He gave me a small smile, one I couldn’t quite read. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d come meet you.”
“Did you miss me?” I asked, stepping close enough to finger his belt loop.
He hesitated, eyes darting briefly toward the bus behind me then back. “Listen, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you something for a while now, and frankly, it’s been eating me alive, so I’m just going to say it.”
The words flowed out of him like lava.Something about his tone made my stomach twist. It also didn’t escape me that he hadn’t answered my question either.
“Okay.”
“I was offered a job,” he said. “A big one.”
I racked my brain. “The sports editor gig, right? You mentioned that a few weeks ago.”
“Right, but what I didn’t mention is that it’s with theMiami Herald.”
I blinked. “Miami. As in—”
“Florida.”
His delivery landed in my chest like a line drive straight to the dick. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something more, but I was already reeling.
I should have seen this coming. Brock had always been bigger than Rose City and thePortlandia Press, bigger than sharing kisses in the shadows with me. Here I was thinking that there might be something more between us—something I had only ever read about in romance novels—but no. I was just the guy between bylines, a secret Brock kept safe while waiting for his next chapter to start. And now it had.
InfuckingFlorida, of all places.
Sticky air, mosquitoes the size of golf balls, the kind of heat that felt like you were being strangled by a damp, musty towel. I had played a year in Double-A down there and swore I would never go back unless I had to. Everything smelled like sunscreen and regret.
But this wasn’t about the weather. Not really.
This was about him beingthereand me still beinghere. And the space between those two things suddenly felt so much bigger than geography.
I searched his face. “So, what does that mean for us?”
He looked up at me then, eyes soft but distant. “I don’t know yet.”
Wrong answer.Brock must’ve seen something shift in my face because he stepped in closer, voice softer. “Tuck, I didn’t expect this.Us.Not like this.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes flicking away for a second. “When we started this, I thought maybe it’d be fun, or light, or . . . I don’t know. I was thinking about myself for once and what I wanted.You.”
His voice cracked a little on the last part, and I hated that it made something ache behind my ribs.
“And then you were so much more. I haven’t said anything because I’ve been scared to make it real.” He paused to catch his breath before adding, “And now this offer shows up, because of course it does. Right when things are starting to matter.”
There were a thousand things I could have said.
Tell me we’ll figure it out. Say this isn’t the end. Pick us over the job.
But none of them felt right. None of them felt fair.
Instead, I fell back on my usual pattern and did what I did best when I was hurting: I lashed out.
“So . . . I guess that’s that, huh?”
My voice came out harsher than I meant it to.
“What? No, that’s not—”
