Then, my eyes still closed, I felt his lips against my cheek—against the deep scar. I sucked in a startled breath, shocked to the very core. It was such a sweet kiss, definitely not the first time in my life that Brock Mitchell had kissed my cheek, but it felt very, very different now. The way his lips felt, the brush of the hair on his chin and jaw caused my skin to prickle with heat. How his nose dragged along the curve of my cheek as he lifted his mouth and pulled away scattered my senses.

It was just a kiss on the cheek, chaste and harmless, and I wanted it to stay that way, where it was safe, but my heart was thundering and my pulse pounding, and there was nothing, nothing safe about how that felt.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Brock slipped the car into gear and pulled out of the parking spot while I sat back against the seat, fingers aching from how tightly I was clenching his jacket. We didn’t talk on the drive to my apartment.

“I’ll walk you up,” he announced, coasting into a spot near the front.

“That’s not . . .” I trailed off as his fingers brushed my hip. He was unbuckling my seatbelt. I blinked and Brock was already climbing out of the car and walking around the front. “Okay then.”

He opened the passenger door and extended a hand. Eyeing him curiously, I grabbed my purse off the floor beside my feet and stepped out. “You really don’t have to do this,” I stressed.

“I want to.” Brock walked beside me, hands shoved into the pockets of his pants as we headed for the stairs. Luckily, I was on the third floor. Any further, I so wouldn’t have taken the apartment. He looked around, scanning the parking lot and the apartments with soft glows illuminating from their windows. “It’s quiet here.”

“It is.” Holding his jacket closed, I trailed my hand along the railing as we climbed the outdoor stairs. “I imagine at your new place it really is.”

“The only thing you hear are birds and what I’m convinced is a bobcat or some shit.”

I laughed. “A bobcat?”

“I’m telling you, sometimes in the middle of the night, you hear some weird shit. Other than that, it’s pretty amazing.” He paused as we rounded the second level. “You should check it out.”

Glancing over at him, I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Was it a friendly offer? Or more? And why would I think it would be more? I had no idea, so I just nodded.

He didn’t say anything as we reached the third level and headed down the wide hall. My apartment was all the way to the end, on the corner. We stopped, and for some reason, my heart started pounding like I’d climbed way more than three flights of stairs.