Page 8 of Fire in You

My hands slipped off the table and fell into my lap.

Brock’s eyes were cold and flat as he extended his arm overmy plate. He spoke, but it sounded muffled since he was speaking to my deaf ear.

“Grady Thornton,” I heard from my left, and I realized Brock had introduced himself. Grady’s hand was all but swallowed by Brock’s much larger one. “You know Cam?”

“We’ve met a couple of times.” Brock placed his hand on the back of my chair, the gesture oddly intimate and possessive. “I met him and his lovely wife through Jillian.”

I stared straight ahead, counting under my breath.

“Really?” Curiosity filled Grady’s tone. “How do you two know each other?”

“He works—well,workedfor my father,” I answered before Brock could.

“Ah, come on, that’s not the whole story.” Brock chuckled, and I widened my eyes. “We actually grew up together. There’s barely a thing I don’t know aboutJilly.”

What in the actual hell of all nine circles of Hell was this?

“And how do you know everyone here?” Brock asked, and since he shifted closer, I could hear him even though it sounded like it was at the end of a tunnel.

Grady’s gaze darted between Brock and me. “I’m a friend of Cam’s. We work together.”

“Interesting,” Brock murmured, still smiling. “You’re coaching soccer now, right?” When Cam nodded, Brock turned back to Grady. “Are you also a coach?”

“No.” Grady sat a little straighter. “I teach chemistry at Shepherd.”

The smile on Brock’s face went up a notch, and I wanted to slip under the table. “A professor? Wow. And how do you know Jillian?”

Oh my God, this was an interrogation.

Grady picked up his bottle as he smiled at me. “We just met, but I think we’re . . . going to be pretty good friends.”

“Good friends?” Brock chuckled, and my hands tightened into fists. “Sounds about right. Anyway,” he said in a way that dripped dismissiveness, “I don’t want to keep you all from your dinner. Just wanted to stop by and say hi. I’ll hit you up later,” Brock said to Cam before focusing on me in that intense way of his that made you feel like there was no one else in the entire world but you.

He tapped the tip of my nose.

I blinked.

Brock grinned. “I’ll see you again soon.”

He then stalked away, drawing attention from nearly every table as he made his way toward the front of the restaurant.

“That was unexpected,” Cam said with a laugh. “You didn’t know Brock was in town?”

I shook my head. My father had to have known Brock would be here, and he hadn’t warned me. Then again, my dad didn’t know what really had gone down between Brock and me. All he knew, all my family believed, was that Brock and I had simply grown apart from one another.

But I could never tell my parents, and I demanded of Brock that he didn’t, because if my father had known why I’d been where I had been and how I . . . how I got hurt, he would’ve straight up murdered Brock. It wouldn’t have mattered that my father treated him like a son or that he’d invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of time in Brock.

Brock would be a dead man.

“You have no idea whose hand you just shook, do you?” Cam laughed again with a shake of his head, sitting back in his chair. “That was Brock ‘The Beast’ Mitchell. God, he’s like, what, Jillian? Heavyweight Champion twice? Then once at Light Heavyweight. Damn.” Cam looked like he was about to pass out. “I can’t believe he’s not fighting anymore. Watching him in the ring was like seeing a damn Titan throwing a punch . . .”

I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable for a thousand different reasons as Cam updated Grady on the awesomeness that was Brock. Someone must’ve said something to me, but I didn’t hear them until I looked up at Avery.

Suddenly, I couldn’t do this.

I didn’twantto do this.

Not with Brock sitting in the same place as me, not after all these years, and all I could think about was that night.

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