“Yeah.” I swallowed down the knot clogging my throat as I watched him walk into my office. “I was . . .” Trailing off, I didn’t have a good excuse to why I was sitting at my desk, staring at the wall like someone had kicked my cat into oncoming traffic. Lifting a hand, I tucked my hair back. “You haven’t been standing there long, have you?”

“Long enough.”

I tensed.

Brock’s dark gaze roamed over my face, missing nothing. He said nothing as he came forward and then sat in the chair across from my desk. Several seconds passed and then he said, “Sometimes you get that look on your face. Like you’re a thousand miles away. As if you’re someplace else. And I think I know where.”

Oh God.

My eyes widened.

“And I’ve seen that look before,” he continued, his gaze finding mine. His broad shoulders tensed. “Because I . . . I put that look on your face before.”

Sucking in a sharp breath, I pushed back from the desk using my toes. I gripped the arms of my chair. “I wasn’t thinking about that. Not at all. I was just lost in thought. Seriously.”

His brows lifted in surprise, and he stared at me like I’d just admitted to secretly being Batgirl or something. “You . . . you never cease to surprise me.”

I laughed nervously. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

Shaking his head as if he was almost stuck in a bubble of wonder, he then leaned forward, pressing his hands together. “You protect me.”

“What?”

“You protected me back then,” he said, his voice oddly hoarse. “And you are still doing it now, aren’t you? You don’t want me to think about that night, because you don’t want me to be upset.”

My God, was I that easily readable?

“Even though I know it still fucks with you. It still fucks with me. It always fucks with me, but you were the one hurt. I was the one who screwed up, and yet you still try to protect me.”

I was going to break the arms of my chair.

“And I don’t deserve that,” he said, a muscle flexing along his jaw. “I sure as hell didn’t deserve it then, and I still don’t deserve it now.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I struggled to get air into my lungs. “Brock . . .”

“But I’m going to change that,” he promised, and my eyes flew open. “One day, one day real soon, I will change that.”

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

“This . . . this would be so perfect.” With one hand on her protruding belly, Teresa turned in a slow circle. “I can almost see the mirror over here, across the wall. The bars right across from it.”

Avery nodded as she stood next to her friend. “God, this is . . . this is even more than what we expected.”