Her head snapped up to look at him. He pressed his lips together as if he were trying to keep in his emotion, and a dark look crossed his face before it quickly disappeared.
“You were in an accident?”
He nodded. “I was in the hospital for a few days. I got pretty banged up.”
“You never called me.” She blushed after the words left her mouth. It was a selfish comment to make, and she knew it. He was laid up in a hospital, and she was asking why he didn’t bother to call. “I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right.”
“My phone broke in the accident. I didn’t have your number. I tried looking for you, but never saw you again.”
“I transferred to a college closer to home after that.”
The truth was, even if Brent had shown up for their date, she would have left the school shortly after. Nothing would have come of a relationship if it could have gone down that road, except that she wouldn’t have held resentment toward him when she realized he was Travis’s older brother.
“You didn’t get your degree at UCLA?”
She shook her head and shifted her gaze to the floor. “I had to move home to take care of Jess.”
“To take care of Jessica?”
“After our parents died. They died a few weeks after I met you.”
He stood there confused before a slight understanding crossed his face. “Wow. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Jessica was a junior in high school, so there wasn’t much raising left to do. She just needed a guardian, and I didn’t want her to have to leave all her friends to go live with a relative.”
“So you gave up your dream to give her a normal life?”
Tears sprang to her eyes. Leaving UCLA was a hard blow, but losing her parents was worse. Transferring to a local college wasn’t a big deal in order to finish her degree, but she had given up a full-ride scholarship and her senior year of college all to give Jessica some normalcy. She would do it all over again in a heartbeat, but she always wondered what would have happened if she had stayed.
“She was young. Her whole life changed suddenly.”
His fingers touched her chin and tilted her face up to his. “So did yours.”
And to her horror, she burst into tears.
Brent tugged her into his arms and rested his chin on her head while she sobbed into his chest in the middle of the hallway. She didn’t know how long they stood there, but once she realized what a mess she was, she pulled back and hastily dried her eyes.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“No need to apologize.” He reached out and swiped a stray tear from her cheek.
She turned to move toward her door, but his hand clasped around her arm.
“Hey, how about we go get a drink?”
She laughed. “We just came from the bar.”
“We did, but you didn’t actually drink. Let’s go have some fun.”
She furrowed her brows. “How did you know I didn’t drink?”
“Because I heard your order. And you never drink. You haven’t once since we’ve been here, aside from a sip of champagne at the wedding after the toasts, and then you never touched it again.”
She was surprised he had noticed that much about her. She certainly had never paid that close attention to him… aside fromnoticing that he enjoyed alcohol, usually whiskey. If he drank beer, it was usually a dark beer. He didn’t like wine.
She frowned at herself. Apparently, she knew more about him than she thought.
“Did I offend you?” he asked.
