Page 48 of Brawler
She nudged him, grinning. “You loved it. I can’t stop responding to your special brand of Neanderthal.”
He chuckled, shifting just enough to brace her back with his arm. Not overt. Not sexual. Yet it hit harder than anything else could have.
His voice dropped, rougher now, almost reluctant. “I’ve got a brother. He’s special. Sees numbers, odds, stats like a computer. But he loves like a little boy. Innocent. Sweet.”
Emily’s breath stalled. Her chest tightened.
“You take care of him?” she asked quietly. “How does that work when you’re deployed?”
Brawler stiffened, shoulders tight, the warmth between them flickering to chill. “Surprising I’d have the decency to make that choice?” His voice scraped raw, almost defensive. Then softer, almost breaking. “The alternative’s unbearable.”
Her hand shot out, catching his shoulder. “No. That’s not what I meant. I wasn’t judging. I wanted to understand. Your life. Him. That you’ve kept him with you instead of…handing him off. That’s rare. Admirable.”
His jaw flexed, eyes closing for a beat. When he opened them again, the steel had thinned. His voice was lower, broken at the edges. “Yeah, okay. Sorry. Knee-jerk reaction.”
He turned toward her, some of the tension easing from his body, well, as much as all that coiled, gorgeous muscle ever allowed. Brawler lived in a steady state of ready. It was simply who he was.
“I watch movies with him,” he admitted at last, the words scraped from somewhere deeper than his chest. “It’s how we bond. Disney’s his thing, so yeah, I know all of it, princess names, sidekicks. Abu, Flounder, Thumper…” His throat worked. He hesitated, voice roughening further. “Pascal. Clever little guy. That chameleon’s more than a joke. He’s Rapunzel’s freedom, her artistic soul, all shown without a word.”
Emily’s heart gave a startled jolt. She reached down, absently stroking Beast’s fur, steadying herself against the weight of what he’d just given her. “Interesting observation, Mr. See-It-All. Much like you and Beast.”
Something flickered in his eyes, then he went quiet. But the cracks he’d shown stayed, etched into her chest, impossible to forget.
11
She letherself take him in that intense gaze, the wit tucked beneath all that brute strength, the sharp edges that sparred so effortlessly with Flash’s humor. She’d been so wrong about him. Not about the gorgeous part, God, no, but about the rest. He wasn’t just a blunt protector. He was clever, layered, startlingly insightful. The full package, and she was weak for him.
The kiss aside, their whole jungle ordeal felt like something torn from a romantic suspense novel. Big, bad SEAL protecting small, fierce redhead while banter blurred into something dangerous and tender.
Her heart seized. No. Not for her. The ugly thought came swift and sharp, dragging her down into a pit she couldn’t name. Why did she believe she didn’t deserve that? Why, after all the failed relationships, did her mind whisper the same painful refrain?You’re the common denominator.Had she chosen the wrong men because, deep down, she thought that’s all she deserved?
She’d stepped away once before. Just a normal, silly, cute conversation with a boy she liked, and Dani had died out there on the pool deck, alone and vulnerable.
The thought gutted her.
Was she still making those unconscious choices, keeping men at arm’s length, punishing herself with distance, because of that one moment? No… but the evidence was there. Failed relationships. Emptiness she couldn’t bridge. Intimacy she’d brushed aside, treated like it meant nothing. Maybe it hadn’t been the men at all. Maybe it had always been her.
The revelation rocked her.
No. That couldn’t be true. It wasn’t. But how could she dismiss the data? She was a scientist. She trusted evidence.
Brawler? He was the outlier. Every dataset had one, the anomaly that broke the pattern. Like Sombra, who had defied the odds and was raising two cubs to adulthood.
She was melting into him, her body betraying her, her mind seduced by the proof of him. Not just the muscle and iron-bright eyes, but the way he respected her without trying. She’d seen the way he took care of the guys, the tossed protein bars, the quiet watch he kept on Flash, the way he respected authority even when he chafed against it. Respect and care disguised as rough edges.
She wanted him. But was he the one exception that proved her whole life of bad data wrong?
Shewasn’tbad data, wasn’t some broken variable in her own life. She’d made her choices, and they were hers. But the sick twist in her stomach said otherwise. The part of her that was scientific, rational, unflinching whispered that she was skewing the dataset, and him…God help her, he might very well be the outlier. He was making her see what she’d been missing all along. Not as a test subject, not as an anomaly to study, but as the real thing she had never let herself acknowledge. Never allowed herself to want.
Until now.
She turned to him, wrapped her arms around him, and pressed her face into the hollow of his neck, just resting against him, holding him, the precious man, this outlier, this confounding SEAL and gruff brother.
He stiffened, caught off guard, then his breath shuddered out, uneven. His big hands hovered before he gave in, pulling her in tight, as if he didn’t know how to stop himself.
“Emily,” he said at last, his voice unsteady, scraped raw. “Don’t think I’m letting you deflect me when I just spilled my guts to you. Repeatedly.”
She kept her face buried, safe in the scent of him, in the flexing, ironclad muscle that surrounded her like a fortress. She could tell him here. In his arms. “You have your brother,” she whispered, the words breaking. “I had my sister.”
