“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.”

—Joan Crawford

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

A week turned into two, and Halloween came and went as November was ushered in. The air grew chillier with each passing day, and the weatherman on the local news warned this would a record-breaking winter, colder than the last several years, with feet of snow. Feet. Not inches.

I still hadn’t put the bookcases together.

I didn’t hear from Grady except for the occasional text from him checking in, which I always responded to. He didn’t bring up dinner and my earlier suspicions were confirmed.

Thinking about Grady, I wished that I . . . that I was upset, because at least then I’d have known that I actually felt something for someone that was more than a passing interest. I guessed it wasn’t to be, because I wasn’t spending time with wishful thinking, hoping he’d make good on the promise of dinner.

However, I was spending a decent amount of time with Brock and things . . . things were really okay. We worked well together, in and out of meetings. There’d been no more dinner meetings or random appearances at my apartment, but every day he either showed with coffee, lunch, or dessert, and sometimes all three things in one day.

I began to wonder if he was trying to fatten me up.

Not that he needed to try. I did that all on my own.

But it was sweet of him, and I guessed maybe it was his way of making up for what had happened in our past or him trying to make up for lost time, because he used to do things like this years ago. Not as often, but he’d come to my parents’ house when I got home from school, carrying a slice of pie or cake from the bakery down the street from the Lima Academy. Instead of delivering coffee to the office, he’d bring smoothies and milkshakes to my bedroom.

Things were kind of like before, but not.

Brock flirted like he used to, which meant he had this amazing ability to turn almost every comment into something that dripped sex. And it might’ve totally been my interpretation, because seriously, I currently existed in a several years long dry spell, so there were moments when I could turn almost everything into a sexual thing. Like seriously. I could be watching Walking Dead and suddenly be fixating on Daryl’s biceps or Rick’s baby blue eyes a little too long.