“I won’t eavesdrop again,” I promised and his hand gave me another squeeze.

“Darlin’, we get to the point where we’re keepin’ anything from each other, we got problems. This is not me and Olivia, where she’d go shoppin’, hide shit in the closet, and I wouldn’t find out we were maxed on our credit cards until I got the statements and learned she was dedicated to the mission of memorizing every square foot of Cherry Creek Mall. And this is not you and that ass clown where you gotta protect yourself by hidin’ somethin’ as important as takin’ birth control. This is you and me. Eavesdropping is not an available option ’cause to make this real and make that real rich, it’s gotta all hang out.”

I liked that. A whole lot.

So I whispered, “Okay.”

“Okay,” he whispered back, then said, “I asked Bree out the first day of her freshman year, my sophomore year of high school. She said yes and we were tight from that day on. She was tight with me and she was tight with my family.”

I nodded.

Brock kept talking.

“I got a scholarship to U of A to play baseball. She followed me down there. But she was close with her family and mine and her friends up here. She didn’t last. She hated Arizona, not because of Arizona, because she missed home. Her sophomore year, she transferred to UC. We thought it’d be cool. We survived the long distance thing my freshman year in Arizona; we figured we’d make it a couple more years. We didn’t. By Christmas, I’d met someone else and realized I was not the kind of man who was not going to taste the variety of flavors life had on offer. Because of that, I also realized what I had with Bree was more about history and friendship than what it takes to make the long haul. I came home, talked to her about it, she was not in that place and wasn’t happy about it but she had no choice. I was done.”

Oh man. Harsh.

Honest, but harsh.

I pulled in a breath but kept quiet and Brock continued.

“I went back after Christmas and so did she. She got it about a month later.” He grinned. “I got good taste and she was seriously fuckin’ pretty. Available for the first time since she hit the dating game, she had ’em eatin’ out of her hands. She enjoyed the fuck outta that. She connected with me in the summer when we were both home and told me she got it. I was pleased as fuck. She was a good friend and I missed her. Our relationship changed and it got better ’cause, like I said, she was a great friend and she was damn fun to be around. We had good times. We still had each other’s families. It worked.”