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I stared at him, speechless. At the lines of repressed rage on his handsome face; the coldness in those dark blueeyes.
“You’re… you’re angry with me,” Istammered.
He grunted derisively. “We can’t just go from being strangers to best friends, princess. Doesn’t fucking work thatway.”
Princess.
He used to call me that, when we were young. It wasn’t a derogatory term, the way he said itnow.
I looked out the window and sniffled a bit. It was the rain making me sniffly. It wasn’t his words that were making my eyes itch and blink, my stomach twist itself inknots.
When had Brody become such anasshole?
Right… Probably around the time I “disappeared.”
I knew that. I knew this was my fault. That I’d treated himbadly.
No, not badly. Badly was when you forgot to tip a really decent waiter. Badly was cutting someone off intraffic.
I’d treated Brodyhorribly.
Horrendously.
I took a breath and looked at him again, watching him pocket his keys and generally ignoreme.
“We are not strangers,” I said softly. “We never havebeen.”
He looked at me briefly. “I don’t know you,” he said, and my heart crushed in onitself.
“If you don’t know me now,” I told him, trying to keep my voice from wavering, “you neverdid.”
“You’re right. I didn’t.” He started to open hisdoor.
I reached to stop him, catching his leather sleeve, and he stiffened like I had the fucking plague. Those ice-cold eyes locked onmine.
I shrank back in my seat, letting him go. “You don’t need to do this, you know. I can just take a cab to theferry.”
He slammed the door shut and swore under his breath, an angry muscle ticking in hisjaw.
“Let me tell you what I know,” he said, turning to me, his elbow on the steering wheel so his broad shoulders seemed to take up all the space in the cab. “What I know is exactly how fast and how far you can run. What I know for fucking sure is exactly what it does to the people you leave behind when you do, and I am not spending this weekend scraping together a trail of shit when you ruin Jesse’s wedding. So if you wanna hate me for it go ahead and hate me, but if you think you’re going to the ferry, you’ve got another fucking thing coming. You’re doing this my way and that’s all the fuck there is toit.”
Holyshit.
Not only had Brody become much more of an asshole than I remembered… he was kind of scary when he was pissed off. Colder than he used to be; harder. Bigger, too. A lot more muscular; I could tell, even with the leatherjacket.
“Unlessyou want me to arrange to get your ass on a plane out of here right now,” he went on, leaning his big, muscular, pissed-off self into my space, “and we pretend you never landed. Because if anyone finds out you showed your ass in town and then you turned tail and took off, sweetheart, I am not gonna be the one telling Jesse to back off and give you space. You hear me on this? I’m fucking done with covering for you and making excuses for you and waiting for you to get a clue. Your brother loves you and the least you can do is show your face at his motherfuckingwedding.”
My gaze dropped away from the accusation in those cold eyes. I studied the muscle ticking in his jaw, the veins standing out on his neck, and realized I’d been wrong. He wasn’tpissed.
He wasseething.
And no, this was definitely not going as badly as I feared it might. It was much, muchworse.
I felt the burn at the back of my throat, the stinging behind my eyes, but I took a deep, shuddering breath, willing myself not to do this… not to fall apart. Not in front of him. Butshit. I totally felt like ateenager.
Maybe because the last time I’d been this close to Brody, I wasone.
His hand went to my hip and I heard the click as he released my seatbelt, felt the straps slide over me as he reached across me…. his nose almost bumping mine as he pulled the latch on my door, openingit.
