Page 67 of Forever Relentless

He didn’t hide the satisfied gleam in his eye at my discomfort. “The great picture you just took of the stadium.”

“I haven’t done it yet.”

“Right.” He was laughing at me. “Convenient.”

You can salvage this; just pretend he isn’t getting under your skin.

“Anyway,” I said briskly, taking a few steps into the room, the table between us. “What the hell was that earlier this morning?”

Noah shrugged. “Practice.”

“Is it normal practice for you to punch your assistant coach?”

He didn’t look uncomfortable at my question. “You’d be surprised.”

I took a deep breath. I needed to reclaim control here because I was just a constant source of amusement to him right now.

“Yes, I would be surprised. You forget I have a brother who was just as immersed in this crap as you are. Every five a.m. start, every ‘just one more practice,’ every training session, every training film studied. I never saw Mason punch his coach during practice.”

Noah lifted one brow. “Maybe he should have, might have given them a real reason to get rid of him.”

I gaped at him. “What the hell did you just say?”

“I said that if your brother had any fight in him, he wouldn’t have rolled over and let the fuckers walk all over him and ruin his life.”

I was going to kill him.

“My brother—”

“Would have punched the asshole as quickly as I did,” Noah cut in smoothly. “You can be as pissy as you want. He was crowding you, you were clearly uncomfortable, and then he said what he said and . . .” Noah pushed himself to his feet. “Tell me, would your brother have done nothing?”

I watched him walk around the table and felt the need to back up, but not for the same reasons I had earlier when Kevin-the-Ass was towering over me.

“Why are you really following me, Briar?”

I looked up at him, knowing he had the advantage in every way that mattered. “I wasn’t following you.” It sounded as weak as I felt.

Noah raised an eyebrow, and my stomach did a weird flip, like that one and only time I was on a roller coaster. “We’ll agree to disagree,” he murmured, leaning against the table behind him like he had nowhere else to be, with the kind of effortless confidence that should’ve been illegal.

I wasn’t making up the ground I needed; I was losing ground, both literally and metaphorically.

“I wasn’t following you,” I insisted. Why? Why am I insisting? He just gave you the out when he said ‘agree to disagree.’ But it wasn’t an out; it was him pacifying me.

“You need to stop hovering over me,” I said before he could say anything else. “You’re drawing attention to us.”

Noah didn’t seem perturbed by that.

“You mean more than following me into a meeting room in the library and closing the door?”

Oh my fuck, this wasn’t helping.

“You’re right. I need to leave. So, bye.” I turned my back and reached for the handle.

His body pressed against mine, not hard, close enough that I knew he’d closed the distance, not so close that I felt like I couldn’t move away.

So . . . why was I not moving?

“Briar, don’t go,” he murmured from behind me, his voice carrying a slight hint of cajoling. “I think you need to talk to me about what’s bringing you in here. Was it the punch, or the fact I said I can’t fuck you?”