Bad Impressions (Revive Me #1) (17 page)

“He’s spread his version of things all over town.” I stopped walking, forcing Brad to do the same. Gripping his arms with urgency, I told him, “I’m so sorry, Brad. This is all my fault.”

“
Your
fault?”

“Yeah. He’s
my
brother. If we’d told him properly, like you’d wanted, it wouldn’t be like this now.”

He lifted my chin with his index finger and gazed down at me with those loving eyes of his that always had me melting at his feet. “It’s not your fault, Soph. It didn’t matter how we told him. You know Ollie. He loves to retaliate. He would’ve done it either way.”

“But—”

He pressed his finger to my lips, cutting me off as he said patiently, “But nothing. Try to relax. It will blow over soon enough. And the best part? We’ll be together without having to hide in the shadows. It’ll be fine. I promise.”

He sounded so confident that everything would work itself out, but he failed to hide a brief flicker of hesitancy in his eyes. Doubt.

And that was when I knew. He was as worried about it as I was. He was just putting on a brave face…for me. To reassure
me
.

I wrapped my arms around him tightly. “I love you.”

He chuckled and stroked my hair softly. “I love
you
, Soph.”

After a few moments, he pulled away and took my hand again. “Now, let’s at least make it to the other side of the square and then we can get the hell out of here if you want.”

“Okay,” I agreed, making an effort to swallow my nerves.

I hated having people’s judgmental eyes on us. I wasn’t used to it like Brad was. And, although, it was directed primarily at him, it didn’t make it any less distasteful. Animosity directed at the man I loved was just as bad as it being directed at me.

I could only hope that it would blow over like Brad had claimed.

Chapter 23

~Brad~

I eyed Soph over my newspaper and smiled to myself.
So fucking cute.

She was curled up on the other side of the couch, her knees drawn up, with her notepad resting on top of them as she wrote furiously. That determined, concentrated look of hers was set firmly in place.

She’d been sitting there writing for the better part of the afternoon. She hadn’t even noticed when I’d left the couch a couple of times to make a trip to the bathroom and to make us both a coffee. Hers was sitting there cold on the coffee table.

“What?” she said, startling me, because it was the first time she’d spoken in hours.

“Nothing,” I said, returning my eyes to the Sunday newspaper. I’d barely made it two pages through, because I’d been so distracted watching her in her element.

The next thing I knew, she was snatching it out of my hands and sitting up on her knees, eyeing me curiously.

“Hey!”

“Are you making fun of me?”

I held up my hands. “Never, my little princess.”

“Yes, you are. And stop calling me that.”

“What?
Little princess
?”

“Exactly.”

“I can’t. You
are
my little princess.”

She growled at me; actually growled and shot me a disapproving look.

I ripped the newspaper from her grasp and tossed it on the floor.

And then I pounced on her, covering her body with mine. She shrieked in surprise and gripped my biceps for support.
Mmm, I like that.

I gazed down at her and she met the intensity in my eyes. “I just like watching you when you’re like that.”

“Like what?”

“In your writing zone. You get completely absorbed in it and don’t notice anything else around you at all. It’s like you’re off in another world altogether. It’s cute.”

“Cute?” she said, screwing up her face.

“Yeah,” I said, kissing her right cheek. “Cute.”

She smiled and her eyes sparkled as she revealed, “I’m writing a modern love story that’s kind of based on
ours
.”

“Really?”

“Yep. You know…forbidden love and all that?”

There was a really awkward pause as we both took in what she’d just said about
forbidden love.
In the aftermath of Ollie finding out, we’d both come to realize just how fucking
forbidden
it truly was in his eyes.

The townspeople had now graduated from casting ice-cold, accusatory glares my way to actually boycotting my damn workplace. It’d been dead for the last few days. No customers.

Soph had barely been home, except to pick up a fresh change of clothes every now and then, just so she could avoid Ollie. She’d been crashing with me and I’d been all for that. Given my track record of never doing relationships, I’d been surprised as hell that I’d taken to having her around 24/7 so easily. But I had.

As far as I was concerned, it just proved how compatible we were and that this thing between us
was
meant to be and so fucking right, despite the town’s ridiculous bullshit. I actually couldn’t get enough of her and it’d been a struggle for both of us to part ways to go to work.

I was fucking whipped. One hundred percent. And I didn’t give a damn. Sophie Clinton had me by the balls and it was just the way I liked it.

“Huh,” I finally responded. I drew my finger over her lips and whispered, “And how will it end, Soph?”

Her tongue darted out and licked my finger. She chuckled and said in a teasing tone, “How do you think?”

I leaned into her and nibbled her left earlobe, whispering, “You tell me.”

“Happily. Ever. After.” She enunciated each word with emphasis as her eyes fixed on me. I watched them darken with that familiar
come-fuck-me
look.

And then, before I could even draw in my next breath, she flipped me, using one of the self-defense moves I’d taught her against me, until she was on top, straddling me.
Holy hell, that’s hot!

She slid her hands underneath my t-shirt, her soft fingers massaging my chest. “Mmm…love your hands on me, darlin’,” I murmured, relaxing into the couch as her magic hands went to work.

She smiled and then asked, “What about you?”

Her question came out of left field and I had no idea what she was getting at. I was also having a little trouble trying to summon any thoughts in that moment with her hands on me. “What
about
me?”

“Before I left…after our night together last year…you were headed back to engineering school…your second year.”

And just like that, any relaxation I’d been feeling instantly disappeared and tension coiled through my body. “Soph,” I warned, shaking my head.
We’re not talking about this.

“Brad, I’ve been tiptoeing around this since I came back here.”

Yeah, for good fucking reason. I don’t wanna talk about it. Ever.

When I didn’t respond, she pushed, “You never went back. After what happened with your dad, you stayed here. I get that. You needed to regroup and you wanted to be here to take care of your mom. But it seems like…like you have no intention of
ever
going back now.”

I eased her off me and climbed off the couch, turning my back to her as I tried to keep my cool. “Wow. That’s one hell of a mood killer you just doused me with. Bringing up my mom, my asshole of a dad
and
my career failures in one shot. If you weren’t up for it, you could’ve just said
no
.”

I tried to keep things lighthearted, but I could hear the edge in my voice. The fierce bite there.
Fuck.

The last thing I wanted was to push her away. She was my only fucking ray of light in our dead-end, hell-hole of a judgmental town. I
needed
her. I’d never thought I’d live to see the day where I needed anyone the way I did her. But I did. It was more than a craving. It was a gut-wrenching necessity.

I felt her arms snake around my waist, her head rest against my back.

“I’m sorry it upsets you, Brad. I’m just bringing it up, because I love you. I don’t care what everyone else thinks, or what they say about you. You’re a good man and you’ve always taken care of me. So, please let me take care of
you
now. You don’t belong here—stuck here. You were always so smart, so driven. And somehow you lost that after what happened with your dad.”

Oh, fuck me.
“Soph, I can’t—”

“Please,” she begged. “For me.”

I drew in a deep breath to try to get my shit together. The plea in her voice reached something within me that I’d thought I’d buried down safely a long time ago. I found myself responding, instead of shutting down, like I always did with everyone else. “You’re right. About all of it.”

She tightened her hold around me, silently encouraging me to continue.

I clasped her hands around my waist and distracted myself with stroking them as I told her, “The shit with my dad really fucked with my head. I guess it…made me question myself…question everything. I thought I’d stayed for my mom, but the truth is, after a couple of months, she would’ve been fine without me here. But I just couldn’t…I was lost.”

“That makes two of us. You know that’s why I came back here,” she whispered into my back. She gripped my shirt and jerked me around to face her. “But now we can figure it out together. Right?”

“Maybe.”

But she wasn’t having any of it.

Soph didn’t like
gray
. She never had. She was a straight-up, black and white kind of woman. It was always all or nothing with her.
Feisty ballbuster.

She fixed me with that no-nonsense glare of hers that no one could ever escape. “Brad,” she pressed.

I blew out a breath. “Yes. Fine, my little princess. We’ll both work our shit out together.”

“Good,” she said, happily. She patted my chest and walked around me into the kitchen. “Now, get in here and help me make dinner. You’re a better cook than me.”

Well, shit.
There was no arguing with her when she was like that. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, chuckling as I followed after her into the kitchen. “Besides, I don’t wanna risk food poisoning by making you cook on your own, do I?”

“Hey!”

“Don’t worry, darlin’. I’ll teach you a few things.”

She fixed me with a smoldering gaze. “Are you still talking about cooking?”

That’s it!
I
stalked towards her. “You’re so fucking hot.” I gripped her hips and hoisted her onto the kitchen counter. “Now, where were we, little princess?”

Chapter 24

~Brad~

A couple of weeks had gone by and things still hadn’t calmed down.

There was no sign of it blowing over at all.

It was taking every shred of self-restraint I had, not to confront Ollie and demand what the fuck he thought he was playing at.

Disapproving of my relationship with his sister was one thing, but continuing to bad mouth me and turn everyone in town against me was another fucking thing entirely. And the only reason I was holding back was because of Soph. I didn’t want to aggravate an already extremely tense situation between her and her brother.

Amazingly
our
relationship hadn’t suffered, despite my fears that it would.

In fact, all the heat on us had brought Soph and me closer together.

She was
still
living with me. It’d gone from her intending to just crash there for a couple of days, to a long-term thing.

Things at the house with Ollie had been incredibly tense, so they’d been avoiding one another as much as possible. I’d put in my two cents and told her that she needed to have it out with him, or things would never get better. But she’d been against the idea right off the bat. Soph didn’t like confrontation, as a rule. But I knew it wasn’t just about that. It was because she didn’t want to openly go up against Ollie, out of respect for him. She felt like she owed him or something, because he’d always had her back and been like a father to her after they’d lost their parents all those years ago.

I just hoped she’d realize there wasn’t an alternative.

I wasn’t worried about me, or my reputation suffering. I was used to it.

Back in my teens, I’d been
the poor kid with the abusive, alcoholic of a father
and as I’d got older, I’d become known as
the womanizer.
The town bullshit wasn’t anything new to me, so I wasn’t concerned for me.

But I was concerned about Soph. I was worried about her relationship with her brother; worried that she’d lose him for good. The two of them had always been close and losing that would surely break her. But there wasn’t much else I could do, given that she’d already shot down my advice. She’d talk to him when she was ready.
Just don’t wait too long, darlin’.