I smiled at the memory.
Prom had been insane. I was seventeen and he had just turned twenty-three. Besides the fact that he was the oldest guy there and that would’ve been super weird, Brock was already quietly famous among those who watched the fights. Pretty sure he spent more time posing for photographs than we did dancing, but if I hadn’t been in love with him before, I fell hard and fast then.
He’d been like a brother to me up until, well, I started staring a little too long at the way his arms flexed or how his bottom lip was fuller than the top one. And then he’d gotten his first tattoo at seventeen, one of many, and I stopped thinking of him as a brother. He just never stopped seeing me as a little sister.
But tonight would be different.
“I’m ready,” I said out loud, to my reflection. “I’m more than ready.”
I had been ready that Saturday night, ready to change how things were between us, except that night ended with him . . . with him meeting the girl who would become his fiancée and me . . . with me ending up in the hospital, almost dead.
* * *
Grady was holding my hand as we walked out of the exhibit hall and into the rapidly cooling evening air of early October. It was later than I had thought I’d be out. We ended up grabbing a light dinner from one of the restaurants on German Street and then we’d stopped to get coffee before heading to the Center for Contemporary Arts.
It had been a nice night, really nice.
The conversation had been easy and it seemed like we never ran out of things to talk about. He told me about growing up in western Maryland and spending his summers helping his grandfather on their family farm and how he still went back there quite often. I explained what it was like to grow up in the Lima household. Even though he knew nothing about mixed martial arts or anything remotely like that, he was genuinely interested in what I had to say.
And now as we were walking to where we’d parked, my head was in a weird place. It was strange being back on the campus since I’d dropped out with three semesters left to graduate. Looking around now, with the students milling about between the dorms, I remembered what it was like before the weekend I came home and after I’d finally returned to college.
I found myself thinking about the time I learned that Brock was engaged to Kristen. Since I’d avoided keeping tabs on him, I was usually successful in zoning out my family whenever they talked about him. This time I hadn’t been so successful.
It had been right after I’d made the decision to leave college. After nearly dying, and that wasn’t an exaggeration. I’d seriously almost died, like dead, dead. I had the scars to prove it. I couldn’t bring myself to waste away hours sitting in the classroom and studying, learning things I’d never apply in life. Looking back now, removed from the intensity of everything, I knew it wasn’t really a thirst to live life that drove me to withdraw from classes.
I’d been depressed.
It was common, I’d discovered later, that after a traumatic event, people became depressed, oftentimes years after the event. I’d been restless, with no desire to go to class, to be around people, and even unable to read for any long period of time. Nothing had interested me.
I’d dropped out of college, returned home, a bittersweet homecoming for my parents since I knew they wanted me there but not under those circumstances.
Mom had pulled me aside one evening, after dinner, to tell me that Brock had proposed to Kristen and she had accepted. It had been two years after that night.
Two years and . . . Brock was on Pay-Per-View. He was engaged to the girl he’d flirted with that night, and it finally hit me then that there had been nothing that Brock had to get over, because he hadn’t had those kind of feelings for me. None. He was moving on, because nothing was holding him back.
His life was exploding in all the best ways while mine . . . mine had imploded, and everything I’d ever wanted—a degree, working for my family, traveling, being happy, and being in love—had felt like it was out of my grasp.
So I stayed home for six more months, found the job at the insurance firm, and moved back to Martinsburg.
And now I was starting to get back those things I once wanted. I was happy. I was working for my family and I . . . Drawing in a shallow breath, I peeked up at Grady.
We stopped by my car, and we stood facing one another.
He was not little.
Grady was at least an inch or two taller than me, so I could still wear normal heels, but yeah, he was short compared to Brock. He had to be close to six foot three. Obviously not Godzilla-sized, but—
Oh my God, I was not thinking about him while I was on a date with Grady.
“So, I was wondering,” Grady said, and the centers of his cheeks pinked. Adorable. “If you’d like to grab dinner sometime this week?”
I started to smile, and ducked my chin a little. “That . . . that would be nice.”
“So that’s a yes?”
I nodded.
“I’m glad you said yes.” He squeezed my hand. “I was prepared to grovel to get another date.”
Another date? That sounded . . . really nice. “Groveling not necessary.”
“Well, it’s . . . it’s getting late,” he said, his gaze finding and holding mine.
“It is.”
He stepped in to me, and his hand coasted away from mine, running up to my elbow. The breath he let out was shaky. Grady tilted his head to the side, lining up his mouth with mine, and I knew then he was going to kiss me.
He was really going to do it!
It had been so long since I’d been kissed, even been in the position to be kissed, and this was going to happen. His pale lashes had lowered. His eyes were closed. His mouth was coming right at mine.