14. Brooks
FOURTEEN
Brooks
“ I don’t know how a week is going to help, Brooks.” Walt sighs, pushing his glasses up his nose. He looks at me over the brim of them. “If you don’t have the money now, you’re not going to.”
“Listen,” I shift to the edge of my seat, steepling my hands on the front of the desk, “I have something going that’s going to pay out in a few days. I just need time, Walt.”
Walt Fitz, the manager of the local bank, scoffs at me, thinking me full of shit.
“Something going,” he repeats, looking at me with suspicion lining the edges of his face.
I nod. “I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. Just give me another week.”
He looks over at his computer, moving his mouse with a wavering look crossing his eyes. I’ve almost got him.
“If I do this, Brooks, this is your last extension. I can’t keep doing this.”
“I completely understand,” I add enthusiastically.
Walt closes his eyes and sighs. “Fuck.”
I smack the top of his desk, and his nameplate bounces up and then slams back down. “Thank you.” I hit him with a finger gun. “You won’t regret it.”
“I hope not!”
Walt finishes the extension and gets me the paperwork from the printer, eyeing me narrowly the entire time.
“One week, Brooks.”
I roll up the papers, pointing them at him as I hover in the door’s fissure. “I’ll see you then. With every penny.”
Foreboding flickers in my chest, reminding me you should never count your chickens before they hatch, but I recall Indie on her knees last night, my dick teasing the back of her throat before she swallowed my cum down and know that we have this firmly in the bag. So, I shove my worry to the back of my mind, press out of the bank, and head toward the bar.
As I prepare to cross the street back to the bar, I’m thrumming with excitement. My eyes are tugged toward a flicker of white on my right-hand side. Turning, I halt my walking and deadpan at what I’m looking at.
“What the fuc?—”
“Watch your mouth, young man,” an elderly woman tells me in passing.
“Sorry,” I mutter absently, moving closer to the dress shop’s window.
Pulling my hands up to my hips, my mind whirrs as my chest fills with a strange feeling. My hand lifts and rubs over the ache, and I stare as Indie turns and locks eyes with me through the window, her color growing pale. I look up and down her body in a tightly fitted wedding gown as she bites the inside of her cheek, her cheeks filling as she steps off a raised podium surrounded by mirrors. Unthinking, I pull the door open and storm inside, not that I have a plan or can remember how to speak English to say anything to her.
“What are you gaping at?” she asks, her hands angling at her hips.
The white gown looks like it was made to fit a princess. Fuck that, a queen, and she looks like one in it. Her breasts are teasing my eyes with the deep v-cut that dips between them. Tulle and lace are everywhere, and the waistline hugs her perfect curves in all the right ways.
“I’m… what are you doing?” I finally get out, my mouth feeling dry as hell.
“I’m trying on wedding dresses for Taylor.” She eyes me as if that’s obvious, when it’s anything but.
“Run that back.” I wave my hand in a circle as my brain gets caught all over again in the way her breasts look in that dress.
Fuck, that dress !
She smirks knowingly as if she knows exactly what’s going through my mind. How could she? I can’t even make heads or tails of my thoughts or the deep vibrating in my chest.
“I had to come to town because there was an incident I’d rather not rehash with Taylor’s dress. Because I’m the same size as her, I decided it would be best to know if the dress I chose would fit if I tried it on.”
I lick my lips, trying to coax my mouth to create any kind of lubrication at this point. I’m desperate.
“Alright, then. Well, I think you found the winner.”
She looks down at herself. “Clearly not.”
“Oh?”
The dress shop employee beside her snickers, covering it with her hand as she fakes a cough. “Sorry. I’ll leave you two to it. I put the others in the dressing room. I’ll wait for you there to help you in and out of them.”
Indie nods, dismissing the lady with a look.
“What’s wrong with this one?” I ask Indie.
She turns to the mirror, looking herself over wistfully. “I don’t think it would complement her very well.”
I step behind her, unable to help myself. The dress only helps show off Indie’s beautiful features, especially her fire-engine red hair and perfectly hazel eyes.
“You look beautiful,” I whisper, dropping my lips to hover near her ear as I keep my stare locked on hers in the mirror.
So many emotions move over her face that I can’t keep up with them, but I catch how she fights the urge to lean back, eventually losing the battle.
“Well, the dress isn’t for me.”
I bite my lower lip, keeping ignorant words from spilling from my lips. She and I are just a fling, just a deal struck after a drunken night in my bar. Fate brought us to one another when we needed it the most, but we were never meant to be more than we are—a fly-by-night wager. Not one steeped in love, but one steeped in necessity.
I feel the clips prodding into me that are holding the back of the gown closed, but I press into them, letting my hands wander the planes of Indie’s curves as her breath hitches.
“Brooks. I don’t have time for?—"
“Shh.”
“Did you just shush me?” She whips around as the woman comes from the back of the store to check on us.
The next few seconds could be described as a series of unfortunate events. At least, I’m confident that’s how the salesperson will relay them to everyone she knows as soon as we leave here.
As Indie spun, the clips caught on my button-up shirt, opening the back of the dress. This wouldn’t have been a massive issue had I not been standing on said dress.
As she twirls on me, the dress not only opens but drops.
And my beautiful Indie, she covered her bases. She’d forgone the bra she likely wore in here to ensure the dress would fit perfectly.
Her breasts pop out as the dress shop employee gasps, and I lurch for Indie. It’s a split-second decision that leaves Indie pressed against the mirror behind her, with both of my hands covering her perfect tits. We both lock eyes, holding one another’s stare before I crack the first smile, and Indie bursts out laughing.
“If you wanted to see my boobs, you could’ve just asked.”
I shake my head, fighting to stop laughing.
After I helped Indie back to the dressing room and watched her try on three more dresses, she had all three in her arms, except the one I’ll remember in my dreams for the rest of my life—the one she left back at the store.
Half of me wants to go back and buy it so no one can ever wear it again, but that’s crazy.
“Want me to go with you?” I ask her.
“No. Plus, don’t you have to get ready? The rehearsal is at four. You don’t have too much longer.” She glances at her watch on her wrist.
It’s two. She’s right; we do have to get a move on.
I need to ensure the bar and Nick is set for my night away while I go through the rehearsal and dinner with Indie.
The wedding is tomorrow, which is exciting for Spencer and Taylor because it marks their beginning. But for Indie and me, it marks the end of something I’m not sure I want to end at all.
“You’re right. Not all of us are naturally beautiful. I better get,” I joke, and there’s a moment she looks at me as if she wants to say something but is holding back.
“Yeah. Well, see you there!” she says, making off in the opposite direction toward a small car.
I’m left staring at her as she drives off, feeling that I’m wholeheartedly not ready to watch her drive away in two days. But I know that I have to let her go.
W e’re on what feels like the hundredth pass of marching down the aisle when my eye twitches uncontrollably.
“No, no, no!” Taylor exclaims, stomping her foot. “The timing is all off.”
“Don’t worry, my love. That doesn’t matter,” Spencer says, trying to console his bride-to-be, but she eyes him with a murderous glare, and he stiffens, clearing his throat.
“We’re going again!” Spencer calls, and I turn and growl, stomping back toward the beginning of the mile-long walk Taylor has us doing repeatedly.
“Hey,” Indie slips her arm through the crook of mine.
I look down at her as she smiles, inclining her head to the left.
“Come with me.”
“Didn’t you hear the boss? We have to go again.”
“We’re not the issue; Michelle is. She’s got two left feet. Come on.”
I look back at Taylor, who has her hands flailing, and Spencer rubbing his temples as Indie leads me off to the side of the barn on the property, where the reception will be held tomorrow night after the wedding.
“Where are we going?” I groan.
She tosses her fake flowers onto the ground before pulling a flask out from nowhere, like magic, waggling it in my face before popping the top and taking a long swig.
“You perfect creature.” I hold my hand out as she hands it over, breathing through the burn of whatever liquid fire she filled the flask with.
I take a mouthful, letting the bourbon inside rake down my throat as I roll my eyes back and sigh afterward.
“God. I needed that.”
“I know.”
I eye her, taking another drink before handing the flask back.
“I could feel your tension as if it was mine.” She huffs a laugh, and I can’t fight the smile that answers it from curling my lips.
Just the act of her taking me away from the frustration of rehearsal has calmed me down. Add that to her presence and the liquid courage she offered, and I’m in heaven.
“Thank you,” I tell her, my voice dipping low as the alcohol coats my empty stomach with a thick layer of buzzing.
“You’re welcome.” She steps closer, her hand resting on my chest as she stows her flask in her back pocket.
“Should we get back?” I ask, lost in searching her face for the barest flicker that she wants to stay with me and fuck me if she doesn’t give it.
Her eyes fill with mischief, and her lips twine in an unholy grin. “They won’t notice we’re missing,” she says.
We both know that’s a lie, but I let myself believe it momentarily as I lean down, caught in the overwhelming attraction floating between us like waves over the pavement in the heat of summer.
We hover in the space where we’re teasing one another for a drawn-out moment before I close the distance and kiss her. This one, however, feels different. Like I know her now, and I want more than I know I can have. There’s a touch of sadness and desperation in the way Indie kisses me back, and I swallow our collective moan. The kiss deepens, her hands sliding up my neck, holding me as if worried I’ll pull away. Little did she know, I’d stay here until we both starved if she wanted me to.
I feel a little foolish, the small-town man getting caught up in the storm of the city girl who’s only moving through town momentarily. I’m a blip on her timeline, and she’s slowly becoming the entire thing for me.
It’s when her tongue flicks against mine, and I tug her closer, kissing her harder, when I realize that I’m getting in far too deep over my head. But I know there’s no turning back.
We break apart like magnets flipped over to oppose one another when Taylor’s angry voice comes around the corner.
“Are you two fucking kidding me right now?”
We share a look fraught with tension and unspoken words as we try to catch our breath. The distinct feeling that this bet between us is more than I bargained for thrashes the inside of my skull as I follow Taylor back to rehearsal, Indie beside me. When Indie slides her hand into mine, my chest leaps, and I know that this love wager between us is going to leave me irrevocably changed, down to my marrow.