It would take nothing—just a tilt of my head, just a shift forward…
But I didn’t.
Instead, I reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, my fingers lingering against the warmth of her skin before I pulled away.
“Beautiful as ever, Mitch.”
Her eyes flashed with something unreadable before she huffed, crossing her arms. “Ugh, stop being so fucking nice to me. It makes it hard to…”
She trailed off, scowling at the ground.
I waited.
But she just stomped ahead, muttering under her breath.
I grinned. “Towhat?”
“To… to not like you,” she bit out, voice frustrated, pissed off.
And fuck if that didn’t do something to me.
She picked up her pace, and I didn’t stop her, because if I did, if I pressed any harder, I’d say something I wasn’t ready for.
Instead, I let my gaze drop, watching the way her hips swayed when she walked, how every step was an unintentional taunt.
“Speaking of hard,” I murmured, loud enough for her to hear, “keep walking like that, Mitch, and we’re gonna have a problem.”
She flipped me off without looking back.
I laughed, trailing behind her, shaking my head. God, this woman was going to kill me.
And I’d gladly let her.
7
Michelle
Despite the celebrationswirling around me, my mind drifted elsewhere, back to a house filled with shouted arguments, slammed doors, and resentment that curdled in the air like spoiled milk.
I would have given anything for my parents to have divorced.
Instead, they stayed together—a slow, drawn-out implosion that left scars instead of ash. My dad’s arrest had been the final blow, but the damage had been done long before that. If my mom had left when she should have, maybe everything would have been different. Maybe my brother wouldn’t have found his answers at the bottom of a bottle.
Maybe I wouldn’t have become this person. Bitter. Obsessed with escaping my family. Closed-off. Unable to have relationships because I saw no benefit from them. My dad brought us down.
I blinked, shaking off the thoughts, forcing myself to focus on the lightness of the rehearsal dinner, the way people actually seemed happy here. Gideon’s sister and niece. Fiona’s sisters and friends. The guys from the team. All laughing, drinking, living without the weight of the past clinging to them like a shadow.
I envied them.
Ihatedthat I envied them.
Brooks sat next to me, his arm resting along the back of my chair, his fingers inches from my bare shoulder but never touching. He could have.
But he didn’t.
And that annoyed me just as much as it pleased me. He told me he’d back off and that was what I wanted, yet, when he didn’t flirt, I missed that guy.
I could handle a sexy Brooks. I knew what to do with a guy who flirted, who pushed boundaries, who burned hot and fast. But a Brooks who was kind, who knew when to push and when to hold back, who could talk me down from a spiral and say the exact right thing?
