Chapter 5 #3
I stay at the bar. This isn’t my conversation.
My job was getting them in the same room, and now the rest belongs to them.
Besides, I can see them from here, so if something goes dramatically sideways, I can step in.
Though what I’d actually do in that situation, I have no idea.
Throw a chair? Give an inspirational speech?
My skill set doesn’t exactly cover half-brother reunions.
“What’s going on over there?”
I turn, and Brooke is leaning against the bar next to me. Her admirer is nowhere in sight, and she looks even better up close than she did from across the room. Dark hair falling around her shoulders, those eyes that see everything and give nothing away.
“Family thing,” I say, in a tone that I hope also communicates now kindly fuck off.
“Relax, Dom.” She rolls her eyes like I’m being unreasonable. “Believe it or not, I’m not always out for a story. Not everything is about supposedly ruining your life.”
“Forgive me for being skeptical.” I take a slow sip of my bourbon, keeping my voice flat even though my shoulders are already tensing up. “Considering our history, sweetheart.”
Her eyes narrow. “You are such a fucking asshole, you know that? Your fighter destroyed your career by pumping himself full of PEDs, with your help. I just reported what happened.”
“You reported half of what happened.” I set my glass down. “You took one shitty source’s word about my involvement and ran with it because it confirmed what you already wanted to believe about me.”
“Well, I tried to reach you for a comment,” she says, tilting her head with mock sympathy. “I believe your exact words were ‘fuck you.’”
“You think I was going to sit down for an interview? Give you some nice quotes you could chop up and slot into whatever story you’d already decided to write?” I shake my head. “I’m not that stupid, Brooke.”
“No, you just let the silence speak for you, and it didn’t say anything flattering.
” She picks up her negroni, takes a calm sip like we’re having a perfectly pleasant conversation and not ripping into each other.
“You had a chance to go on record and you chose to tell me to go fuck myself instead. That’s not my fault. ”
“You really expected me to trust you with my side of the story? You, of all people?”
“Your fighter was dirty, Dom. That’s a fact. Whatever happened between us in high school doesn’t change the test results.”
“My fighter was dirty. I wasn’t.” My grip tightens around the glass.
“But you didn’t bother making that distinction, did you.
You let the implication do the work and you walked away with a big shiny job offer while I was here watching everything I’d built fall apart.
Every door I’d spent my twenties kicking open slammed shut, and all because your article implied I was in on it without ever actually saying it outright.
Which was clever, I’ll give you that. Really fucking clever. ”
She sets her drink down, and there’s fury in her eyes now.
“Oh, you want to talk about things falling apart? Let’s talk about what you did to me first. Because after you went to that scholarship committee with your bullshit, I lost the money I needed for school.
I spent years drowning in debt, working doubles until two in the morning.
I missed internships I couldn’t afford to take.
So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not exactly weeping over your networking problems.”
“Networking problems.” I stare at her. “That’s what you’re calling it.”
“I’m calling it the natural consequence of what happens when you help your fighter juice and then get caught.” She doesn’t flinch. “Somebody was going to break that story. It just happened to be me.”
“Right. Just happened to be the girl from high school who already wanted me dead. What a coincidence.”
“I did my job,” she says, holding my stare without a flinch. “You didn’t like the result. That’s not the same thing as me being wrong.”
We stare at each other across six inches of charged air, and I realize with a grim certainty that we are never going to agree on this.
I had no idea what Miles was doing, and I’ve spent years living with the consequences of something I didn’t do while the woman who pinned it on me built a career off the wreckage.
But trying to tell her that is like talking to a brick wall.
“Whatever, Brooke.” I push my glass away. “There’s no point arguing with you. You decided what you think of me a long time ago and nothing I say is going to change that.”
“We’ve always been a disaster,” she says. “Let’s just get through this fucking story so I can get back to my life and you can get back to yours.”
She looks away, and in that unguarded second the memory hits me before I can block it.
Her mouth on mine in the back of my truck, her fingers twisted in my shirt, and the terrifying realization that I was in way over my head with a girl who was supposed to be nothing more than a bad idea.
I finish my drink in one long swallow and set the glass down.
“Sounds good to me,” I manage, my voice tight. “Can’t happen soon enough.”
She turns back to the bar without another word, settling onto her stool. And like a moth to a goddamn flame her admirer materializes out of nowhere, sliding back into the seat next to her with a fresh drink and a hopeful smile.
She laughs at something he says, easy and light, and my blood runs hot and I turn away. I need her to go back to New York and stay there. I need her to finish this story and get out of my gym and out of my town and out of my fucking head.
I force my attention back to the booth where Calvin, Maren, and Mateo are talking quietly. That’s what matters right now. The stuff that’s actually important. Not Brooke Bennett and whatever twisted game she’s playing by coming back here.