It matched the beat of my heart, making me suddenly acutely aware of that as well.
I took a long, deep breath as Brock used his gloved finger to hold down the envelope as he ripped the edge with the tip of the tweezer.
I swear the world froze in that moment.
Or, at the very least, my heartbeat and breathing did.
Then Brock was opening the card inside.
To reveal… an invitation?
The laugh that bubbled up and burst out of Brock was a mix of shocked, amused, and relieved.
“What is it?” I asked, feeling so wound up that I couldn’t relax even after seeing the weight fall from Brock’s shoulders.
“An invitation from Bellamy for the two of us to stay at his Italian villa.”
“What?” I asked, voice breathless.
“I’m not shitting you,” Brock said, holding it out to me.
“What? Does he drive around with these things in his car?” I asked, turning it over to see a hand-drawn image of the villa we were discussing.
I won’t lie.
I would love to spend a week there.
I didn’t even remember the last time I took a vacation.
“You mull on that,” Brock said. “I have to take this,” he added, reaching for his phone that must have been vibrating in his pocket.
Taking it out, he moved onto the balcony.
And despite thinking he’d been a bit of a loon for all the worry about it, I couldn’t help but worry about all the ways Brock could be attacked out there, thanks to Lennon’s words.
I didn’t think anything of the call seeing as I wasn’t the only client that his work had, and they likely needed to give each other advice here and there, but when Brock’s head whipped over to look at me, I had a feeling things had just taken a worrying turn.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Brock
I was going to be in a world of shit when Sawyer found out about me hooking up with Miranda.
Somehow, though, I couldn’t bring myself to give a single fuck about that.
I get that I had a reputation for being a little reckless or careless or even selfish and not a team player. But at the end of the day, I cared what Sawyer thought.
But about this one thing, this one woman, yeah, I couldn’t bring myself to give a shit if he was going to be pissed.
Because, whether it made much rational sense to me or not, whatever was going on with Miranda was different than anything else I’d ever known.
I couldn’t explain it.
Maybe if I was a man who never spent more than a night with a woman, I could blame the constant close proximity, the patterns we’d fallen into, playing house, and falling into traditional roles because of that, confusing ourselves with reality and fantasy.
But the fact of the matter was, I had spent many weeks with many different women. I knew what it was like to fall into patterns, to appear to be a couple.
That said, never before had it led to interest in having those things be true.