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She’d known he was hot from his photos, obviously, but only in a theoretical sort of way. In her mind he was still the sweet dork she’d been friends with in middle school. The Dylan in all the carefully posed selfies and photo shoot outtakes he posted on Instagram had never seemed real to her. Wasn’t everything on Instagram supposed to be fake anyway?
Dylan’s hotness was not fake. In fact, he was somehow even hotter in person than he looked in his photos. Much,muchhotter. Like his hotness emitted a stream of particles that reacted with everything they came in physical contact with.
Brooke had been trying to stay calm and low-key about this whole visit, but when he broke into a grin on her doorstep, she was pretty sure she had a hotness-induced ministroke.
“Hey! Did I catch you in the middle of something?” His eyebrows twitched over his sparkling blue eyes as he gestured at her chest.
“What?” Brooke looked down and remembered her sopping wet T-shirt, which was clinging to her chest like Saran Wrap, and just when her nipples had chosen to protrude through her bra like a pair of nail heads. Horrified, she tugged the wet fabric away from her body. “Oh, sorry. Just cleaning up a last-minute mess.”
“I love your place,” Dylan said, darting forward to brush a kiss against her cheek. Which was a thing they did now, apparently. Kissed on the cheek like a couple of French socialites.
Before she’d properly recovered fromthat, his arms wrapped her up in a hug.
She let out a long breath as her body instinctively relaxed against his. This, at least, felt normal for them and more like the Dylan she remembered. He smelled familiar underneath the fancy cologne he was wearing, and she couldn’t help grinning as she squeezed him back. “It’s so good to see you.”
“I know. It’s been too long.”
Almost six years. Not since the last time she’d gone home for Christmas.
He let go and stepped back, breaking into another grin. “You look great.”
“I look great?Youlook great!” She reached out and punched him in the arm, which was a bit like punching an extremely smooth tree trunk. “Look at you. My god!” He definitely hadn’t had so many muscles the last time she’d seen him, and he hadn’t been so stylish either.
Those faded-to-perfection jeans he was wearing probably cost several hundred dollars off the rack. And that plain black T-shirt that fit his body like a glove had almost certainly been custom tailored. He’d come a long way from the kid who’d once had a different Star Wars tee for every day of the week.
He ducked his head and made a wry face, which was so much like the old Dylan she remembered, the one who’d always been uncomfortable with compliments, that she relaxed a little more.
“Come in.” Brooke grabbed his hand and tugged him the rest of the way into her apartment. “You can drop your bags anywhere.”
“I love this building,” he said as he propped his backpack and roller bag by the front door. “It’s so LA.”
“It is pretty great, isn’t it?” She loved her old courtyard building in Palms with its murky swimming pool and eclectic neighbors. “I took over the lease from a friend of a friend. It’s hard to find somewhere affordable that allows cats.”
Dylan thrust a hand through his dark blond hair as he peered around the small apartment, his eyes sliding right past the new throw cushions on her couch. His hair was just long enough to hint at the curl Brooke remembered from when he used to wear it shaggier, back when his personal grooming routine consisted of a reluctant trip to Fantastic Sam’s every six months. Nowadays he probably got a hundred-dollar haircut from a celebrity stylist every two weeks like clockwork.
“Where is the famous Murderface?” he asked. “I’m dying to meet him after seeing all the pics on Facebook.”
“I wouldn’t get too excited,” Brooke said. “He’ll probably spend your whole visit hiding under the bed.”
“No way. Cats love me. I’m gonna win him over.” Dylan wandered into the kitchen and stooped to study the photos on the front of Brooke’s fridge. Smiling, he extended a long finger to straighten a group photo of Brooke and the other volunteers from her first field research trip in Alaska.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Brooke countered. “He really doesn’t like strangers.”
When her now-ex Garrett had done his ill-fated three-week stint at her place, Murderface had only come out of hiding when Garrett left the apartment. She’d actually been a little worried he was going to give himself a urinary tract infection. The cat, that was, not Garrett.
Dylan spun back around and winked. “He’s gonna like me. I’m irresistible.”
The effortless sexual magnetism emanating from that wink nearly gave her another ministroke, but something about the smile underneath it rang hollow. Brooke recalled his promise to tell her what was going on with him, but decided to hold off pressing him about it until he’d had a chance to settle in.
“Are you hungry? I was thinking I could take you out for dinner.” She had the perfect place in mind: a quiet, cozy Mexican restaurant that reminded her of one of their favorite haunts back home. They could settle into a booth and catch up over tortilla chips and margaritas.
His smile deflated a little. “I’d love that…but I’m doing a water cut for this shoot tomorrow so I can’t.”
“A water cut? What’s that?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, which caused his incredible biceps to flex and the room to feel suddenly much smaller. “You drink two gallons of water a day for a few days, then decrease your water intake the day before a shoot so your body sheds a bunch of excess water weight. It’s how you get that shredded and separated look that makes your muscles really pop, you know?”
Oh, she knew all right. She’d drooled over enoughMen’s Healthcovers in the grocery store checkout line. She just hadn’t realized what kind of effort went into it. “I always thought that was all drawn on in Photoshop.”
