“You keep shooting like that, and I’m going to get very drunk and make poor decisions.”
“And what if I want you to make poor decisions?”
“You might get dragged down with me.”
“So we’d both wind up on the floor?”
“Something like that.”
I half-expected a kiss to come. I even let my eyes start to close.
But Brock pulled back, chuckled, and said, “Shoot again, Tara!”
I laughed, lined up my shot, and missed, giving the turn back to Brock.
But as I watched him line up his shot, and as I thought about his words—“get very drunk and make poor decisions,”—I recalled something I had promised to myself right before I left Albuquerque.
I would not have a relationship of any kind, romantic, sexual, casual, built purely on lust. Oh, we had intense attraction to each other. We could probably bang it out in the Saloon bathroom right now if I felt like being that degenerate.
But even though I abhorred my family’s controlling nature, they had instilled in me a desire for serious relationships only, or at least something more than sex based on carnal desire. I could sleep with Brock before we committed to each other—that’s how Steele and I had started—but especially after Steele, I needed to make sure the people I was with were open, honest, and willing to look vulnerable. Steele’s refusal to appear weak had cost him more than his being guided by his emotions, though the two played off each other.
When the game ended, which Brock won, he came over and pulled me in for a hug.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he said. “How about instead of more drinks, we go back to my place where we can have alcohol for free?”
I gulped. No one was naïve enough to think we were just going to “have alcohol for free.” I had to make my stand here. I had to.
“Well, that sounds fun,” I said. “But Brock, I need to know a little more about you before I do something like that.”
“Sure, no problem,” he said with ease. “What do you want to know? Interview me.”
I chuckled. I hoped it could remain this lighthearted throughout.
“What happened in your past?”
“What do you mean?” Brock said, some amusement in his voice gone.
“I mean…”
Just get to the point.
“I’ve heard so much about how you used to be Zack before Zack, about how something happened several years ago. Kathryn said that something bad happened. What was it?”
Brock chuckled, but his eyes betrayed his thoughts. His eyes showed a bear being pushed to the corner, a bear that was running out of room and was dangerously close to fighting back.
“You’ve got to be more specific than that, I mean, it could mean several things.”
“Brock—”
“I mean, really, what does it matter what happened in the past?”
“Don’t do this,” I said. “Don’t turn into Steele.”
The amusement in Brock’s expression left his face. He bit his lip, sighed, and shook his head.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do,” I said. “I do. If I’m going to be doing this with you, I—”
