“For wh—Why?”
“Well, you were kinda obvious that you don’t want him knowing about your feelings, and you said you belong to him for now. So I’ll wait my turn.”
“Aiden,” I whispered and scratched at my forehead. “That’s not . . . I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want to lead you on.”
“And you’re not.” His smile somehow seemed to get wider as he draped an arm over my shoulders and began walking toward the little coffee shop again. “You told me how you feel, and I’ll respect that. To be honest, I don’t have a lot of time for dating, as I’m sure you can see with Jace’s schedule. Last weekend and tonight with you were some of the best times I’ve had in the last year. So we’ll stay friends, if nothing else. Just know that if you ever change your mind, I’ll be waiting.”
I sighed, but was hopeful that he was serious about staying friends. I had as much fun with Aiden as I did with Kinlee and Jace. “If you say—” I cut off on a gasp. Oh, mother of all that is holy.
My body went rigid, and if it hadn’t been for Aiden’s arm guiding me, I’m sure I would have stopped walking. Barely ten feet from us, frozen with a coffee cup halfway to his lips and his wide eyes on us, was the man haunting every second of my life.
“Hey, Brody! Where’d you go last week?”
My pulse jumped when Aiden said his name, and though I tried to keep my eyes anywhere else—the street, the cars, the shops, my feet—they kept pulling back to Brody. My eyes quickly traveled over the tight-fitting Henley shirt and perfectly worn jeans on his body, and I wished he’d been on patrol so he would’ve been in his uniform instead. A flash of Brody in his uniform went through my mind and I realized that actually would have made it harder to tear my gaze from him. Someone needed to put the man in a cardboard box. No, he just needed to leave and I needed to never see him again.
“Um, I just—I had somewhere I needed to be.” His eyes barely held Aiden’s for more than a few seconds before darting over to me, and over to where Aiden’s hand rested on my shoulder. He blinked a couple times and seemed to clear whatever he’d been thinking about. “What are the two of you up to?”
I couldn’t respond to him even if I’d wanted to tell him what I was doing here with Aiden. My mouth had gone dry, and I had to keep my hands clasped so I wouldn’t reach out toward him. I had a soul-deep yearning to be closer to him, and I knew the second I stepped into his arms I would feel like I was exactly where I was meant to be again. I’d been craving that feeling ever since we’d separated in Kinlee’s entryway, and being this close to him for the second time since then was making it practically impossible to stay away.
“We grabbed some dinner, and now we’re going over to get coffee before I take her home.”
Which means date. Brody knows I’m on a date with Aiden. Obviously, as if seeing us out like this wasn’t enough of a hint. But I hated that he knew, and I hated that I hated that. Brody’s eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second as he stared at Aiden, and his forehead tightened when his eyes met mine again. I would have given anything to know what he was thinking about in that moment. Because I needed him to crush the hope I had that he didn’t look happy about the fact that I was standing here with Aiden’s arm around me. I knew he couldn’t care, but I was making myself believe that he did. And that wasn’t going to help in getting me to stop thinking about him.
“Well, uh, I’ll let you get back to that. It was good seeing you again, KC. Aiden,” he grunted by way of closing the conversation. And with one last look from Aiden to me, he took off toward a dark Expedition parked at the sidewalk.
My body automatically took a step in the same direction, but Aiden started walking us toward the coffee shop again. I exhaled roughly when the sense of loss hit me.
It’s official. There’s something wrong with me. These are not normal feelings to have for someone I don’t even know. It’s not normal to crave and obsess over a man I’ve only had a five-minute conversation with. Aiden removed his arm when we got to the door of the shop, and I turned to look at the dark SUV just sitting there. The need to catch another glimpse of him, or at least hear his voice again, was so strong that I could feel this energy working its way from my chest to my arms, as if calling me to him.
“KC?”
“Huh?” My head snapped back to look at Aiden and his patient smile. I tried to feel something, anything, for the man standing in front of me. But there was nothing. My entire body was now buzzing, and somehow I knew Brody’s eyes were on me, and that knowledge sent a welcome shiver up my spine.
Aiden’s smile faltered when he noticed how distracted I was. “Did you still want coffee or did you want me to take you home now?”
“Of course, I do,” I assured him. “Let’s go in.”
When I stole a glance at the street, the Expedition was gone.
Brody
May 13, 2015
WHAT ARE YOU doing? What the f**k are you doing? I tapped my thumbs on the steering wheel of the Expedition and looked out the windshield toward the shop. It was early Monday morning, it had been two days that felt like a damn week since I’d seen her, and I felt like I was going crazy.
Casey—or KC, as I’d found out—had consumed my every thought over the last week, waking and sleeping. I knew I should forget about her and the weird moments we shared, but I couldn’t. And now here I was sitting in front of her bakery. I’d reminded myself thousands of times over the last week that I was married, that I couldn’t think of her the way I had been . . . but then I saw her on Thursday, and again on Saturday, and Saturday was what broke me. I wanted to rip Aiden’s arm off her. An unwelcome amount of jealousy and pain surged through me when I saw them walking together, and I knew then that my attempts to forget about her were futile.