Until that night.
Until I realized it had always been me wanting him and him wanting everyone but me.
“No,” I whispered, hating myself a little for what I was saying. “You can’t blame me.”
A muscle flexed in his jaw as he nodded. Heart pounding, I turned around and hurried back to the table without looking behind me. I had no idea how long I’d been gone, but guessing by how everyone was staring at me when I slid into my chair, it had been a little too long.
Avery smiled tentatively at me.
“Is everything okay?” Grady asked, touching my arm.
I started to respond, but before I could, I heard only part of what Cam said, “Holy shit.”
A shadow fell over the table, a shadow that originated directly from behind me. Avery’s eyes widened and her mouth formed a perfect O. The tiny hairs along the back of my neck rose.
No, he didn’t.
He so didn’t follow me back to my table.
Cam was rising from his chair, a look of pure adoration etched into his handsome face. “Holy shit, man. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”
Yep.
He’d followed me to my table.
Looking to my right, I watched Brock clasp Cam’s hand and then they exchanged one of those one-arm man hugs. All I could do was sit there as Brock and Cam spoke to one another. I had no idea what they were saying, and it probably had nothing to do with my hearing. I was concentrating on not standing, picking up my chair and tossing it at Brock.
Then Brock was standing to my right, looking directly at Grady. He held the man’s stare like he used to hold the stares of his opponents during weigh-ins and before the matches, smiling narrowly.
Clearing his throat, Grady removed his hand from my arm.
My hands slipped off the table and fell into my lap.
Brock’s eyes were cold and flat as he extended his arm over my 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, worked for 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 about Jilly.”
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.