Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Audrey
“Gray usually has better shit than this,” Brooks says, rifling through the pantry. “Where are the cookies? The cakes? The freaking Nutter Butters?”
I watch his back muscles ripple out of the corner of my eye. I’m not sure whether he left his shirt in the bathroom or mixed it up with the towels when he deposited them on the front porch. Either way, I’m not upset about having to look at his half-naked body.
We exist in the same room, bathing in the sunlight streaming through the windows like two people who have done it a hundred times before. There’s a quiet comfort in it, a natural rhythm that surprises me. But I’ve never sewn someone’s body closed, either. Maybe that creates a new type of intimacy.
I open a cabinet to retrieve two glasses. The sound catches his attention, and he glances at me over his shoulder. “Sit.”
His tone—playful but firm—sends a ripple of chills through me. “I was going to get us a drink.”
“And I said I was getting you a snack and juice. So sit.”
“It’s really no problem. I—”
“Dammit, Doc.” He slides a hand down the pantry door and turns sideways toward me. “You just performed a half-assed surgery on my arm. At least let me get you a drink.”
His eyes don’t leave me until I’m sitting at the table.
He mumbles something under his breath, but I can’t quite make it out.
Under the circumstances, that might be for the best. I know that he should probably be resting his arm and not using it, but I have a feeling he’s used to being in charge, so I let it slide.
I mean, if I argue and his blood pressure rises, that could be … messy.
“I think Astrid is starving my man,” Brooks says, returning to the pantry. “They have no snacks. What kind of torture is that?”
“I’m pretty sure that Astrid keeps Gray’s diet pretty healthy. I know athletes get a little loose with their diet and exercise in the offseason, but Astrid runs a pretty tight ship.”
Brooks pulls a chocolate bar from the back of a shelf, knocking over a can of green beans in the process. “This is all the fun food I can find. One lousy chocolate bar.” He sighs. “Gray used to be fun, but now he’s a man of discipline.”
“Discipline never hurt anybody.”
His smirk is deep and downright delicious. “I used to think that. Turns out that using self-restraint can be really, really painful.”
A rush of adrenaline hits my veins, and my pulse skitters like crazy. This is too much for one day. But it’s not quite enough either.
“What about you?” he asks, taking two glasses from the cabinet and pouring us each a drink. “You seem like the disciplined type. And, by the way, no juice. Your options include tea—and that’s it.”
“Tea is great. And you’d be correct about me having discipline. It was drilled into me as a child. If my parents weren’t so anti-tattoo, they probably would’ve had it inked on my forehead.”
“Are your parents both doctors, too?”
I laugh, taking a glass of tea and half of the chocolate bar from him.
“No. My father is an investment banker, and my mother is the vice president of her very important social club. Not the president, mind you, because the president must deal with everyone’s problems and my mother wants none of that.
” I take a sip as he sits across from me.
“Mom likes the power and visibility, but doesn’t care much about the purpose, if that makes sense. ”
“So I take it that you aren’t a social club girl.”
“No way.” I chuckle, then stop myself. “Well, I am a member technically. I just don’t participate in anything and kind of hope they’ll forget I’m supposed to be there so I can fade into oblivion.”
He takes a bite of the candy. “Why don’t you just quit?”
“You clearly don’t know my mother. There is no crying in baseball and no quitting the social club.”
He chuckles, his jaw flexing with every chew. It’s distracting. “But if you hate it …”
“It would break her heart,” I say as if that’s reason enough to continue participation in a club I don’t want to be in. “Her friends’ daughters are members, and it would devastate her if her only daughter weren’t a part of it, too. I couldn’t do that to her.”
He lifts a brow. “But if you hate it …” he says again, as if my point didn’t land—or he didn’t accept it as a valid excuse.
I take a long drink of tea and sit with his phrase.
But if you hate it. I do hate it. I hate everything about the social club, charity events that aren’t done in the spirit of helping actual charities, and tennis games scheduled to show off the latest tennis couture.
And even though I’d love to resign, I value my mother’s heart more.
My thoughts go to her call about Dad’s party, and my spirits sink. It’s going to be awful. It’ll be a contest over who can wear the most expensive jewelry. Seth will be there with his new wife, which gives me major anxiety, and Lewis Lemon scored an invitation. I must wonder—do my parents hate me?
It’s a terrible thought, and I know it’s untrue. They don’t know the truth about Lewis and me. If they did, I’m sure they’d feel much differently.
But that doesn’t change this party and how soul-crushing it’s going to be for me. Because no matter what I do or say, somehow, I won’t measure up. And my parents will be sure I know it. A subtle dig here, a certain tone there that no one else will pick up but me.
“It’s a simple thing,” I say, setting my glass down. “And it doesn’t take up that much of my time to just pay my dues every year and make it to a meeting once or twice.”
“Time is all you really have. Seems like a big thing to sacrifice to me.”
I shift in my seat, slightly annoyed. “Are you telling me that you don’t do anything you don’t want to do?”
“Correct.” He pops another piece of candy into his mouth as if we’re discussing the weather. “If I don’t want to do it, I don’t. Sometimes that costs me, but I can sleep at night.”
“You wouldn’t do it even if it made someone else wildly happy?”
He swallows slowly, taking his precious time.
Then he leans against the table and folds his muscled arms in front of him.
“The only person in the world that I give a fuck about their happiness is my mom. And if something makes her happy, there’s no way it can make me miserable because I’d do just about anything to make her smile. ”
My chest warms, an ache growing right behind my ribs as if my emotions are growing faster than my body can expand to hold them. The mix of tenderness and love in his face is so pure. Honest. Good.
The man is a walking juxtaposition—a gorgeous riddle.
Sharp, yet soft. Intense, but gentle. He’s unfiltered but emotionally open.
His confidence is disarming, and his carpe diem attitude is equal parts thrilling and terrifying.
He’s not the kind of guy I’m used to being around, and the fact that I’m more relaxed around this mischief-maker than I am around men I’ve known my whole life boggles my mind.
Brooks leans back, wincing as he moves. His arm is an angry red and swollen around the makeshift stitches. It must hurt so much.
I grab my purse off the chair beside me and drop it on the table next to my computer. Clearing my throat, I focus on finding a bottle of anti-inflammatory pills. I’m not sure what to say or where to go from here.
“That’s a sweet thing to say about your mother,” I say. “You must have a pretty great dad.”
“He’s dead.”
My eyes flash to his, the pills clinking against the bottle in my hand as I jerk upright. His words are crisp with each syllable enunciated with a definitive, intentional coolness that’s a huge shift from moments ago.
“I’m sorry,” I say, swallowing hard. “I didn’t know.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m not. We’re all better off with him in the ground.”
Oh.
“He was a giant piece of shit who died when I was seventeen,” Brooks says, breaking a piece of chocolate off the bar and popping it into his mouth. “Dying was the only nice thing he ever did for us.”
If I thought I didn’t know what to say before, I’m really speechless now.
It’s obviously a touchy subject, and the last thing I want to do is make him uncomfortable—especially about something so personal and private.
And even though he’s playing it cool, I sense a boatload of pain under the surface, and that tugs at my heartstrings.
So instead of speaking, I dole out two small pills and drop the bottle back into my bag.
“Here,” I say, offering him the medicine. “It’ll help with the inflammation.” I point at his wound. “It’s looking a little red, and that worries me.”
His lips twitch as he takes them from me. “Yeah, well, you were poking it with a needle ten minutes ago.”
We exchange the smallest, softest grin that deflates the tension. I’m relieved. My shoulders sag as he pops them into his mouth and swallows them with a slug of tea.
“Do you think we should put some antibacterial gel or something on it?” I peer down at the line, noticing it’s fairly straight. Not bad for my first time sewing someone up. “I bet Astrid has some in her first-aid kit in the hallway.”
He shrugs. “Sure. Knock yourself out.”
“I love how you’re so ambivalent about it,” I say, laughing. “Do you even care that you could get sepsis and lose your whole arm?”
“Not really,” he says, popping another piece of chocolate between his teeth. “I’m right-handed.”
This man. I smile at him as I head for the hallway. “I’m going to find some gauze and cream.”
Energy buzzes through me with wild abandon, a brightness flooding every nook and cranny of my brain.
It’s like I stitched Brooks shut, but it somehow opened a part of me—pushed me so far out of my comfort zone that I’m in an entirely new mental space.
I’m alive in a way that I haven’t been in a very long time.
The cream and the bandages are at the bottom of the medical bin. I grab them and put everything else back in its place.