Page 75 of Fire in You

“I knew when you dropped out of college. I knew when you got the job at the insurance firm,” he explained, and my lips parted on a sharp inhale. “I knew when you started dating someone. I also knew you never brought him home to meet your parents, so I knew it couldn’t be that serious.”

Holy crap.

Thunderstruck, the anger gave way to surprise. “Why didn’t she say anything to me?”

“I asked her not to. I was . . . I was sure you wouldn’t want me to know any of those things. You had made it clear the last time we had talked that you didn’t want me in your life.”

A twinge of regret blossomed in my chest. It had been that last holiday I spent with him and my family. “You . . . you brought her to the house.”

I think that was what broke me the most about Brock back then. The girl he’d been flirting with, the girl he’d ditched me for, wasn’t just some one-night stand who was forgotten the moment he walked out. It was the girl he ended up getting involved with. It was the girl he finally settled down for. It was the girl he proposed to.

He turned his head slightly, looking away as if he couldn’t go eye to eye with me. “I wasn’t thinking.”

A knot formed in my throat as that night came rushing back. It had been the Christmas after everything had happened and Brock had come to Christmas dinner. He hadn’t come alone. Roughly four months after he’d broken my heart and my life had literally imploded, he’d brought Kristen tomyfamily dinner, and I . . . I’d lost it.

Face still practically a wreck and healing, my mental state nowhere near stable, I’d come downstairs for one of the rare times to join my family, and I could still remember it like yesterday.

I’d made my way into the large dining room, my weary gaze tracking over the familiar faces, and I’d seen Brock first. He’d been staring at the door, and for a moment, I thought maybe he’d been waiting for me, looking for me. Although he had dealt a death blow to my emotions that night at Mona’s, tiny seedlings of hope had formed in the weeks afterward during his visits.

But then I’d seen who he stood next to, and seeing her, knowing that he brought her to the dinner, meant she was important to him. No one-night stand. No drunken hookup. He’d never, ever, brought a girl to my parents’ house.

Kristen was his girlfriend. Not me. Never me.

I’d pivoted right around and went back upstairs, managing not to flip my shit in front of my entire family. It hadn’t mattered, though. They all knew. And that mortification and raw hurt from the night at Mona’s had resurfaced in a messy explosion of emotion.

Brock had come after me like he had a hundred times before then, like hehadn’tthe night at Mona’s.

He’d come to my bedroom, and I’dyelledat him. I was pretty sure I called him a “selfish, conceited whore” at one point and I’d told him that I never wanted to see him again. I’d said other things, terrible things, and I could still see his face and the shock that had been etched into his features. The pain I didn’t want to see, and especially the guilt I didn’t want to acknowledge.

It was like almost dying all over again, but looking back, I knew it hadn’t been all his fault. He shouldn’t have had to live his life worrying about hurting the kind of feelings I had for him. It wasn’t fair to him, and that had taken a whole lot of soul searching to realize—painful, brutal soul searching.

His thumb massaged my pulse, tugging me out of the past. “Jillian?”

“I’d . . . I’d overreacted. I mean, I was . . . fuck,” I said, letting it all out. “I was jealous. I was so jealous, Brock, because I wanted to be her. I’d lo—” I cut myself off as tiny bundles of nerves formed in my stomach. I pulled so his hand was no longer touching my throat. “I just wasn’t in a good place.”

“Don’t take the blame for this,” he told me.

“I’m not. Well, I’m taking partial blame for the . . . the fuckery known as us.” Desperately needing space to think about this clearly, I slipped out of his hold and off his lap. Standing, I thrust the hair back from my face and moved until the back of my legs touched the coffee table. “I was young and—”

“And I didn’t want to see what was right in front of my face.” He scooted to the edge of the couch and stared up at me. “I just wanted you to think of me like you would a brother.”

Uncomfortable of where this conversation was going, I edged away from the coffee table, moving so I was standing in front of it, my back to the TV. “Brock—”

“But I knew that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t a fucking idiot.”

I stiffened.

His hands hung between his knees. “And I wanted to just think of you as someone who was like a baby sister to me.”

“You did. You didn’t once treat me like I was anything other than that.”

“I told you. I couldn’t let myself. You were six years younger than me. Now? Not a big deal. Then? Not to mention jailbait, but your father would’ve murdered me. Hell,” he grunted, a wry grin on his lips. “He still might kill me. You were too young and I was . . . I was too caught up in my own head. All I had were my dreams—be this big UFC star. Get a shit ton of endorsements. Work hard and party fucking harder, and you—”

“I didn’t fit into that,” I said without an ounce of bitterness, because I hadn’t. I’d been a little girl compared to him, full of silly dreams and hopes.

And there was a part of me that still felt like her sometimes. That I could be easily swept off my feet again, sucked back into Brock just when I was finally, finally starting to live my life.

“But I always knew,” he said, lowering his gaze. He let out a ragged breath. “I fucking knew how you felt.”

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