14. Brooks
14
brOOKS
“I think she’s out,” Brooks said as he rejoined Maddie in the kitchen. She was putting the last of the dishes in the dishwasher despite him having told her many times that she didn’t have to clean up.
But she’d apparently done it anyway while he’d put Audrey to sleep.
By the time Maddie had returned from the store with a car seat and the two of them had installed the damn thing, Audrey had complained about being hungry. So instead of going out to the playground, they’d made her mac and cheese and hot dogs.
Maddie and Brooks had eaten the cedar-grilled salmon and mushroom risotto the chef had prepared while Audrey played with a bubble maker Maddie had surprised her with. After dinner, they’d made s’mores—another Maddie surprise.
Audrey had chased bugs on the lawn while the sun had set, then Brooks had taken her in for bedtime, which had been quick, considering it was late, and she’d played outside so much. And loved every second.
For that matter, Brooks had enjoyed it, too. And Maddie’s company.
A little too much.
Maddie glanced up from the dishwasher and shut it. “I’m not surprised she fell asleep fast. She’s four, right? I think my four-year-old niece is ready for bedtime by like seven.”
“No wonder you’re so good with her.”
She shrugged. “I have practice, but honestly, I don’t really think of myself as great with kids. It doesn’t come naturally to me.”
“What does come naturally to you?” Brooks asked, genuinely curious. Because she seemed to interact with Audrey effortlessly.
She stretched, the barest hint of her midriff showing, a slip of her tanned, flat belly. He tore his gaze away. “I don’t know. I’m not really sure I’m great at anything. My family thinks I’m good at running the business, but it’s not hard, either. Anyway, marketing and admin are boring. Numbers are boring. Optimizing is stab-me-in-the-eyeballs-with-forks boring. But it’s what I signed up for, so I guess that’s on me.”
She set her hands on the counter and leaned forward. “And now I’m being boring. Sorry. I don’t know why I told you all that. I talk too much.”
He could tell. And it was . . . cute.
No, you fuckwit.
But he couldn’t seem to help it.
She was smart. Pretty. Natural.
Effortlessly good at things.
Humble. Which is both rare and refreshing.
Anything but boring.
And you’re lonely and tired.
Brooks leaned against the wall near the entrance to the kitchen, casually hooking his fingertips into his pockets. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been curious about anyone. But the more she talked, the more he wanted to know about her. Which wasn’t smart, considering she’d shown she had a dishonest side, too.
“Thanks for doing the dishes. You don’t have to stay any longer.” He glanced at the clock. This afternoon’s debacle had cost him another four hours of her time. Somehow, ten hours didn’t seem long enough now.
If he didn’t know any better, a flash of disappointment filled her face as she stepped back, lowering her hands to her sides as she nodded. “Yeah. No problem. I’ll just get going, then.”
“We never got to the mechanic. Think you can come tomorrow at four again?”
She gave him an odd look, then nodded.
Stay.
He bit the edge of his tongue, keeping himself from talking.
He was leaving in a few days.
Loneliness was a bitter drug.
It almost made him believe she wanted to be here.
She’d only come because he’d coerced her.
He walked her to the door, his chest tight.
Come on, Brooks.
Don’t do it.
Don’t be an idiot.
“I think the fire’s still going. . .if you wanted to stay.”
She tilted her head, the whisper of a smile on her lips. “Are you asking me to hang out with you off the clock?”
“I just didn’t want you to feel like I was kicking you out.”
Amusement danced in those blue eyes. She dropped her purse by the door, then shrugged. “Okay, Brooks. I’ll stay. Off the clock.”
“Don’t be like that.” He crossed his arms, instantly irritated with himself. Why had he gone and opened his mouth? “I don’t need your pity, you know.”
“Maybe I do pity you. What do you care what I think?” She moved to walk past him.
His hand shot out, settling at her elbow, dragging her to a stop. “Well, I do care. Stupidly. Probably because I’m an arrogant son of a bitch who doesn’t entirely love being called pathetic.”
Her thumb curved up the inside of his forearm, brushing it with the barest touch. She said nothing, but her eyes locked with his, her chest rising and falling slowly. “You keep contradicting yourself. Either you care about what people think about you or you don’t. Which one is it, Brooks?”
Shit. How did she keep digging deeper under the walls he’d spent so long constructing?
When he didn’t answer, she dropped her hand. “Thought so. It’s not so black and white, is it?” She didn’t go toward the outside, though. Instead, she strode toward the game room, where he’d been hanging out with Cormac earlier in the day.
He followed her, intrigued as she ran her fingers over a pool cue, then kept walking. She stopped in front of his guitar case, then dropped to her knees beside it.
“Whoa—hang on.” He rushed to her side and squatted. He set his hand over hers. “What are you doing?”
“Taking out your guitar. As your prospective employer, I figure it’s probably a good idea for me to hear what you’ve got.” She raised a brow. “Especially if you don’t play much anymore.”
She’d somehow come back to their conversation the previous night.
Dig, dig, dig.
But piece by piece, he felt the bricks on his walls loosening around her.
He smirked. “Nice try.”
“How about you just play a song on the guitar? It used to be your best friend, right? You don’t have to sing.” She leaned closer. “Or has Brooks Kent lost his spark?”
He glared at her. “You’re not as clever as you think you are, Madison.”
“And you’re not as hard and bad as you think you are, Brooks.”
She was too close for comfort.
He had a flashback to an hour earlier when she made s’mores. A tiny bit of marshmallow had clung to her lip. He’d imagined licking it off.
However, nothing could be as sweet and alluring as those lips looked right now.
She was only a few years younger than him.
But she was from a completely different world.
This country, small-town-loving sunshine woman.
God, we couldn’t be from more different worlds.
Any closer, though, and he might just have to see for himself what those lips tasted like.
“I should have just let you leave me to quiet while I had a chance,” he growled irritably.
“Yet you didn’t. Now play. Before you force me to beg.”
He grinned wolfishly. “Begging might be interesting.”
Stop.
Fucking stop it.
He couldn’t keep flirting with her.
The pupils in her eyes widened, and she moistened her lips.
Painful.
Dragging the guitar case closer, he opened it to stop that line of thought. The familiar wooden scent greeted him, and he breathed in deeply because he needed it to slow his erratic heartbeat and because it was the closest thing to the scent of home to him.
Pulling out his guitar, he threw the strap over his shoulder, grabbed the case, and stood, then left the game room without bothering to say a word. She’d follow.
He needed a moment away from her to get his head on straight anyway.
Apparently, so did she because she took a full minute to join him outside on the deck near the firepit.
Even at home near the beach, he couldn’t get far away from the lights of the city to see stars like this. The quiet wasn’t lonely here, either, even though it should be. Maybe that was because of Cormac and Audrey. Maddie. But even when he’d taken his coffee alone out on the deck this morning, he’d relished the way his mind could be blank here, without the cloud of anxious thoughts pressing in.
Nothing was lonelier than feeling alone while surrounded by people, anyway.
The tour had been a whirlwind of cities all over the world, blinding lights, stadiums, crowds of tens of thousands, sweat, and noise. Deafening noise. For months.
Hotel rooms, strangers, foods prepared by different people all the time. Interviews. Celebrities. Flashes of cameras.
All the time.
Here, the simple crackle of a burning log, the hum of tree frogs, cicadas, and crickets were . . . food for his aching soul.
He was quickly falling in love with the spot.
He strummed the guitar, tuning it as he went, watching her out of the corner of his eye as Maddie sat in the Adirondack chair beside him. It still had a blanket on the seat—she’d brought it out for Audrey earlier.
Maddie wrapped the blanket around her shoulders now, then curled her legs onto the seat beside her.
They didn’t have to speak. She leaned back and closed her eyes as he continued to strum, not saying a word. The melodies of several of his songs blurred together, a continuum of the notes that had defined the last decade of his life.
But something about sitting here outside by the fire, with just her as company, was . . . oddly freeing. Like he was just a teenager sitting on the carpet of Mom’s apartment.
The carpet.
His fingers tumbled over the strings.
He tore himself from the image and focused his gaze on the fire. The memory he’d worked so hard to forget was pressing closer.
The guitar had also been Dad’s favorite way of relaxing in the evenings. They’d been too poor to live in a house with a fireplace, but one year, Mom had scrimped and saved and bought one of the standing units with an electric heater that looked like a fireplace so they could have it for Christmas.
“For Santa to come in,” she’d said.
His last clear image of his parents together was the three of them sitting in front of that red electric glow while Dad strummed a Christmas tune.
Bloodstains on the carpet.
He sucked in a deep breath, feeling like he’d been punched in the gut.
Maddie opened her eyes, her brow furrowing. “Why’d you stop playing?”
He set the guitar down like it was burning his palms. “That’s enough.”
“You were really playing bea?—”
“I said I’m done,” he snapped.
Hurt flashed on her face.
Good. She needs to leave.
She stood, staring down at him. The log of the fire sizzled, sending sparks in the air.
Here, they were surrounded by all the symphony of nature and more beauty than seemed fair, and he’d gone and thought of that.
Maddie sat on the arm of his chair unexpectedly, then slipped her hand into his. “Brooks, you’re trembling.”
Am I?
He hadn’t even realized it.
He swallowed hard, pulling his hand from hers. “You should go.”
“I know it’s not my business?—”
“You’re right. It’s not. Go.”
She didn’t budge. “You know what I think? I think this tough-as-nails shtick is just an act. You’re a softy deep down. Just look at the way you treat Audrey. As though she were your own daughter.”
“That’s because her father is a piece of shit. And she deserves—” He scowled, his throat feeling tight. “Just go, Madison.”
“Why? Because you’re going to growl and snap at me like a wounded animal? You’ve already promised there’s no bite to that bark.”
He leaned forward, glaring. “How do you know I wasn’t lying?”
“I just do. You’re not what people say you are.”
“Or I’m exactly what people say I am, and you’re playing with fire?”
She crossed her arms. “Aren’t those the lyrics to ‘Wildfire’? Is that what it was? Your anthem? A declaration of what damaged goods you were? Telling everyone to stay the fuck away from you, right?”
He lifted his chin sharply, his breath catching so hard that it sent a piercing pain through his chest.
Never once in all his life had anyone looked at him and seen so much.
He said nothing as she lifted a hand, stroking the curve of his temple with the back of her index finger, then tracing it down his jawline. The gesture was fascinatingly intimate, shivers going through him. As though she was speaking, “I see you,” without saying anything at all.
“Audrey deserves better than what Kayla and I got.” He closed his eyes, breaking the spellbinding eye contact. “My father committed suicide when I was seven. Two months before Kayla was born,” he whispered in a voice he could barely even hear.
He’d never told anyone but his therapist.
Yet he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I was the one who found him lying face down in my parents’ bedroom.”
Her arms were around him in an instant, and despite his urge to resist her, Brooks pulled her against him instead. He tightened her in his embrace and buried his face against her neck.
“That’s horrible, Brooks,” she whispered. “I can’t even imagine.”
“It’s why I’ve never wanted kids. Why I try my best to protect Audrey.” He pulled back. “Because parents fuck their kids’ lives up all the time—sometimes on purpose but so often by mistake. Every. Damn. Day. And I never want to do to anyone what my father did to me.”
She leaned away, holding him by the shoulders while she scanned his face. “What your father did wasn’t about you. You know that, right, Brooks?”
“Yeah, but that’s the point. He had his demons, sure, and probably even got them from his old man. People in town used to gossip about what a piece of shit my grandfather was. But my dad didn’t think about stopping the cycle. He just kept it going. He didn’t think about Kayla or me at all.”
Maddie touched his cheek again, then leaned forward and kissed his forehead. Not the hot, sexy kiss he’d imagined earlier in the evening, but this was much better. Needed.
Hell, he might have just torpedoed her desire to be around him at all. If anyone came at him with something so heavy, he’d probably tuck tail and run. Maddie had asked for him to play the guitar. Instead, he’d unloaded on her.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a groan and pulled away from her. “This...I didn’t mean to . . .”
She watched him, patiently waiting for him to continue, her eyes filled with compassion.
He struggled for a breath. “For so long, I just wondered why. Why did he do it? Why couldn’t he just . . . try a little harder? For the rest of us? One day, I woke up and realized I’d never know the answer. And I’ve never known how to move forward since.”
Maddie took his hands in hers. “Why is a natural question. Trust me, I’ve asked myself the same question before. I think we all do when we’re hurt. But, Brooks, . . . you don’t have to know why to heal from what was done to you. You are whole. You’re not a half a person because of what happened to you when you were seven. You’re still whole. And you’re worthy. What haunted your father will only control you so long as you allow it to.”
He swallowed hard, his mouth drying.
I see you.
He’d cracked open the deepest, darkest part of his soul, and she hadn’t run away.
She’d embraced him.
Who on earth is this beautiful woman?
He cleared his throat, exposed under her gaze. “Sorry. I know you weren’t asking for my sob story. Normally, I just shut up and sing instead.”
“You still owe me a song. But I’ll let it slide for tonight.” She smiled sadly, then stood. “Unfortunately, I don’t have that many skeletons in my closet to share with you, so I can’t even the score.”
He appreciated the out she offered him from continuing to discuss his sordid past. She was clearly intuitive, and he needed the respite.
“Let me guess. You have two parents, still married, a large, extended family with lots of kids, and you all get along and get together for holidays.”
“I can do you one better. My mom still has us all come over for family dinner every Thursday. It’s pizza night. She grills pizzas and we all talk late into the night.”
“So you’re like the Brady bunch without the blended family bit.”
“Basically.” Rather than leaving as he’d expected her to do—as she probably should do—she sat in the chair she’d occupied before.
“Sounds disgustingly perfect.”
Her musical laughter filled the air. “Like I said, I have no reason to leave Brandywood. Everything I could ever want is here.”
“Yes, now all you need is your own perfect happy ending, a little farm, some chickens, a couple of kids?—”
“Don’t forget the handsome man dressed head to toe in flannel?—”
“Who’ll give you only the best of wood in Brandywood?”
“Oh my, Brooks Kent, you are a rascal!” she exclaimed mockingly, clutching imaginary pearls. She laughed, then rolled her eyes. “Wow, you’ve just described my nightmare. Do I look like I’m trying to audition for a Christmas movie romance?”
He smiled. “Maybe. Not sure if the girls on those shows wear crop tops. Get a few more turtlenecks, and then come back to me.”
Actually, now that he thought about it, Maddie seemed to have a different side of her. A sexy side that he could see being a bit more . . . wild.
That was the thing, though. For as much as she’d been able to pull out of him each time they talked, he barely knew anything about her. Amazingly, she was doing a better job of keeping her cards closer to her chest than he was. No one had ever flipped things on him like this.
“Tell me something about you.” He set his hands behind his head, leaning back. “You keep making these conversations one-sided, and I’m going to have to quit having you come over here.”
“It is antithetical to your supposed need for privacy.”
“Nothing supposed about it. I don’t like people knowing my business.”
“Hmm . . . I’d argue that you just don’t like people knowing you , but fine.” She played with the fringe on the blanket. “Nothing is interesting about me to share. I’m not shy. Just boring.”
“You’re anything but boring.”
She reclined in her seat. “Yeah? I’m so interesting that you quickly made me your errand girl, right? I’m just good at listening. My grandfather says I get it from him. Secretly, I’m one of his favorites, but that’s because we’re similar in personality. He likes that one of his grandchildren turned out like him.”
Even when asked directly, she still redirected the conversation and talked about someone else. “So what’s he like?”
“My grandfather?” Her eyes seemed to sparkle. “He’s perfect. Like honestly. The best man I’ve ever met. He’s like our whole town’s grandfather—everyone knows him. A few years back, he had an unexpected brush with fame and ended up with a cable show . . . sort of a home reality show where he talked about his best recipes, daily life, garden tips—you know the type. More people started coming to Brandywood just to see him. So he opened the Depot, and my sister and I run it.”
“So he’s building a family empire, then?” Not exactly the mom-and-pop shop he’d imagined she was involved in.
“Basically. He started the Depot a couple of years after I graduated from college, and the rest is history.”
He grabbed the fire poker and shifted a log. “You know that doesn’t tell me anything about you, though. Just your grandfather.”
A smile played on her lips. “Speaking of the Depot, I really should get back. I’ve got a ton of work to catch up on tonight since I spent the afternoon with you. Cormac will probably be back soon, and he won’t believe I’m not messing around with you if I’m still hanging around here.”
And just like that, he’d chased her away.
“He already thinks that.” Brooks quirked a brow.
“I’ll have to set him straight, then.” She pushed the blanket aside and stood. “Good night, Brooks. Thanks for dinner.”
He started to stand, and she held up a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I can see myself out the door. I have the past couple of times I’ve been here, remember?”
She smiled and then left quickly, not giving him a chance to protest.
Just let her go.
She wants to go.
Besides, look what happened when he’d asked her to stay before. She’d just made him reveal more, while she remained a mystery.
Yet that empty chair made the whole backyard feel instantly lonely. Isn’t that how I like it? The solitude? Perhaps, but something Maddie said came back to him...before his emotional diarrhea.
“How about you just play a song on the guitar? It used to be your best friend, right? Or has Brooks Kent lost his spark?”
She wasn’t wrong. His guitar used to be his place of solace.
Brooks hesitated, then pulled out his guitar again. Maybe he just needed time with his old friend.