But the moment she opens her mouth, I realize it’s too good to be true.
“Brooke and Rosie come back today from visiting her grandparents,” she reminds me, and she flashes her eyes at me.
Just the sound of her name causes a thrum somewhere within me.
“And?”
“You can’t avoid her forever.”
I shake my head to myself. “I’m not avoiding her, she just happened to be away since I moved back.”
My upper lip twitches from the thought of seeing Brooke again. Back in high school, she was the cheerleader every guy wanted. I was the lucky one to call her mine. Christ, she could bend like no other too. Being with her was a dream… until we imploded.
“Don’t screw it up. Brooke is really cool. She lets me babysit Rosie, and I need Brooke happy so she can teach me her pasta recipe since I can’t keep eating pizza.”
“You don’t know anything about it, Lucy,” I state, as I’m not sure what Lucy would understand about my romantic history.
“Please,” she sneers. “Your homecoming king and queen photo hits my eye sockets every day on entering the school. I know you two had a thing.”
A thing is an understatement.
First love, inseparable days, unrealistic plans of a future that were too good to be true. Her caramel-brown hair wrapped around my hands and her blue eyes bright with love for me.
A thing doesn’t even cover the surface.
“Doesn’t matter.” I hear the somber in my tone.
It’s been four years since I last saw her, in the only way we know; her under me with her eyes piercing me, asking me for something more. Again in our twenties, we reconnected for an instant and acted like two insatiable people clueless to the impossibility of a future.
“Well, figure it out, because her car just pulled up and we have a casserole dish to return. I’m not doing it, so you have fun with that situation.” The satisfied look my sister gives me tells me she’s enjoying this.
Looking out the window to the driveway next door, I see the small blue SUV park, and I know my time has come.
But that’s the thing—I’m ready, or at least I think I am.
Because Brooke Rivers is the only woman who I would want to make squirm again. Who, despite the way last time went down—and hell, that was a rollercoaster of crazy—I still can’t keep her out of my mind.
And if there is anything about my new way of life that I can’t try to avoid, it’s the complication of running into my ex, because it’s just impossible to avoid one another in this town.
“Don’t do anything I would do,” I say as I move to leave and see that Lucy has conveniently grabbed the dish for me while I was thinking about the hundred ways this all could go.
“Me? I’m perfectly behaved.” Her sentence is dripping with sarcasm as she holds up the glass oven dish.
I gently pull her ponytail before taking the dish.
Heading out through the garage, I’m thankful that my dark long-sleeve shirt and jeans are the right outfit for running into your ex. As my feet begin to walk in the direction of her driveway, my adrenaline spikes, because her silhouette alone does something to me.
Her sunglasses are on top of her head, her hair down well past her shoulders in natural waves. Her jeans are a perfect fit, showing me the curve of her ass that I want to squeeze, and an olive-green sweater that brings out the blue in her eyes, with her lashes fluttering.
My worst fear.
She gets more fucking beautiful as time passes. Her glow is different from when we last saw one another, only better, more gentle, pure radiance.
Our eyes meet, her pink lips part, and her breath cuts as she stops in her tracks.
God, I hope her mouth curves up into a smile.
“You knew this was coming.” I have to offer her a gentle grin.
Her face is frozen, but inside I’m screaming, Smile for me, you know you want to.
“Grayson…” she begins, but the squeal of a tiny human in the car breaks our locked gaze.
A reminder that we are two very different people now.
That pinch in my stomach reminds me that she’s a mom, and I’m the guy who broke her heart over reasons that are no longer valid.
“You really want to do this reunion now?” She breathes out, and I hear half-amusement, half-annoyance in her tone.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
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