Chapter Sixty-Four #2
“He has access to your room?” Brock asked. “I know they typically have master keys, but you have the private elevator with the keycard.”
“He has an actual key to access the elevator.”
“And your door?”
“Not anymore, with Lennon’s updates, but yes.”
“Alright. I will focus on him for sure. Does anyone else have keys or keycards? Aside from you, me, and Cam, that is.”
“The doorman. He brings up my dry cleaning and packages sometimes if there are too many behind the desk, since he can just leave them outside my door and they can’t be stolen.”
“Alright. That is a good direction. It makes a lot of sense,” Brock said, reaching for some bread, breaking off a piece, and swirling it in the dip. “They could come up the elevator without you being notified. Then they could knock at your door. And you remember there being someone at the door.”
“Right,” I agreed, still annoyed that no other memories of that night had come back to me. The best I could come up with was that the second the door was opened, I had been, like, chloroformed.
“What?” Brock asked, seeing my gears turning.
“Could I have been chloroformed? Is that why I don’t remember anything?”
“No,” he said, shaking my head. “I mean, yes, it is always possible to be chloroformed. But it is nothing like what you see in movies and TV shows. It takes several minutes of having that rag over your face to make you pass out. It’s possible, but unlikely.
I think the lack of memory is more of a trauma response, your brain protecting you from unpleasant memories. ”
“That just… that doesn’t sound like me.”
“Typically, no. But sometimes there is no control, babe. Your brain does it subconsciously. And sometimes it comes back, but most of the time it doesn’t. I get that it’s scary to have gaps like that, but it’s probably something you’re going to have to learn to live with.”
I hated that.
I was such a control freak, to the point that I never let myself get too drunk because I didn’t want to not be in complete control of myself and my image.
I damn sure didn’t want to black out and have no idea what I did the night before.
But he was probably right. If it didn’t come back yet, it likely isn’t going to. So being upset about that is just a waste of energy.
“We’re going to figure this out, honey,” Brock said, nodding. “You just have to trust us and give us some time.”
Him.
I had to trust him.
Because as much as I was sure Sawyer and Tig were one call away, and keeping abreast of all the details of the case, they clearly weren’t the ones working the case. Brock was.
The thing was, I did trust him.
Almost implicitly.
The problem was that I didn’t trust myself. Around him. Especially now that I knew I wore my desire right there on my face for him to see.
That was going to be an issue. Especially since I didn’t seem to have any control over my feelings toward him. The longer I spent with him, the worse it seemed to be getting.
I just had to… distract myself.
No more trips out with him when he didn’t need me to tag along. No more going out to eat, just the two of us.
I was sure there was extra work I could be doing instead. There was always work that could be getting done. I needed to focus on that, let him handle the case, and keep some damn distance.
Luckily, conversation dipped back to more casual things as our food arrived and we ate.
By the time we were done, I had to admit to him that he was right. It was the best Italian I’d ever had. And I would likely be back weekly if I lived closed, regardless of who owned it.
“Brock, no,” I objected as the server brought the book over to him.
“Miranda, yes,” he shot back as he reached for his wallet.
“This is ridiculous. Technically, you’re working for me. That makes this a business dinner. I should be paying.”
“And yet… you’re not,” he said, slipping his card into the book and holding it out for the server to grab on her way past.
I liked to pay a lot of the time.
I felt like it gave me a little more power.
When a man paid, they often thought of it as transactional. They bought the meal, so you owed them something.
When I paid, they didn’t get to have that entitled train of thought.
That said, I couldn’t deny that Brock insisting on paying twice was giving me the warm and tinglies.
“So… coffee?” I asked as we made our way out of the front door.
“I would never go back on my word when it comes to She’s Bean Around,” he agreed, placing a hand at my lower back, then sliding it to my hip, as we started down the very steep, somewhat slippery from the water, stairs.
Just a few minutes later, we were standing on a long line, listening to some song I remembered from years ago about people doing it like on the Discovery Channel while the women behind the counter sang at the top of their lungs as they prepared drinks at lightning speed.
I employed the help of Brock to help me carry all the bags of coffee I was going to take home with me. Including all their regular blends and their flavored ones, inwardly wondering if they carried seasonal ones around holidays or not.
“Well, we know what your pretty-ass wants,” the woman said, looking Brock up and down in a way that was both appreciative, yet dismissive. “What can we get your pretty ass?” she asked, looking at me. “Aside from almost every bag of coffee we have in the building.
“I know it’s rude to clear shelves, but I don’t live here, and I need all of this,” I told her as she rang them up and put them in canvas bags with their logo on them.
“Hey, we are never going to complain about making some extra money,” the woman, whose name tag said Jazzy, declared. “How about you order something snazzy, since you have all this regular stuff for home?” she suggested, waving up toward the latte section of the menu on the wall behind her.
After some hemming and hawing, I decided I had to go with the caramel Praline latte with an extra shot.
“Of course you want whipped cream on that, correct?” Jazzy asked, giving me a knowing smile.
“It seems almost wrong not to have it,” I agreed.
“I like her,” Jazzy told Brock.
“Me too,” he agreed.
It was a throwaway comment, damnit. He didn’t mean it the way my stupid little heart skip wanted him to mean it.
Unsurprisingly, Brock slipped cash across the counter before I could even reach for my wallet.
“Go wait at the pick-up,” he demanded, hip-checking me until I moved out of his way. “Normally, I’d say we can get a table, but the youths have descended upon the place,” he said, gesturing around to the young clientele that had occupied every single table.
“It’s hot in here anyway,” I said, shrugging. “I think I would enjoy this more in the cool air outside,” I told him, moving through the crowd and out the door. “Can we walk?” I asked, waving toward the street lined with storefronts.
“Yeah,” he agreed, but I didn’t miss the casual glance down at my feet.
Admittedly, they were killing me. But I’d be damned if he knew that. So I started walking as I waited for my coffee to get just a shade cooler than ‘the fires of hell’ before I took a sip.
Apparently, Brock was immune to third-degree mouth burns, because he chugged his coffee and tossed his cup before I could even fully tolerate the heat through the cup and the coffee collar around it.
“Are you going to try it or not?” Brock asked, shooting me a smirk.
Deciding it was probably drinkable, I leaned back against the brick of a closed office, took off the cap, took a deep breath to breathe in the scent, then took a long sip.
It was like all the best parts of fall and winter combined to have a party in your mouth.
There was no way to keep the primal groan of pleasure in as I closed my eyes and tipped my head back for a second, just enjoying it fully because I knew I would probably never have a first sip of anything quite as good as that coffee.
But then I sensed Brock moving closer, making my eyes slit open just in time to watch as his arm rose, and his thumb moved out to wipe down my nose where, I imagined, some whipped cream had accumulated.
Everything in me seemed to freeze at that moment, something inside of me sensing the electricity sparking between us.
Finished cleaning off my nose, his thumb moved down, wiping down my lower lip, forcing it down slightly so he could wipe off the foamy cream.
There was no stopping the way my lips parted in a silent invitation. And, I imagined, there was no mistaking the desire in my eyes right then, either.
“Oh, fuck it,” Brock hissed just a second before his hand shifted to my jaw, and his lips crashed down on mine.
I froze for just the briefest of seconds, like some part of me was afraid that any movement would break the spell, would ruin the moment.
But then his lips were pressing harder into mine, and there was no stopping them from responding.
My head tilted back as my lips pressed to his, as my free hand rose to slide up his side, settling on his ribs as his shifted from my jaw to the back of my head, holding me there as his teeth nipped my lower lip, as his tongue moved inside to claim mine.
“Ah, hey Brock?” a voice called right at that perfect moment. “Whatcha doing?” it added, making Brock pull back, his forehead meeting mine for a second.
“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath.
“I sure hope she’s not who I think she is,” the blonde added as she walked past us with a massive bird sitting on her shoulder.
“Who was that?” I asked as we both watched her go.
“Clarke,” he said, moving suddenly away from me, and the small space between us may as well have been a cavern with all the distance it seemed to create.
“Who is Clarke?” I asked, holding my coffee with two hands, making it create some sort of barrier in front of me.
“Sawyer’s brother’s woman,” he said, exhaling hard.
“She has a giant bird,” I said.
“It technically belongs to a vigilante and his woman, but they share custody with Barrett and Clarke.”
“That was a whole lot of crazy in one sentence,” I decided, and couldn’t help but look as the woman stopped in front of a building to unlock it before moving inside.
“Let’s get back to the car, and maybe I can tell you it,” he told me.
With that, he did.
For the whole ride back to the city, almost as if he was afraid that if there was a second where the conversation lapsed, we might be forced to discuss what had just happened.
And, clearly, he didn’t want to do that.
I tried not to feel just a little bit crushed at that idea as we walked into my apartment building, then silently rode up the elevator.
“What’s your schedule for tomorrow?” Brock asked, his tone more guarded than usual. Which, of course, only made me throw up more of my own guards.
“Work.”
So much work, in fact, that I wouldn’t even be able to think about the man.
That is, of course, until I was calling him for help…