the fucking nipple.
And that skirt. Goddamn. That thing should be illegal.
It rode up high enough to show off every inch of her shapely, tattooed thighs—the same thighs I had spent endless hours buried between—and clung to her hips like it had been painted on.
But underneath it all—the makeup, the boots, the armor—she was still my Dani.
Only she wasn’t mine, never had been.
I willed myself to drag my eyes back up her body before I did something stupid. Like press her against the nearest wall and make her forget every second we’d spent apart. There was a chance I still might.
“To be fair, I didn’t expect you to actually read it.” Her eyes lit up with amusement and, dare I say, a hint of mischief when she took in my disheveled appearance. “Wait, were you in bed when I texted?”
I paused. “No.”
“You were, weren’t you?”
“No.”
“Probably watching one of those trash shows you love, like Real Housewives of New York.”
It was a little unsettling how well she knew me. Our relationship, if you could even call it that, had only lasted a few months, and most of that time had been spent fucking our way through every room of my house—plus a few in hers, too.
But somewhere between all those hours of mind-blowing sex, Dani and I had shared more than just bodies.
She knew I had a soft spot for “trashy” reality shows, mainly because they made my own life feel less chaotic, and I knew about her thing for quirky, colorful socks.
To be fair, I also had a thing for her in quirky, colorful socks.
I had jerked off—more than once—to visions of her in a pair of black and purple striped thigh-highs and nothing else.
We had done our best to avoid talking about anything more personal than that, though she never failed to ask about Carolina, even now.
Still, I couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling that there was something darker, something painful lurking behind those gorgeous, green eyes and . . . goth Tinkerbell exterior.
But tonight wasn’t the night for unpacking generational trauma—hers or mine.
“First of all,” I said, nailing her with a pointed look, “it was Below Deck: Mediterranean. More importantly, you know that I’m a Salt Lake City fan.”
She laughed, just barely, and it hit me like a punch to the gut. “Does that mean you don’t have Carolina tonight?”
“We spent Christmas together, so she’s with her mom.”
My cock twitched when she nibbled her lower lip. Dangerous territory. That lip had been the beginning of the end for me more times than I cared to count.
“You could’ve at least brought a coat,” she said, voice quiet now.
“And you could’ve warned me you were dressed like that.”
I let my gaze drop just long enough to make her squirm. There it was again—that vulnerability that tugged at my chest and made me want to wrap my body around her like a shield and protect her from everything.
“Why did you come, Brooks?”
Finally, a question I knew the answer to.
“Because I missed you, kitten.”
There. I said it. The thing that had been weighing down my mind and heart since the second we’d called things off back in October. There was no point in pretending otherwise, not when my voice was tinged with yearning and my erection was tenting my pants.
The gravel crunched beneath my feet as I stepped toward her. “Because I can’t stop thinking about you. About us.”
She clung to the lapels of her coat, twisting the fabric between her fingers. Her eyes widened, as she was no doubt surprised by my raw honesty. That made two of us.
To say that I had never been much of a people person would be an understatement.
I didn’t speak unless spoken to, didn’t share personal information unless it was pried out of me.
Hell, I much preferred the company of my six-year-old daughter and her stuffed animals over people my own age most days of the week.
But with Dani, the words came whether I wanted them to or not.
The silence between us stretched, thick and charged. I could feel it, the way she was trying to talk herself out of this. Out of me.
So, I said what I needed to say.
“Because I didn’t want to start the new year wondering what would have happened if I’d come.”
She exhaled, shaky. “Brooks.”
My hand found her waist, fingers pressing into the curves I had spent hours committing to memory. Her breath hitched, but she didn’t pull away. If anything, she leaned in, like her heart had already made the decision her brain hadn’t caught up to yet.
“Did you kiss anybody at midnight?” I asked, voice rough.
“No,” she replied, barely above a whisper.
“Good answer, kitten.”
Thank fuck for that because the very thought of her kissing someone else—smiling against someone else’s lips while the clock struck twelve—was enough to make me see red. I was barely hanging on as it was.
With two fingers under her chin, I tilted her face up to mine. She came willingly, eyes locked on me. I was used to her looking up at me—she was nearly a foot shorter than my 6’2” frame—but this time, it felt like she wanted to.
“Five . . . four . . .”
Her hands fisted in the front of my shirt.
“Three . . .”
I lowered my head.
“Two . . .”
She surged up before I could finish, smashing our lips together like the world was about to end.
And hell, maybe it had. Maybe the clock had struck midnight and this was some alternate . . . multiverse version of us, one that didn’t pull away and ruin a good thing just because we feared how much it might matter. Or maybe I had just watched one too many Marvel superhero movies.
Her lips moved against mine with a feverish kind of urgency. I kissed her back like a starving man, because that was exactly what I was. She tasted like whiskey and winter air, and beneath it all, the same sweetness that had always fucking wrecked me.
I gripped her hips, pulling her flush against me. She gasped when she felt the weight of my cock straining against my sweats, and I took the opportunity to deepen our kiss, sweeping my tongue into her mouth like I owned it.
We both knew that wasn’t the case, though. If anything, she owned me.
A broken cry fell from her lips, and I swallowed it whole. She pressed closer, tugging at my hoodie like she wanted to tear it off and crawl inside my skin.
Works for me.
“This is a bad idea,” she breathed.
“The worst,” I agreed, trailing kisses down the side of her neck. “Still want you, though.”
Her hands fell away from my body, and for a second, I thought she might give into reason and stop. Thankfully, lust won out over logic. She circled her arms around my neck and hoisted herself up, wrapping her legs around my waist.
“Fuck,” I growled into her mouth. “I’m parked across the street.”
“Don’t stop.”
“Dani—”
My knees nearly buckled when she tugged my lower lip between her teeth and bit down. Just enough pressure to light me up, to make my hands tighten on her ass and hitch her farther up my body.
She released me slowly, lips brushing mine, and gave me a look that told me she knew exactly what she was doing.
“I need you, Brooks,” she whispered, hot breath fanning my face.
“Then you’ll get me,” I rasped.